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Mind and Brain

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Submitted By Hashemi
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1. There are two conditions that are being described in this case. The two conditions are object agnosia and ideomotor apraxia. This study mainly focuses on apperceptive visual agnosia which is a type of object agnosia and it is a condition in which a person fails to recognize objects due to a functional impairment of the occipito-temporal vision areas of the brain. This condition does not affect other elementary visual functions such as acuity, color vision, and brightness discrimination. Apperceptive agnosics are not able to distinguish visual shapes and they have trouble recognizing, copying, or even discriminating between various visual stimuli.
There are three subtypes of apperceptive visual agnosia: Dorsal Simultanagnosia, Ventral Simultanagnosia, and Visual Hemi-neglect. Dorsal Simultanagnosia is caused by bilateral damage to the bilateral parieto-occipital region of the brain. Sight is limited to a single object without awareness of the other stimuli present. These patients also have a hard time perceiving objects which are in motion. Ventral Simultanagnosia is caused by damage to the left inferior temporo-occipital parts of the brain. Patients with this condition cannot identify more than on object at a time even though they can see more than one object at a time. Visual Hemi-neglect caused by damage to the right parietal lobe. Patients with this condition are unable to see stimuli from one half of the visual field. Ideomotor apraxia is a movement disorder which is associated with damage to the left parietal lobe. Patients with this condition have insufficiencies in their ability to plan or complete certain motor actions which rely on semantic memory. This case study focused on Dorsal Simultanagnosia.

2. The brain area that is involved in this condition is the posterior parietal cortex, which is a critical brain region along the dorsal visual pathway.
3.
4.
5. , damage to the posterior parietal cortex, a critical brain region along the dorsal visual pathway, can produce a neurological disorder called simultanagnosia

bilateral damage to the bilateral parieto-occipital region of the brain.
6.
Simultanagnosia refers to an inability to recognize two or more things at the same time. Patients with dorsal simultanagnosia may use the identification some parts of an object to make a inference about the whole object. The term "simultanagnosia" coined by Wolpert, was refined by Luria who referred to it as a visual deficit in which only one object can be seen at a time. For example, a patient with dorsal simultanagnosia may report only one of the four items contained in the image below, and disregard the rest. Attention seems to be a factor in this agnosia in that unattended objects do not seem to be seen at all. Dorsal simultanagnosia patients often cannot localize stimuli that are seen. Dorsal simultanagnosia patients may have difficulty reading and counting because these activities involve viewing more than one thing at a time. This, in turn, may keep them from jobs or hobbies that require such skills. Dorsal simultanagnosics may seem to be "blind" since they bump into objects that are close together. Motion may further impair their ability to perceive objects. Typically, dorsal simultanagnosia is due to bilateral damage to the bilateral parieto-occipital region of the brain.

http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/a/apraxia_ideomotor/causes.htm
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/03/13/brain.aws066.full

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