Apraxia of tool use: an autopsy case of biparietal infarction

Although disorders in the use of single objects have been reported, there have been few detailed analyses. We describe the autopsy case of a 65-year-old, right-handed male patient with severe impairment of actual tool use which was caused by biparietal infarctions. He persistently and stably showed a severely defective use of actual objects, single or multiple, and relatively well-preserved pantomimes of object use and intransitive gestures. He did not have aphasia or dementia, and his ability for tool naming and function description was completely preserved. The author identified similar patterns of errors about a tool-action(-target) relationship both in single-object use and multiple-object use. Lesion analysis showed cortical infarcts mainly located in the bilateral inferior parietal lobules, extending into the temporal lobe on the right side.