Constructional apraxia after left or right unilateral stroke

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Neuropsychology
• Spatial Cognition

Background:

• Constructional tasks assess spatial cognition after brain damage.
• Previous models suggest lateralized systems for spatial relation encoding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if constructional deficits after brain damage can be classified into distinct spatial cognition disorders.
• To propose and support a bipartition of constructional apraxia based on lateralized processing of spatial relations.

Main Methods:

• Re-assessment of constructional task deficits in patients with unilateral posterior brain lesions.
• Review of existing evidence in light of a cognitive neuroscience account of lateralized spatial processing.

Main Results:

• New evidence supports the proposed bipartition of constructional apraxia.
• The nature of constructional impairment correlates with the loss of specific lateralized components for spatial relation perception.

Conclusions:

• Constructional apraxia can be categorized into two distinct types.
• These types relate to the loss of lateralized systems for processing categorical and coordinate spatial relations.