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Dyssynchronous apraxia: failure to combine simultaneous preprogrammed movements
Cognitive Neuropsychology
|March 28, 2012
Summary
This study shows that damage to the frontal lobe can impair prepared movement programs, leading to limb apraxia. The patient struggled with simultaneous movements and larger Fitts task targets, indicating issues with motor programming.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Motor Control
- Cognitive Neurology
Background:
- Limb apraxia involves deficits in skilled, learned movements, potentially stemming from representational or innervatory processing impairments.
- Innervatory motor patterns can be either online (visual feedback-dependent) or prepared (feedback-independent).
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the innervatory pattern system, specifically prepared movement programs, in a patient with apraxia due to a left dorsolateral frontal stroke.
- To investigate the role of frontal processing in the functional synchrony of prepared movement programs.
Main Methods:
- Assessed a patient (TB) with apraxia and four controls on non-meaningful single and multi-joint movements to command.
- Evaluated sequential and simultaneous multi-joint movement combinations.
- Administered the Fitts (1954) task involving tapping between targets of varying sizes.
Main Results:
- TB performed similarly on single-joint and sequential multi-joint movements but significantly worse on simultaneous multi-joint movements compared to controls.
- TB was proportionately slower than controls on larger Fitts circles (prepared programs) but comparable on smaller circles (online programs).
Conclusions:
- Functional synchrony of prepared movement programs may depend on late-level frontal processing.
- Frontal lobe dysfunction can lead to limb apraxia and defective programming of non-meaningful movements.
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