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Updated: Apr 28, 2026
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Published on: March 28, 2025
Perseveration found in a human drawing task: six-fingered hands drawn by patients with right anterior insula and
Chiharu Niki1, Takashi Maruyama2, Yoshihiro Muragaki2
1Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Tokyo Women's Medical University, 8-1 Kawada-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8666, Japan.
Background:
Perseveration has been observed in a number of behavioural contexts, including speaking, writing, and drawing. However, no previous report describes patients who show perseveration only for drawing a human figure.
Objective:
The present report describes a group of patients who show body awareness-related cognitive impairment during a human figure drawing task, a different presentation from previously described neuropsychological cases.
Methods:
Participants were 15 patients who had a frontal lobe brain tumour around the insula cortex of the right hemisphere and had subsequently undergone a neurosurgical resective operation. Participants were asked to draw a human figure in both "hands-down" and "hands-up" configurations.
Results:
Eight of the 15 patients drew a human figure with six fingers during the "hands-up" and the "hands-down" human figure drawing tasks (one patient drew eight fingers). A statistical analysis of potential lesion areas revealed damage to the right anterior frontal insula and operculum in this group of patients relative to the five-finger drawing group.
Conclusions:
Our findings reveal a newly described neuropsychological phenomenon that could reflect impairment in attention directed towards body representations.
