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Loss of Spatial Orientation, Constructional Apraxia and Gerstmann'S Syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

E. Stengel
E. Stengel*
Affiliation:
Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Mental and Nervous Disorders
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Extract

In recent years important additions to the knowledge of the symptomatology in cases with involvement of the parietal lobe have been made. Both constructional apraxia (Kleist, 1922) and Gerstmann's syndrome, consisting of finger-agnosia, disturbance of right-left orientation, agraphia and acalculia (1924) have been related to lesions of the angular gyrus of the dominant hemisphere. Before the description of those symptoms, a loss of spatial orientation had been described in cases with lesions of the same localization. Balint (1910), Riddoch (1917), and others had observed that symptom in single cases, but the most comprehensive description was given by Gordon Holmes (1918), who studied it in a case-material of war injuries. When Holmes and his co-workers published their observations, constructional apraxia and Gerstmann's syndrome were still unknown. Loss of spatial orientation as a fully developed symptom is rare, while the other two disorders are not uncommon. For this reason the psychopathological relationship of those symptoms is still insufficiently understood. The following case offers an opportunity for studying the problem:

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 90 , Issue 380 , July 1944 , pp. 753 - 760
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1944 

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