Mental Health

Behavioral alterations with lesions of the medial frontal cortex What are the behavioral alterations associated with lesions of the medial frontal cortex ?  Medial frontal lesions are associated with impoverished speech and apathy, which can be to the extreme of akinetic mutism, lack of motivation and drive, poor initiation, lack of goal formation, loss of planning, paucity …

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Utilization behavior and stimulus bound What is utilization behavior and what does it mean to be “stimulus bound”?  Utilization behavior refers to a patient’s inability to suppress the urge to manipulate or use an object in a correct way but in an unacceptable context—for example, drinking from the examiner’s cup or writing with the examiner’s …

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What is neglect and where are the lesions that produce it?  Neglect, compared to agnosias, is a lack of attention to events and actions in one part of one’s personal and extrapersonal space.  Hemineglect is the term used to describe neglect of one-half of one’s space, usually on the left in right handers. This inattention to stimuli from …

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Cerebral achromatopsia What is cerebral achromatopsia and where is the lesion responsible for it?  Achromatopsia is an acquired lack of color vision. Lesions of the occipital cortex below the calcarine sulcus produce upper quadrantanopia and achromatopsia in the preserved inferior visual field. Hemiachromatopsia can result from contralateral inferotemporal lesions of the fusiform and lingual gyri.

What is simultanagnosia and where is the lesion underlying it?  Simultanagnosia is a disorder of visual perception and attention characterized by the inability to interpret complex visual arrays despite preserved recognition of single objects.  Simultanagnosia occurs predominantly in patients with high occipitoparietal lobe disease such as bilateral infarcts in the posterior watershed region, venous infarcts due to …

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What is prosopagnosia and where is the lesion responsible for it?  Prosopagnosia (face blindness) is the inability to recognize familiar faces. Patients can perform a generic recognition —“it is a face”—and are able to tell age, gender, and emotional expression but are unable to identify the specific person. They rely on voice, posture, clothing, etc., to make the identification. Commonly, patients …

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What is anosodiaphoria and where is the lesion that produces it?  Anosodiaphoria is a disorder in which patients recognize a deficit, such as a hemiparesis and/or a hemisensory deficit, but are indifferent to it. It may be seen with right hemisphere lesions.