Apraxia
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1] Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Parul Pahal, M.B.B.S[2] Norina Usman, M.B.B.S[3]
Synonyms and keywords: Dyspraxia
Overview
Praxis, a Greek work for act, work, or deed, is the ability to perform the learned movements. It usually comprises of three components, namely, ideation (what to do), motor planning (how to do), and execution (performing the movement correctly), that results in purposeful movements. Apraxia, however, is the inability to execute these skilled and learned purposeful movements when there is a breakdown in any component of praxis. This disorder makes it difficult to perform daily tasks and negatively impact the quality of life. Apraxia, a complex neurological disorder, with cognitive-motor dysfunction may be acquired or developmental. It can occur as a result of brain trauma/disease, and higher motor functional neuronal pathways damage in the setting of preserved comprehension, coordination, elementary sensory and motor systems. The most common types of apraxia are Ideational and Ideomotor.
Historical Perspective
- Steinthal introduced the term apraxiae (Greek word meaning inaction) in 1871. However, a German physician, Hugo Lipmann first established the conceptual knowledge and published complete description of apraxia after studying the gestures in a 48-year old stroke patient who had a left hemispheric stroke.[1]
- Lipmann noticed that, despite of resolution of the paresis, the patient was unable to perform tasks such as buttoning the shirt, with no affect on spontaneous movements, and doing simple tasks on command. He observed this phenomenon specifically in patients with left hemispheric lesions. He also concluded that the planning of the motor movements occurs in the motor area of the left side of the brain. Lipmann further proposed that the 'praxis' information flows from the posterior brain areas (parietal and occipital lobes) to the anterior (motor cortex).
- The major subtypes classified by Lipmann were ideational, ideomotor, and limb-kinetic apraxia.
- One of the behavioral neurologist, Norman Geschwind, presented that the superior longitudinal fasciculus involvement disconnects the Wernicke's area are from the left premotor cortex, leading to 'apraxia'[2]
Classification
APRAXIA[3] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Ideomotor | Ideational | Limb-kinetic | Constructional | Speech | Gait | Task-specific apraxia | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
- Ideomotor apraxia:
- Most common type of apraxia.
- inability to carry out a motor command, for example, "act as if you are brushing your teeth" or "salute") - the form most frequently encountered by physicians,
- Decreased performance of skilled motor performances despite integral language, sensory and motor function.
- Seen more frequently in neurodegenerative disorders and stroke patients.
- It can be classically demonstrated when a patient questioned verbally to make a motion with a limb. Patients with Ideomotor apraxia display spatial and temporal errors, inconvenient timing, amplitude, sequencing, configuration, limb position in space.
- It is an inability to carry out, learned motor acts, command, adequate motor, and sensory abilities.
- Ideomotor apraxia can be due to cerebral damage in numerous areas, including the left parietal lobe, the intrahemispheric association fibers, the dominant hemisphere motor association cortex, and the anterior corpus callosum.
- Patients often use their arm as an object relatively than indicating how to use the object . Patients are frequently able to achieve the same acts without struggle in their daily lives. This process has been called the "voluntary-automatic dissociation".
- These patients have a deficiency in their skill to plan or ample motor actions that depend on semantic memory. They can describe how to achieve a response, but incapable to "imagine" or do the movement. Though the capability to perform an act inevitably when cued remains complete, this is recognized as automatic-voluntary dissociation.In Ideomotor apraxia, there is difficulty or inability to execute familiar or learned movements on command despite of understanding the command and willingness to perform that action. The characteristic of this type of apraxia is the inability to a transitive movement. For example, the person can describe how a tool such as comb is used, but, when asked to use that tool, he is unable to perform the task (i.e. combing the hair) using the comb[4][5][6][7]
- Ideational apraxia:
- like the name depicts, problem in conceptualization of the task.
- The person may be able to name the objects correctly but fails to coceptualize how that object is used.
- inability to create a plan for or idea of a specific movement, for example, "pick up this pen and write down your name"
- Constructional apraxia:
- It is a condition resulting from neurological damage, which is demonstrated by the inability to construct and copy to command two- and three-dimensional stimuli.
- Constructional apraxia has been a classic sign of a parietal lobe lesion, and as a valuable tool to escalate the spatial abilities functioned by this lobe.
- It has become gradually clear that Constructional apraxia is a complex construct that can be observed with very different tasks that are only slightly interrelated, and hit various kinds of visuospatial, attentional, perceptual, planning, and motor mechanisms.
- The patient with constructional apraxia is unable to construct, draw, or copy simple configurations; for example, intersecting shapes; they have trouble drawing basic shapes or copying a simple diagram[8].
- inability to draw or construct simple configurations
- Buccofacial or orofacial apraxia:
- This is the most common type of apraxia.
- These patients cannot convey facial movements on requests, such as voluntary movements of the tongue, cheeks, lips, pharynx, or larynx on command, for example, include licking lips, whistling, coughing, or winking).
- Limb-kinetic apraxia:
- It is the failure to make precise movements with an arm, finger, or leg. For example, a person may have trouble tying their shoes, waving hello, or typing on a computer.
- inability to make fine, precise movements with a limb
- Gait apraxia:
- Apraxia of gait is a rare locomotion syndrome categorized by the incapability of lifting the feet from the floor regardless of discontinuous stepping action.
- The accountable site of lesions is in the basal ganglia and frontal lobe[9].
- Task-specific apraxia:
- These include-
- Sitting apraxia
- Dressing apraxia
- Eyelid opening apraxia
- oculomotor (difficulty moving the eye)
- These include-
- verbal (difficulty planning the movements necessary for speech), also known as Apraxia of Speech. Apraxia may be accompanied by a language disorder called aphasia.
- Developmental Apraxia of Speech (DAS) presents in children who have no evidence of difficulty with strength or range of motion of the articulators, but are unable to execute speech movements because of motor planning and coordination problems. This is not to be confused with phonological impairments in children with normal coordination of the articulators during speech.
- Symptoms of Acquired Apraxia of Speech (AOS) and Developmental Apraxia of Speech (DAS) include inconsistent articulatory errors, groping oral movements to locate the correct articulatory position, and increasing errors with increasing word and phrase length. AOS often co-occurs with Oral Apraxia (during both speech and non-speech movements) and Limb Apraxia.
Pathophysiology
- 'Praxis' comprises three components, which include ideation, motor planning, and execution to carry out the purposeful movement. There are particular regions of the brain that represent specific component functions, and these regions together work as a ‘praxis system’ to process and execute a purposeful movement. Dysfunction in any of these regions, namely, frontal and parietal cortex, basal ganglia, and the white matter which connects theses areas, leads to apraxia.
- The movements which requires tools are transitive movements, and the ones which do not require tools are intransitive. The intransitive movements are gestural which can be meaningful (communicative), or meaningless movements (not representational). In apraxia, transitive movements are affected more frequently as compared to intransitive movements.[10][11]
- The observations of the patients in the clinical practice is the basis of most of the knowledge about 'apraxia'. Apraxia has been mostly seen in chronic left hemispheric lesions and Alzheimer's disease.[12][13][14][15] The left hemispheric lesions cause more difficulty to perform transitive movements, as compared to intransitive movements and imitating gestures. Left hemisphere has a major role in 'praxis' and this may be due to specific stored representations in left hemisphere and their retrieval.[16] On the other hand, Alzheimer's patients have preserved transitive movements, but shows deficits in gestures.[15][17][18] Therefore, the type of apraxia depends on the type of neurological disease and the area of the brain affected by it.
- Different brain regions which have role in cognition and movement are involved in complex 'Praxis' movements. The conceptualization of a purposeful task involves prefrontal, left premotor, middle temporal and parietal areas of the brain.[19]
- Neuroimaging studies have been done to investigate praxis correlations, but studies done so far vary widely on focus areas of praxis. One of the study reported left temporal lobe correlation with praxis because of its role in somatic memory retrieval.[20][21][22] Left premotor cortex, left parietal lobule, and parietal cortex have also been shown to have a role in praxis as they are involved in knowledge of tools and their use,[23][24][25] grasping movements,[20][26][27][28] and spatiotemporal information integration,[27][29] respectively. Stronger left lateralization (especially posterior parietal and premotor cortex) for gesture production in praxis has been suggested by neuroimaging studies.[23][30][31]
Causes
- The most common causes of apraxia are[32]:
- Ideomotor apraxia is almost always caused by lesions in the language-dominant (usually left) hemisphere of the brain, and as such these patients often have concomitant aphasia, especially of the Broca or conduction type. Left-side ideomotor apraxia may be caused by a lesion of the anterior corpus callosum.
- Ideational apraxia is commonly associated with confusion states and dementia.
Differentiating Xyz from Other Diseases
Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) | Neuropraxia | Dyspraxia | Dysarthria | Aphasia |
CAS is a neurological childhood speech disease in which the consistency and precision of speech movements are weakened without neuromuscular deficits. CAS is also known as verbal dyspraxia or developmental apraxia. | Neuropraxia is the disease of traumatic peripheral nerve injury. It is categorized by focal segmental demyelination at the injury site, which results in obstruction of nerve conduction and transient paresthesia or weakness | Dyspraxia is defined as the breakdown of actions and the inability to apply voluntary motor activities effectively in all parts of life from play to organized, skilled responsibilities | Dysarthria is a motor speech illness and is associated with troubles of laryngeal function, respiration, articulation, and airflow direction leading to difficulties of speech intelligibility and quality. | Aphasia is a condition having trouble with the formulation and comprehension of language triggered by dysfunction in the precise brain region.
Risk Factors
ScreeningThere is insufficient evidence to recommend routine screening for apraxia. Natural History, Complications, and PrognosisNatural History:
Complications
Prognosis
Diagnosis
History and Symptoms:Physical ExaminationPhysical examination of patients with Apraxia is usually dependent on what type of Apraxia they have for example Ideomotor apraxia, Buccofacial apraxia, and Constructional apraxia. Ideomotor apraxia
Buccofacial apraxia
Constructional apraxia
Laboratory Findings:ElectrocardiogramThere are no ECG findings associated with apraxia. X-rayThere are no x-ray findings associated with apraxia. Echocardiography and UltrasoundThere are no echocardiography/ultrasound findings associated with apraxia. CT scanBrain CT scan may be helpful in the diagnosis of apraxia to evaluate for possible mass lesion or atrophy MRIBrain MRI may be helpful in the diagnosis of apraxia. Findings on MRI diagnostic of apraxia include atrophy, ischemic changes, and mass lesion. Other Imaging FindingsThere are no other imaging findings associated with apraxia. Other Diagnostic StudiesDiagnostic study PET may be helpful in the diagnosis of apraxia. Treatment
Medical TherapyInterventionsThere are no specific recommended therapeutic interventions for the management of Apraxia[46][47][48][49] Apraxia is believed to have an adverse impact on the Activity of Daily Living independence. There are limited information and research available regarding various treatments</ref>. Various interventions include:
SurgerySurgical intervention is not recommended for the management of Apraxia. Primary PreventionThere are no established measures for the primary prevention of Apraxia. Some steps can be used which include[50].
Secondary PreventionEffective measures for the secondary prevention of Apraxia include secondary prevention of stroke[51].
Related ChaptersReferences
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