Limb-kinetic Apraxia Research Articles

Premotor cortex in man: evidence for innervation of proximal limb muscles.

Fourteen patients with frontal CT-lesions involving premotor cortex showed moderate weakness of contralateral shoulder and hip muscles. This premotor syndrome in man resembles that described for lesions of brainstem pathways in monkeys, except that axial musculature was not disturbed when these lesions were unilateral. Medial extent of the lesion involving the SMA was accompanied by additional slight limb-kinetic apraxia.

APRAXIA

John Hughlings Jackson1observed that certain aphasic patients could not protrude their tongues when requested to do so. They could, however, eat and drink well, and even lick their lips. While Jackson recognized the significance of this disturbance, he did not designate it by any name. The term apraxia was introduced by Leipmann,2who made the first intensive studies of this problem. He3pointed out that apraxia is a motor disturbance that cannot be explained as due to paresis, ataxia, motor discharges, speech deafness, agnosia, dementia or disturbances in primary sensation. He stressed the fact that only distinct categories of movement are involved. The apractic patient does not make every purposeful movement erroneously, nor are all purposeful movements of the involved limb in abeyance. Liepmann3designated three types of apraxia: limb-kinetic, ideokinetic and ideational. Limb-kinetic apraxia does not exclude the head region. Only skilful movements of