The definition of apraxia specifies that the disturbance of performed skilled movements cannot be explained by the more elemental motor disorders typical of patients with movement disorders. Generally this does not present a significant diagnostic problem when dealing with 'higher-level' praxic disturbances (e.g. ideational apraxia), but it can be a major confound in establishing the presence o...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the inter-rater reliability of a new apraxia test. Furthermore to examine the association of apraxia with other neuropsychological impairments and the prevalence of apraxia in a rehabilitation setting on the basis of the new test. DESIGN Cross-sectional cohort study, involving 100 patients with a first stroke admitted to a rehabilitation centre in the Netherlands. M...

Humans need to perform skilled movements to successfully interact with their environment as well as take care of themselves and others. These important skilled purposeful actions are primarily performed by the forelimb, and the loss of these skills is called apraxia. This review describes the means of testing, the pathophysiology, and the clinical characteristics that define five different gene...

OBJECTIVE To determine the brain areas associated with specific components of ideomotor apraxia (IMA) in corticobasal syndrome (CBS). DESIGN Case-control and cross-sectional study. PARTICIPANTS Forty-eight patients with CBS and 14 control subjects. Intervention Administration of the Test of Oral and Limb Apraxia. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Differences between patients with CBS and healthy cont...

In a series of 50 patients with cerebrovascular lesions (demonstrated with CT scan), seven patients had lesions located in the basal ganglia and/or thalamus. All these seven patients were apractic. Ideomotor apraxia was present in all patients; five also had constructional apraxia, and one had bucco-facial apraxia. None of the patients had utilisation apraxia. These observations indicated that ...

Although ideomotor limb apraxia is considered to be a typical sign of cortical pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), it has been also reported in subcortical neurodegenerative diseases and vascular lesions. We aimed to investigate the difference between AD, subcortical vascular dementia (SVaD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients by means of ideomotor limb apraxia frequency and ...

AIM To assess the reliability and validity of the Van Heugten test for apraxia (VHA), developed for and used in stroke patients, in a memory clinic population. Furthermore, we assess the presence and severity of apraxia in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) and investigate which AD patients are likely to develop apraxia. METHODS We included 90 controls (age: 60 ± 9 y...

In typical right-handed patients both apraxia and aphasia are caused by damage to the left hemisphere, which also controls the dominant right hand. In left-handed subjects the lateralities of language and of control of the dominant hand can dissociate. This permits disentangling the association of apraxia with aphasia from that with handedness. Pantomime of tool use, actual tool use and imitati...

OBJECTIVE To discover how reliably speech and language therapists could diagnose apraxia of speech using their clinical judgement, by measuring whether they were consistent (intra-rater reliability), and whether their diagnoses agreed (inter-rater reliability). DESIGN Video clips of people with communication difficulties following stroke were rated by four speech and language therapists who w...