GERSTMANN SYNDROME: FINGER AGNOSIA, AGRAPHIA, CONFUSION OF RIGHT AND LEFT AND ACALCULIA

Abstract

"Body scheme" or "body pattern" is the concept which a person has of the structure of his own body or that of another and the relations of the parts of the body to each other. This body scheme may be disturbed without the patient's becoming aware of it spontaneously and the disturbance may even fail to cause any defect so far as performance of purely motor functions is concerned. The body scheme may be affected in whole or in part by focal lesions in the parietal or the parietooccipital region. Such lesions do not necessarily affect projection tracts but involve association systems and cause genuine disturbance of the psyche.There are certain peculiar differences, however, in the types of disturbance of the body scheme resulting from lesions of the two sides. Destruction of the major area, usually the left, by lesions of certain types or locations produces defects on both