Ideational Apraxia

Ideational Apraxia

Ideational apraxia (IA) is a neurological disorder which explains the loss of ability to conceptualize, plan, and execute the complex sequence of motor actions involving the use of tools or objects in everyday life. Ideational apraxia is a condition in which an individual is unable to plan movement related to an object because he has lost the perception of the object's purpose. Characteristics of this disorder include a disturbance in the idea of sequential organization of voluntary actions. The patient appears to have lost the knowledge or thought of what an object represents. This disorder was first seen one hundred years ago by Doctor Arnold Pick, who explained one specific patient that appeared to have lost their ability of object usage. When using an item such as a comb several errors were produced e.g., combing the hair with the wrong side of the comb or placing a pistol in his mouth. From that point on several other researchers and doctors have stumbled upon this unique disorder. IA has been described under several names such as, agnosia of utilization, conceptual apraxia or loss of knowledge about the use of tools, or semantic amnesia of tool usage. The term apraxia was first created by Steintha in 1871 and was then applied by Gogol, Kusmaul, Star, and Pick to patients who failed to pantomime the use of tools. It was not until the 1900s when Liepmann refined the definition so that it specifically described disorders that involved motor planning rather than disturbances in the patient’s visual perception, language, or symbolism.