Ideational Apraxia - Therapy

Therapy

Ideational apraxia at the moment has no real recovery. However, Occupational/Physical Therapy may be able to slow the progression and help patients regain some functional control, with the treatment approach being the same as that of ideomotor apraxia. The onset of this disorder is established because of damage to the brain. The only real recoveries seen are found in stroke patients or young patients. The reason for this occurrence is that plasticity of the brain allows for these damaged regions to remap themselves. Therefore, as the patients develop new behaviors to cope with their apraxia their brain’s functioning neurons are able to grow over the areas of dead or damaged cortical tissue.

In some cases the apraxia just vanishes as fast as it appeared. In those cases the patients were not diagnosed with a severe impairment such as traumatic brain injury or Alzheimer. This disorder is becoming a major problem in nursing homes because as the disease progresses and becomes more severe their apraxia worsens. It reaches to the point that patients are unable to feed themselves because of not being able to use simple utensils. Everything must be done for the patients because they have no recollection how objects should be properly used.

With the help of brain imaging such as fMRI, EEG, and PET scans and more research, this disorder may be localized to a specific area of the brain. From that point, new therapies could be developed to help with patients cope with their disorder.