Autotopagnosia: The Inability To Locate Body Parts
Although we normally talk about the sensory channels that help us understand our environment by referring to the “five senses”, the truth is that, in reality, there are more.
Touch, for example, is related to our ability to perceive pain and temperature changes. But there is still another “sense” that we tend to ignore, and whose importance is revealed in those cases in which a neurological disorder causes it to disappear. This biological alteration is known as autotopagnosia. and the capacity it suppresses is the ability to know at any given moment which parts of space are being occupied by body parts.
Etymologically, the term autotopagnosia already gives clues about its meaning: it is a type of agnosia, like prosopagnosia or visual agnosia, in which the inability has to do with the possibility of knowing in which positions the parts of one’s body are located. yourself or another person or entity.
Thus, this neurological disorder, which is sometimes also called somatotopagnosia, It is expressed in serious problems when it comes to knowing the orientation and placement of parts of the body. or, this being the product of an organic lesion in certain parts of the brain.
Causes of autotopagnosia
Typically, autotopagnosia appears associated with lesions in the parietal lobe of the left cerebral hemisphere. However, it is not easy to know its causes in detail.
As in almost all neurological disorders, it is very difficult to locate an isolated cause that explains the appearance of the symptoms, because the nervous system (and especially the human nervous system) is tremendously complex, both structurally and in terms of its functioning.
Furthermore, cases in which autotopagnosia appears are rare, which makes its study difficult. However, Yes, possible explanations have been proposed for how this alteration appears. n.
There are three main hypotheses about what the causes of this disorder may be. The first of them conceives autotopagnosia as a product of a lesion of the areas of the posterior left hemisphere related to language (it could simply be a type of anomia, which is characterized by the impossibility of referring to elements by the name that serves to designate them); The second understands this failure as an alteration in certain parts of the parietal lobe that intervene when imagining a three-dimensional model of the body; and the third characterizes it as a visuospatial problem also related to the parietal lobe.
The possibility of analyzing in depth the causes of autotopagnosia are made difficult by the fact thatIt often occurs together with other neurological disorders. such as apraxia.
Symptoms of this neurological disorder
People with autotopagosia They have serious difficulties when locating their own body parts from another person or from a drawn character. In addition, they usually show two types of symptoms:
1. Semantic errors
These types of symptoms correspond to cases in which, When asked to point to one body part, they point to another part that belongs to a similar semantic category. For example, when instead of pointing to an arm they point to a leg, or when instead of pointing to a knee they point to an elbow.
This symptom has to do with the person’s inability to know exactly where a part of the body is. For example, When asked to point to the chest, he points to the belly or when asked to point to the ear, points in the direction of the neck.
It is also necessary to point out that not all cases of autotopagnosia are the same, and that while some people are unable to know where the body parts of oneself or another entity are, others may have problems locating their own, or It may be that by touching the area of ​​your own body you realize where it is and what it is, for example.
Treatment of somatotopagnosia
As it is a neurological disorder caused by injuries, it is considered that The symptoms cannot disappear completely and the marks left on the brain by the injury are irreversible. However, you can work to mitigate the symptoms of the disease, teaching the person to adopt habits that make everyday life easier.
Unfortunately, to date there are no known pharmacological treatments that have shown efficacy in these cases, which is why it is necessary to attend to each case in a particularly personalized way to understand all the problems that patients face and the possible opportunities to which they are exposed. It’s time to make progress in your way of acting.
Concluding
Autotopagnosia is a neurological disorder that is difficult to understand because its nature is not yet understood: it could be a language failure (that is, problems when calling things by their name) or a visuospatial failure (that is, related to not knowing where that part of the body that is already you know what it’s called).
