Types of agnosia symptoms and treatment

The ability to recognize what we perceive can be altered in the function or reduction of it. Agnosia is a recognition disorder in a sensory way without the concurrence of sensitivity, language or intelligence disorders. A previous requirement to diagnose agnosia is the absence of significant levels of aphasia and dementia.

The lesions responsible for agnosia are located in the parietal, temporal and occipital lobe, and affect the associative areas adjacent to primary sensory. Often the callosum body can also be involved

Clinically, the suspicion of agnosia must arise in front of the people who react to some environmental stimuli as if they were blind or deaf, while normally react to different stimuli of the same sensory field. However, multiple are distinguished types of agnosia that we will see together in this Psychology-online article, together with their symptoms and possible treatments.

1. Visual agnosia
2. AUDITIVE AGNOSIA
3. Tactile agnosia
4. Space agnosia
5. Somatagnosia
6. Agnosia treatment

Visual agnosia

Visual agnosia is the inability to recognize objects normally perceived through vision. Several types of visual agnosias are described in relation to the category of unrecognized stimuli. Let's see which:

• OBJECT AGNOSIA: The person cannot say the name and use of an object with the view, but it can do it correctly if it touches it, listen to the sound or aspires the smell. Sometimes, you can describe the physical characteristics of the object, without identifying it (associative agnosia). Other times it is impossible even the analytical description (agnosia apnosia).
• Colored agnosia: The person is not able to call colors, put them in increasing order of luminosity, to match equal colors or to assign to a common object the appropriate color.
• Faces or Prosopagnosia agnosia: The person does not recognize the faces of the relatives, sometimes not even the reflection of a mirror. Recognition can be done through individuals (glasses, mustaches), the way of dressing, the sound of the voice.
• Agnosia of written words or Alessia.
• Balint syndrome: It is not properly visual agnosia, but an opening of the look that causes difficulties in exploration of the visual field.

AUDITIVE AGNOSIA

Auditory agnosia is the inability to recognize common noises, Musical sounds and spoken language, in the absence of deafness. Next, we will see the different types of auditory agnosia:

• Noise agnosia: inability to identify the origin of characteristic noises such as the sound of a bell, of the flowing water, the sounds of the animals, etc.
• Agnosia of musical sounds or amusia: Inability to recognize the songs and sounds of the different instruments.
• Spoken language agnosia: It is the pure verbal deafness, described on aphasias.

Tactile agnosia

Tactile agnosia is the inability to identify an object through palpation With eyes closed, even being able to describe their physical characteristics such as shape, size and surface. The disorder depends on a pair -lobe lobe injury, and must be distinguished from astemoagnosia, in which the person does not identify the palpated object because it does not perceive their spatial characters, while elementary sensibilities are preserved.

This disorder has no locator value, being able to occur in the presence of sensitive path lesions at the level of the hemispheres, of the brain trunk or of the bone marrow.

• Amorfognosia: The person does not recognize the form and dimensions of the object in hand.
• Tactile asymmetric: disability or difficulty to name that object through touch. Tactile agnosia itself.
• Ailognosia: With the touch, the person does not understand the material with which the object is constituted, neither the weight, nor the temperature.

Space agnosia

With the term space agnosia indicates the inability to analyze and use spatial data correctly, For example, locate the objects with respect to the body or among them, appreciate the distance, the direction, etc.

The Unilateral spatial agnosia It is of great clinical interest and is known as negligence for the hemisphere or neglect, which consists of a degree of indifference for stimuli from one side of the space. In general, it is evident in the spontaneous behavior of people who, for example, write and draw only in one half of the sheet or by copying a figure reproduces only one half of the pattern.

Somatagnosia

Somatagnosia refers to disorders on the perception of body itself. Different types of agnosia are distinguished with respect to the body pattern that can be unilateral or bilateral.

• Autotopoagnosia: It consists in the difficulty of indicating the parts of the body and the other.
• Digital agnosia: It is the impossibility of indicating and calling the fingers of the hands, own and others.

Agnosia treatment

Agnosia can have a significant impact on the daily life of affected people, as well as that of their families, friends and colleagues. In general, the most recommended agnosia treatments are:

• Treatment of the direct cause of agnosia: Whenever possible it is, for example, with surgery and/or antibiotics due to brain abscess, surgery and/or radiotherapy for brain cancer.
• Speechopedia or occupational therapy: A rehabilitation treatment due to speech therapy or occupational therapy can help patients learn to compensate for their deficits.

This article is merely informative, in psychology-online we have no power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Types of agnosia: symptoms and treatment, We recommend that you enter our category of neuropsychology.