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inability to make purposeful movements

inability to make purposeful movements

A group of cognitive disorders characterized by the inability to perform previously learned skills that cannot be attributed to deficits of motor or sensory function. The two major subtypes of this condition are ideomotor (see APRAXIA, IDEOMOTOR) and ideational apraxia, which refers to loss of the ability to mentally formulate the processes involved with performing an action. For example, dressing apraxia may result from an inability to mentally formulate the act of placing clothes on the body. Apraxias are generally associated with lesions of the dominant PARIETAL LOBE and supramarginal gyrus. (From Adams et al., Principles of Neurology, 6th ed, pp56-7)

1. A disorder of voluntary movement, consisting in a more or less complete incapacity to execute purposeful movements, notwithstanding the preservation of muscular power, sensibility, and coordination in general. 2. A psychomotor defect in which one is unable to apply to its proper use an object which he is nevertheless able to name and the uses of which he can describe.

Loss of memory.

A condition in which, without loss of mental power, a person can not understand the nature of objects that he perceives by his senses. Thus in Visual a. he does not recognize a familiar object, although he sees it (Mind-blindness, Word-blindness); in Auditory a. he attaches no meaning to familiar sounds, although he hears them (Mind-deafness, Word-deafness) ; and in Psychic anasthesia Psychic anosmia, and Psychic ageusia, he fails to appreciate the nature of familiar objects that he handles, smells, or tastes.

Insane performance of preposterous acts.

Loss of the power of communication by signs, also of knowledge of the uses of objects; object blindness. Inability or awkwardness in performance of intentional muscular movement. General term for loss of power of expressing or effecting ideas of muscular movements of any kind. [Gr.]