Ideomotor apraxia in Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Ideomotor apraxia, tested on verbal command and by imitation, was checked in 23 patients suffering from dementia of Alzheimer's type of different severity and in 17 age‐matched controls. A significant deterioration of ideomotor praxis could be shown even in mild dementia. Correlations of ideomotor apraxia and aphasia, tested by the Token test were found to be significant.

Gesture comprehension, knowledge and production in Alzheimer’s disease

“…Studies on patients with dementia have mainly focused on memory and language disorders, with much less attention being paid to apraxic disturbances. In Alzheimer’s disease (AD) [1], the relationship between disease progression and apraxia [2,3] and the incidence of gesture apraxia [2,4,5] are subject to debate. The relative incidences of ideomotor apraxia (IMA), defined as difficulty in producing gestures – mostly pantomimes – on verbal command or especially by imitation, and ideational apraxia (IA), defined as difficulty in using real objects without making content errors, that is inappropriate movements, have also been debated.…”

Bimanual Gesture Imitation Links to Cognition and Olfaction

“…In addition, the prior study incorporated both one‐handed meaningful gestures and bimanual meaningless gestures, while our study only focused on bimanual ideomotor assessment of imitating meaningless gestures. Disturbance in imitation of meaningless gestures may be one of the earliest findings in AD . Perhaps, imitation of meaningless gestures without tools or objects (ie, intransitive) is more sensitive to early changes in sensorimotor function compared to imitation of meaningful gestures.…”

“…Disturbance in imitation of meaningless gestures may be one of the earliest findings in AD. 10,12 Perhaps, imitation of meaningless gestures without tools or objects (ie, intransitive) is more sensitive to early changes in sensorimotor function compared to imitation of meaningful gestures. Future studies are needed to verify the age effect on gesture imitation of meaningless and meaningful gestures across the adult lifespan.…”

“…Ideomotor apraxia is typically an impairment in intransitive gestures, such as imitation, whereas ideational apraxia is often an impairment in transitive gestures that involve tools or objects . In ideomotor apraxia, a disturbance in imitation of meaningless gestures may be one of the earliest symptoms in AD . Contrary to imitation of meaningful or known gestures (such as “OK”), imitation of meaningless gestures is thought to rely entirely on a “direct” neuroprocessing route from visual input to execution of movement, without input from learned gesture representations…”

“…8,9 In ideomotor apraxia, a disturbance in imitation of meaningless gestures may be one of the earliest symptoms in AD. [10][11][12] Contrary to imitation of meaningful or known gestures (such as "OK"), imitation of meaningless gestures is thought to rely entirely on a "direct" neuroprocessing route from visual input to execution of movement, without input from learned gesture representations. 13 However, little is known about gesture imitation performance across the lifespan, which may indicate subclinical changes in sensorimotor function sometimes associated with variation in the rate of brain aging.…”