The neuropsychological rehabilitation of visual agnosia and Balint’s syndrome

Abstract

Visual agnosia and Balint's syndrome are complex neurological disorders of the higher visual system that can have a remarkable impact on individuals' lives. Rehabilitation of these individuals is important to enable participation in everyday activities despite the impairment. However, the literature about the rehabilitation of these disorders is virtually silent. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review is to give an overview of available literature describing treatment approaches and their effectiveness with regard to these disorders. The search engines Psychinfo, Amed, and Medline were used, resulting in 22 articles meeting the criteria for inclusion. Only articles describing acquired disorders were considered. These articles revealed that there is some information available on the major subtypes of visual agnosia as well as on Balint's syndrome which practising clinicians can consult for guidance. With regard to the type of rehabilitation, compensatory strategies have proven to be beneficial in most of the cases. Restorative training on the other hand has produced mixed results. Concluding, although still scarce, a scientific foundation about the rehabilitation of visual agnosia and Balint's syndrome is evolving. The available approaches give valuable information that can be built upon in the future.

Occurrence of Balínt Syndrome in a Patient with Hypereosinophilic Syndrome

“…However, individual case reports pointing out different rehabilitation protocols have come to show similarity among their treatment approaches. Among one of them applying visuo-perceptual retraining and a functional adaptation program to restore functionality (7) .…”

Visual Object Agnosia in Brain Lesions (Review)

“…Spontaneous recovery is rare in visual object agnosia, increasing the importance of special training sessions with patients [2,8]. Nevertheless, very little attention is paid to methods of restoration or compensation of visual gnosis, much less than to visual neglect correction issues, for example [7]. Indeed, in 2018, Heutink et al found only seven works on rehabilitation of patients with visual object agnosia in scientific publications [8].…”

“…Since visual agnosia is a monomodal disorder, clinical cases of patients having signs of gnostic function disorder of other modalities along with visual gnostic disorders should not be regarded as cases of true visual agnosia, according to some experts [3]. Visual agnosias can be observed in the clinical picture of many brain diseases and lesions, nevertheless, they are still among the least studied disorders in neurology [7]. However, the relevance of timely diagnosing visual gnostic disorders is determined by their negative impact on the quality of life of patients and the need for early correction [8].…”

Acquired visual agnosia as an uncommon presentation of epileptic encephalopathy in a 6-year-old boy with CSWS

“…In these children, visual agnosia is considered a developmental disorder that becomes evident when the child becomes older and may appear as the difficulty to recognize quite specific objects, letters, or people [12] , [13] . Visual agnosia in children, acquired after a period of normal development, is not often reported [14] .…”