[Apraxia--neuroscience and clinical aspects. A literature synthesis]

Abstract

Apraxic phenomena occur in various neurological conditions. Selective motion control is viewed as the basic capacity to make fine and precise, isolated or independent face or limb movements. Its deficit can indicate limb-kinetic apraxia if it is not explained by paresis, somatosensory deafferentation, or ataxia. The core deficit in ideomotor apraxia could be deficient movement representations, i.e. the combination of invariant features of intrinsic and extrinsic coding for a given movement, which are most important when movements have to be performed outside their typical context. Ideational apraxia would be defined by a semantic deficit related to action. Frontal apraxia is characterised by an action-sequencing deficit. A detailed model is proposed regarding processes relevant to praxis.