Balint Syndrome

Excerpt

Rudolf Balint first described Balint syndrome in 1909. In his original observations, Balint described the patient's clinical symptoms, which included:

1. An inability to visualize more than one object in the visual field at a time (psychic paralysis of gaze or visual inattention)

2. An inability to identify different items in a visual scene simultaneously (a spatial disorder of attention or simultagnosia)

3. A failure to reach an object with his right hand but able to do so with the left hand. (Misreaching or optic ataxia).

The patient had normal visual acuity, color vision, and intact extraocular muscle movements, and his autopsy revealed changes suggestive of chronic cerebrovascular disease in bilateral posterior parietal lobes. The postulation then was that the symptoms were from a lack of coordination between sensory input and motor output.

In 1919, Holmes and Horrax described another case with a similar presentation, but the authors postulated that the patient’s inability to touch or point to objects was due to visual disturbances only. They considered that the patient had no trouble in performing sensory or motor tasks that did not need visual input, hence the primary deficit had to be in visual fields.