Autotopagnosia: the inability to locate body parts.

We explain the causes, symptoms and effects of this perceptual disorder.

Although we usually talk about the sensory channels that help us learn about our environment by referring to the "five senses," the truth is that there are actually more.

Touch, for example, is related to our ability to perceive pain and temperature changes. But there is yet another "sense" that we tend to ignore, and whose importance is revealed in those cases where a neurological disorder causes it to disappear. This Biological alteration is known as autotopagnosiaand the capacity it suppresses is the ability to know at each moment which parts of space are being occupied by parts of the body.

What is autotopagnosia?

Etymologically, the term autotopagnosia already gives clues to its meaning: it is a type of agnosia, like prosopagnosia or visual agnosia, in which the disability has to do with the ability to know in which positions the body parts of oneself or another person or entity are located.

Thus, this neurological disorder, which is sometimes also called somatotopagnosia, is expressed in serious problems in knowing the orientation and placement of parts of the body, as a result of an injury.This is the result of an organic lesion in certain parts of the brain.

Causes of autotopagnosia

Autotopagnosia is usually associated with lesions in the parietal lobe of the left cerebral hemisphere. However, it is not easy to know its causes in detail.

As in almost all neurological disorders, it is very complicated to locate an isolated cause that explains the appearance of the symptoms, because the nervous system (and especially the human nervous system) is tremendously complex, both structurally and in terms of its functioning.

Moreover, the cases in which autotopagnosia appears are rare, which makes it difficult to study. However, possible explanations for autotopagnosia have been proposed, However, possible explanations have been proposed as to how this alteration appears.n.

There are three main hypotheses as to what may be the causes of this disorder. The first of them conceives autotopagnosia as a product of a lesion of the areas of the posterior left hemisphere related to language (it could simply be a type of anomia, which is characterized by the impossibility of referring to elements by the name that serves to designate them); the second understands this failure as an alteration in certain parts of the parietal lobe involved in imagining a three-dimensional model of the body; and the third characterizes it as a visuospatial problem also related to the parietal lobe.

The possibility of analyzing in depth the causes of autotopagnosia is hindered by the fact that it is often present in conjunction with other problems of the parietal lobe.t often occurs in conjunction with other neurological disorders, such as apraxia such as apraxia.

Symptoms of this neurological disorder

People with autotopagosia have serious difficulties in locating their own body parts.They usually show two types of symptoms: the first one is the one of another person or of a drawn character. In addition, they usually show symptoms of two types:

1. Semantic errors

This type of symptom corresponds to cases in which, when asked to point to a part of the body, they point to another part that belongs to a similar semantic category.. For example, when instead of pointing to an arm they point to a leg, or when instead of pointing to a knee they point to an elbow.

2. Contiguity errors

This symptom has to do with the person's inability to know exactly where a body part is. For example, when asked to point to the chest, he/she points to the bellyWhen asked to point to the ear, he/she points in the direction of the neck.

It should also be noted that not all cases of autotopagnosia are the same, and that while some people are unable to know where the body parts of oneself or another entity are, others may have trouble locating their own, or it may be that by touching the area of one's own body one realizes where it is and what it is, for example.

Treatment of somatotopagnosia

As it is a neurological disorder caused by injuries, it is considered that the symptoms may not disappear completely and the marks left on the brain by the injury are considered irreversible.. However, it is possible to work on mitigating the symptoms of the disease, teaching the person to adopt habits that make daily life easier.

Unfortunately, there are no known pharmacological treatments that have shown efficacy in these cases, so it is necessary to treat each case in a particularly personalized way in order to understand all the problems faced by patients and the possible opportunities to which they are exposed when it comes to making progress in the way they act.

Concluding

Autotopagnosia is a neurological disorder that is difficult to understand because its nature is not yet understood: it could be a language failure (i.e., problems in calling things by name) or visuospatial (i.e., related to not knowing where that part of the body is that you already know what it is called).

More research is needed to develop more effective intervention programs.