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Parietal Lobe Injury

5 important questions on Parietal Lobe Injury

Function of Parietal lobe

sensory integration, spatial orientation, language, body awareness and attention.

Left Parietal Lobe injury

· Lesions in dominant (usually left) parietal lobe can produce Gerstmann’s Syndrome – a combination of right-left disorientation, finger agnosia, agraphia and acalculia.
· These patients may also exhibit aphasia (disorder of language) and agnosia (inability to perceive objects normally), resulting in frustration, irritability or depressive symptoms related to loss of language and functional independence.

Right Parietal Lobe injury

· Damage to the non-dominant (usually right) parietal lobe often results in contralateral neglect and anosognosia (denial of deficits), with constructional apraxia (difficulty in making things).
· Psychiatric manifestations include poor insight, apathy or impaired self-awareness, reflecting dysfunction in body schema and the “sense of self”.
· Disorders of the self: Parietal lobe lesions disrupt self-representation and spatial embodiment. Patients may experience asomatognosia (loss of limb ownership) or impaired perception of how they are viewed by others. These phenomena including anosognosia and asomatognosia, reflect parietal dysfunction in self-representation.

Bilateral parietal lesions (Balint’s Syndrome)

· Large bilateral lesions can produce Balint’s Syndrome, comprising ocular apraxia (inability to direct or control gaze), simultanagnosia (failure to integrate components of visual scenes) and optic ataxia (inability to accurately reach for an object with visual guidance).
· These deficits often lead to anxiety, disorientation and dependency.

Parietotemporal lesions and personality/memory changes

· Right parietotemporal damage may cause significant changes in personality (selflessness with increased spirituality) and can affect non-verbal memory
· Left parietotemporal lesions may impair verbal memory and ability to recall strings of digits. Can leading to frustration, reduced self-esteem and affective lability.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Neuropsychiatry

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