atopognosia
A patient with atopognosia cannot identify where the doctor touches their arm.
Noun: A neurological condition characterized by the inability to correctly identify the location of a touch on the body's surface, despite being able to perceive the touch itself. It involves a loss or absence of the normal spatial sense for tactile stimuli (topognosia).
This is a highly specialized medical term used primarily in neurology and clinical neuroscience to describe a specific sensory deficit. - It is used to diagnose and discuss disorders of the parietal lobe of the brain. - It describes a symptom, not a disease itself, often resulting from brain lesions or damage.
- The patient's parietal lobe lesion resulted in atopognosia, as she could feel the pinprick but could not point to where it occurred on her left arm.
- Atopognosia is a key clinical sign differentiating cortical from subcortical sensory processing disorders.
- Following the stroke, the neurologist tested for atopognosia by asking the patient to localize light touches with his eyes closed.
- Atopognosia is often contrasted with astereognosia (inability to recognize objects by touch) and agraphognosia (inability to recognize symbols or letters drawn on the skin), as all are types of tactile agnosia related to cortical sensory processing.
- In clinical assessment, atopognosia may be documented as "impaired point localization."
- Topognosia (n): The normal ability to localize a point of touch.
- Atopognosis (n): A less common variant synonym for atopognosia.
- Somatotopagnosia (n): A related but broader term for impairment in localizing or identifying parts of one's own body.
- Topographical agnosia for touch (descriptive synonym)
- Tactile disorientation (descriptive term)
- Impaired tactile localization (clinical description)
- Topognosia (normal tactile localization)
This term has a single, precise meaning in medical contexts. It should not be confused with more general terms for loss of sensation (anesthesia) or for the inability to recognize objects by touch (astereognosia). Atopognosia specifically refers to the loss of the spatial mapping of touch sensation.
A patient with atopognosia cannot identify where the doctor touches their arm.
- absence or loss of topognosia; inability to locate correctly a point of touch