University of Coimbra team carries out unprecedented study with people who have difficulty using objects

^{Translation by Diana Taborda}

A team of researchers from the University of Coimbra (UC) conducted a study with Portuguese patients with ideomotor apraxia (IMA), a neurological disorder that makes it impossible to properly handle everyday objects.

Ideomotor apraxia (IMA) is a neurological disorder characterised by the inability to use tools correctly and to think about the movements necessary for the handling of an object, despite the absence of visual or musculoskeletal impairments.

The study, which has already been published in the journal Cortex, was conducted on two patients, a woman and a man, both aged 59, with different difficulties in manipulating objects, which had never before been reported in the scientific community. The patients were asked to mimic the use of different objects and to identify which objects were manipulated in a similar way.

According to Daniela Valério, first author of the scientific article, "Patient LS can simulate writing on a computer, although she cannot tell us whether this movement is more similar to playing the piano or using a screwdriver. On the other hand, patient FP easily recognises this similarity and is able to describe the gestures needed to manipulate the objects, but is unable to reproduce the movements".

According to the UC researcher, these differences "are due to lesions in different areas of the brain, caused in these patients by the onset of dementia and a reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome". Valério adds that "for the first time, a dissociation between thinking about manipulating objects and performing the gestures was demonstrated, showing that these abilities are probably represented in different neural networks".

Jorge Almeida, PI (Principal Investigator) and Director of the Proaction Lab of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the University of Coimbra (FPCEUC), points out that "the inability to use any object in our daily lives is difficult to imagine. The more we know about how the brain organises information, the closer we will be to finding treatments for such disabling conditions as ideomotor apraxia".

According to Daniela Valério, the results of the study show that "the tasks of pantomime and thinking about gestures rely on different brain mechanisms. Therefore, when assessing apraxia in patients or studying object manipulation, using one or the other task is not as redundant as previously thought. This finding may therefore have implications for the interpretation of many studies.

The scientific paper “Knowing how to do it or doing it? A double dissociation between tool-gesture production and tool-gesture knowledge”, is available here.