Skip to main content

phatic functions in the brain

Image
By
The majority of deficits related to the parietal lobe belong to the category of phatic (amnestic aphasia, alexia, agrafia, and acalculia), gnostic and practical deficits.  Deficits in phatic functions develop with damage to the posterior portion of the parietal lobe in the dominant hemisphere and clinical pictures of gnostic functions are not strictly related to the dominant hemisphere. - From "Clinical Rehabilitation" by Pavel Kolar, et al., p. 95
Here the word "phatic" seems to mostly describe linguistic behavior (vocabulary, text understanding, ability to write); the acalculia case seems slightly different from the others.  All of these issues have to do with the parietal lobe, which includes a somatosensory cortex, and which has strong connections to the thalamus.

During maturation of the parietal lobe centers, one's body awareness (somatesthesia) is formed, as well as, its relation to the surroundings.

Even so it is clearly related to language as well, as we see above.  It's interesting to compare the other classes of deficits (pp. 95-96).

Gnostic: autotopagnosia (cannot recognise own body parts), anosognosia (not aware of one's own deficit), asomatognosia (unaware of part of the body), astereognosis (cannot recognize shapes), hemihypesthesia (slight deficit of tactile sensation on one side of the body); pain asymbolia (can distinguish the quality of pain but does not react to it).  Also recognizing color, sound, faces, movement, and other tactile deficits.

Practical: deficit in the performance of a learned task (e.g. plan is preserved but execution is disrupted), movements are clumsy and no plan is formed; the task cannot be understood.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The plot thickens (with Herbert Spencer)

By Semiophrenic
In a paper attempting to outline the conceptual domain of comparative psychology , Herbert Spencer discusses the quality of impulsiveness in relation with human races (bearded and unbearded). Among his "sundry questions of interests" about the relationship between mental energy, evolution, complexity, etc. are the following notes: ( b ) What connection is there between this trait and the social state? Clearly a very explosive nature - such as that of the Bushman - is unfit for social; and, commonly, social union, when by any means established, checks impulsiveness. ( c ) What respective shares in checking impulsiveness are taken by the feelings which the social state fosters - such as the fear of surrounding individuals, the instinct of sociality , the desire to accumulate property, the sympathetic feelings , the sentiment of justice? These, which require a social environment for their development, all of them involve imaginations of consequences more or less distant; and th
4 comments
Read more

Vitruvius Pollio, The origin of the dwelling house

By
 Chapter 1 of Book II of "Ten Books on Architecture", available from Project Gutenberg .  Sections 1, 2, and 7 (from the Richard Schofield translation published by Penguin rather than the one here) are quoted on pp. 218-219 of Spheres II by Peter Sloterdijk.  Pay particular attention to Section 2. 1. The men of old were born like the wild beasts, in woods, caves, and groves, and lived on savage fare. As time went on, the thickly crowded trees in a certain place, tossed by storms and winds, and rubbing their branches against one another, caught fire, and so the inhabitants of the place were put to flight, being terrified by the furious flame. After it subsided, they drew near, and observing that they were very comfortable standing before the warm fire, they put on logs and, while thus keeping it alive, brought up other people to it, showing them by signs how much comfort they got from it. In that gathering of men, at a time when utterance of sound was purely individual, fro
1 comment
Read more