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Abstract & Commentary
By John J. Caronna, MD , Professor of Clinical Neurology, Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Caronna reports no financial relationships relevant to this field of study.
Synopsis: Gerstmann Syndrome is associated with lesions of the parietal cortex and subcortical white matter in the region of the angular gyrus. It should be considered one of the "disconnection" syndromes.
Source: Rusconi E, et al. A disconnection account of Gerstmann syndrome: Functional neuroanatomy evidence. Ann Neurol 2009;66:654-662.
From 1924 to 1930 in vienna, Josef Gerstmann published three case reports describing patients with finger-agnosia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and right-left disorientation. He asserted that these four symptoms constituted an independent syndrome and were the expression of disease in the left angular gyrus where, he postulated, there was a common functional denominator essential to these four cognitive faculties.
Since Gerstmann's description, authors who have studied the clinico-anatomic correlations of the syndrome found that the lesions, although always in the dominant hemisphere, were not restricted to the angular gyrus, and that the four components of Gerstmann...