Comparative neuropsychological study of the changes in different programmed activities in subjects with frontal or retro-rolandic lesions or with Huntington's chorea.

Eaily performed tests for showing alterations in organization of programmed activities were given to 20 patients with frontal lesions, 23 with retro-rolandic lesions and 17 with Huntington's Chorea. Normal scores were determined in a group of 24 patients without any symptoms of cerebral pathology. The results showed that frontally lesioned patients and those with Huntington's Chorea have similar patterns of disorganization in reproduction of gestures, drawing and rhythmic sound sequences. The data seem to indicate that a major difficulty of these patients lies in faulty "recall" of the original model. Retrorolandic patients do not show this difference in response to the differents tests, but have problems in simultaneous organization of visual and auditory information. These results support the hypothesis of LURIA that the frontal lobes regulate programmed motor activity.