Autotopagnosia. Occurrence in a patient without nominal aphasia and with an intact ability to point to parts of animals and objects.

A patient with a metastasis in the left parietal lobe demonstrated difficulty in pointing to body parts although he could name them when they were pointed to by someone else. As he had no nominal aphasia, could understand complex verbal instructions and could correctly describe the functions of named body parts, his autotopagnosia is unlikely to be a result of a category-specific comprehension deficit. As he is able to point to parts of objects, plants and animals on command, his disorder is also unlikely to be part of a general inability to analyse a whole into its details. Instead, his difficulty appears to be one of locating body parts in relation to the whole body. Such a disorder provides support for the existence of a discrete body image that can be disrupted by a lesion of the left parietal lobe.