Also known as dyspraxia, ideomotor apraxia or ideational apraxia and first described in detail by Hugo Karl Liepmann (1836-1925), it is a neurological syndrome involving the loss of the ability to perform complex voluntary movements, despite no obvious impairments in the muscles or sensory organs themselves. It occurs in many forms. Apraxia of speech, for example, is a disruption in the ability to perform the skilled oral movements necessary for speech, other manifestations being evident in dressing, gesturing and writing. As with dyslexia, a distinction is made between developmental apraxia and acquired apraxia. There is an overlap (co-morbidity) between dyspraxia and dyslexia, and with attentional deficit hyperactive disorder as well as with Asperger’s syndrome. Developmental apraxia was documented in the 1920s by the neurologist Samuel T. Orton (1879-1948) who also tried to account for developmental dyslexia (and other disabilities such as stuttering) in the same way (i.e., as being as consequence of disordered development of lateralization due to the lack of cerebral dominance).
See Asperger’s syndrome, Attentional deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), Cerebral cortex (disorders), Co-morbidity, Developmental coordination disorder (DCD), Developmental dyspraxia, Dysgraphia, Dyslexia, Laterality, Stuttering