Disconnection syndrome

Other types of disconnection syndrome include conduction aphasia (lesion of the association tract connecting Broca’s area and Wernicke’s), agnosia, apraxia, pure alexia, etc.

[citation needed] An example is commissural disconnect in adults which usually results from surgical intervention, tumor, or interruption of the blood supply to the corpus callosum or the immediately adjacent structures.

[citation needed] Other examples include commissurotomy, the surgical cutting of cerebral commissures to treat epilepsy and callosal agenesis which is when individuals are born without a corpus callosum.

The different systems affected are listed below: The concept of disconnection syndrome emerged in the late nineteenth century when scientists became aware that certain neurological disorders result from communication problems among brain areas.

As the father of the disconnection theory, Wernicke believed that instead of being localized in specific regions of the brain, higher functions resulted from associative connections between the motor and sensory memory areas.

In 1965, Norman Geschwind, an American neurologist, wrote ‘Disconnexion syndromes in animals and man’ where he described a disconnectionist framework that revolutionized neurosciences and clinical neurology.

With Mesulam and Damasio’s contributions, Geschwind’s model has evolved over the past 50 years to include connections between brain regions as well as specializations of association cortices.