Mechanical problem-solving and imitation of meaningless postures in left brain damaged patients: Two sides of the same coin?
Résumé
Left brain damaged (LBD) patients with difficulties to use familiar tools are also impaired when asked to use novel tools to solve mechanical problems (Goldenberg and Hagmann, 1998, Goldenberg and Spatt, 2009, Hartmann et al., 2005, Jarry et al., 2013, Osiurak et al., 2009 and Osiurak et al., 2013). These patients have been suggested to be unable to reason about the mechanical properties of tools and objects, whether they are familiar or novel (i.e., the technical reasoning hypothesis; Jarry et al., 2013). Goldenberg, 2009 and Goldenberg, 2013 has formulated a somewhat similar view in his spatial, categorical apprehension hypothesis. For him, tool use is based on the ability to configure a whole chain of mechanical relationships between multiple objects or multiple parts of objects. Importantly, this spatial, categorical apprehension can also be applied to the human body, considered as a multi-part mechanical object. In this framework, Goldenberg, 2009 and Goldenberg, 2013 has argued that, in LBD patients, difficulties in both tool use and imitation of meaningless postures (IMP) (particularly hand postures) might be two manifestations of the same disorder. Therefore, according to the spatial, categorical apprehension hypothesis, a strong link should be observed between the use of familiar tools, mechanical problem-solving, and IMP. No study so far has tested this prediction within the same group of LBD patients. So, our aim was to fill this gap by exploring the relationships between the use of familiar tools (i.e., Tool-Object Pairs (TOP)), mechanical problem-solving, and IMP in 17 LBD patients. [...]