ACALCULIA (HENSCHEN)

Abstract

Acalculia is an inability to perform simple arithmetic operations; it may occur either as a concomitant symptom within an aphasic syndrome or as the main or even the only symptom of a focal cerebral lesion. As a concomitant symptom it is probably associated with many of the common aphasias. Henschen¹was able to collect from the literature no less than 260 cases in which acalculia was mentioned as an accompanying condition. That in many more cases it had been present but was overlooked appears to be a safe assumption. Cases in which acalculia was the outstanding or exclusive symptom of a cerebral lesion have been described by Lewandowsky and Stadelmann,²Peritz,³Sittig,⁴Berger,⁵Gerstmann,⁶Herrmann⁷and Lange.⁸The views expressed in these publications on the nature of the condition are sufficiently controversial and obscure to warrant the addition of a new case