Hugo Karl Liepmann was a German neurologist

Neurologist

A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...

 and psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

 who was a native of Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. From 1895 to 1899 he was an assistant to Carl Wernicke in Breslau, and in 1901 received his habilitation at the Charité

Charité

The Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the medical school for both the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. After the merger with their fourth campus in 2003, the Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe....

-Berlin. From 1914 to 1920 he was director of the Herzberge asylum in Berlin.

Liepmann is remembered for his pioneer work involving cerebral localization of function. From anatomical

Anatomy

Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...

 studies, he postulated that planned or commanded actions were controlled in the parietal lobe

Parietal lobe

The parietal lobe is a part of the Brain positioned above the occipital lobe and behind the frontal lobe.The parietal lobe integrates sensory information from different modalities, particularly determining spatial sense and navigation. For example, it comprises somatosensory cortex and the...

 of the brain's dominant hemisphere, and not in the frontal lobe

Frontal lobe

The frontal lobe is an area in the brain of humans and other mammals, located at the front of each cerebral hemisphere and positioned anterior to the parietal lobe and superior and anterior to the temporal lobes...

. Beginning in 1900, he began extensive work with a disorder he called apraxia

Apraxia

Apraxia is a disorder caused by damage to specific areas of the cerebrum. Apraxia is characterized by loss of the ability to execute or carry out learned purposeful movements, despite having the desire and the physical ability to perform the movements...

. Apraxia is the inability to act or move different parts of the body in a purposeful manner, even though the physical capability of movement is normal. Liepmann believed that damage in the parietal lobe prevented activation of learned sequences of actions that are necessary to produce desired results on command. As a result of his studies, he divided apraxia into three types:

• ideational: object blindness, where the patient is incapable of making appropriate use of familiar objects upon command.
• ideomotor: the inability to follow verbal commands or mimic an action, such as saluting or waving goodbye.
• kinetic
  Kinetic energy
  The kinetic energy of an object is the energy which it possesses due to its motion.It is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from rest to its stated velocity. Having gained this energy during its acceleration, the body maintains this kinetic energy unless its speed changes...
  
  : clumsiness in performing a precision act that is not due to paralysis
  Paralysis
  Paralysis is loss of muscle function for one or more muscles. Paralysis can be accompanied by a loss of feeling in the affected area if there is sensory damage as well as motor. A study conducted by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, suggests that about 1 in 50 people have been diagnosed...
  
  , muscle weakness, or sensory loss.