In a study by Joseph Babinski (Babinski, 1914), two patients who had left-hemiplegia due to a stroke did not acknowledge their paralysis—they denied being paralyzed and when they were asked to move their left arm they either remained silent or vocalized that they had in fact moved their arm. Despite their inability to recognize their paralysis, the patients were completely lucid and displayed normal intellect. Joseph Babinski coined this phenomenon as anosognosia, which when translated from its Greek roots means ‘without disease knowledge’ (Colman, 2008). Since its origin, anosognosia has been associated not only with hemiplegia, but also many other illnesses such as: Alzheimer’s disease, Anton’s syndrome, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
