For example, patients may fail to recognize a familiar gait or stride, or to understand pantomime. Patients with visual disorientation can perceive color and shape normally, so long as objects are appreciated within a clear sector of the visual field. It consists of an inability to direct gaze voluntarily towards a stimulus located in peripheral vision, so as to bring it into central vision. Thus, patients fail to direct saccades towards stimuli that have appeared in the panorama of their visual fields, or they produce saccades that are inaccurate and miss the target. Ocular apraxia is not necessary for the development of visual disorientation, although it always occurs together with either visual disorientation or optic ataxia.
Optic ataxia is a disturbance of visually guided reaching behavior.
Patients are not able to point accurately at a target, under visual guidance, e.g., they cannot point precisely to the examiner's fingertip, or to items such as a cup or coin. Interestingly, pointing to targets on their own body does not pose a problem, as this can be accomplished on the basis of somatosensory information. Also, the patients have no difficulty pointing to sound sources. Optic ataxia can occur in isolation, particularly when lesions are at the border of the occipital and parietal regions, or in the parietal region exclusively. The full Balint syndrome is associated with bilateral occipitoparietal lesions, although unilateral lesions can also produce the syndrome, especially when they are on the right.