Lacks Scoring System (Adults)

Organicity and Brain Damage Indicators

The Lacks method is used for adolescents and adults, focusing on the detection of organic brain damage. This qualitative and quantitative system identifies 12 pathognomonic signs.

The presence of 5 or more errors is considered a strong indication of neurological compromise.

These errors include severe rotation (80° to 180°), suggesting severe spatial orientation problems; perseveration (repeating the pattern beyond what is required), associated with cognitive rigidity or frontal damage; and collision (collision between figures), indicative of lack of impulse control or planning.

Differential Diagnosis and Specific Errors

Other critical errors in this system include fragmentation (breaking the figure into dissociated parts), which is a characteristic sign of psychosis or schizophrenia; simplification (making figures simpler or childish), which denotes immaturity, lack of concentration or reduced effort; and helplessness (trying to draw the figure repeatedly without success), which indicates awareness of the deficit but motor inability to correct it, common in organic damage.

The joint analysis of these signs allows differentiating between a neurosis (without serious perceptual problems), a psychosis (with bizarre distortions) and an organicity (with failures in motor and spatial execution).

Summary

Designed for adolescents and adults, this method seeks to identify organic brain damage. It is based on the detection of twelve pathognomonic signs whose cumulative presen