Named after rudolph balint (1874–1929), a neurologist and psychiatrist from hungary, it is characterized by optic ataxia (the inability to move the hand to an object by using vision) and simultanagnosia (inability to comprehend more than one element of a visual scene at the same time or to integrate the parts into a whole). These visual difficulties are usually the result of damage to the superior part of the temporal-occipital lobes on both sides of the brain.
Inability to scan the peripheral visual field and to grasp an object under usually due to bilateral occipitoparietal lesions of the brain.