Cognitive Profiles and Visuoperceptual

cerebral palsy is spastic diplegia, characterized by the pres-ence of bilateral hypertonic involvement primarily of the lower extremities.2 A Swedish survey found that 44 % of cerebral palsy cases were spastic diplegic2 and that 66 % to 67 % of preterm and 29 % to 33 % of term infants with cere-bral palsy had spastic diplegia.3,4 The ample literature on preterm spastic diplegia cases has established that periven-tricular leukomalacia on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is pathognomonic for the condition and that lesion extent correlates with neurofunctional outcome4 and cog-nitive profile,5-7 with the latter typically being characterized by a predominance of visuoperceptual disorders.7-11 By contrast, little attention has been paid to spastic diplegic children born at term. An MRI study12 in such chil-dren indicated that periventricular leukomalacia could be accompanied by diffuse cortical-subcortical lesions and malformations but also no discernable alterations, pointing to a variety of prenatal and perinatal causes of the condi-tion. Among the few clinical studies, that of Krageloh-Mann et al3 reported on full-term children with periventricular leukomalacia and bilateral spasticity (not all diplegic) and Cerebral palsy is a group of disorders of the develop-ment of movement and posture, causing activitylimitation and attributed to nonprogressive distur-bances in the developing fetal or infant brain.1 The motor disorders are often accompanied by disturbances of sensa-tion, cognition, communication, perception, and behavior and also seizures. The most common form of childhoo