Gabriel Anton (28 July 1858 – 3 January 1933) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. He is primarily remembered for his studies of psychiatric conditions arising from damage to the cerebral cortex and the basal ganglia.
Gabriel Anton (28 July 1858 – 3 January 1933) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist. He is primarily remembered for his studies of psychiatric conditions arising from damage to the cerebral cortex and the basal ganglia.
He was a native of Saaz, Bohemia, and in 1882 received his medical doctorate at Prague. In 1887 he traveled to Vienna in order to work with Theodor Meynert (1833–1892), who was to become an important influence to Anton's medical career. In 1891 he moved to Innsbruck, where he served as an associate professor of psychiatry and director of the university clinic. Later (1894), he relocated to the University of Graz as a full professor of psychiatry, and in 1905 succeeded Karl Wernicke (1848–1905) at the University of Halle.
Anton is remembered for his pioneer contributions in the field of neurosurgery. In collaboration with surgeons Friedrich Gustav von Bramann (1854–1913) and Viktor Schmieden (1874–1945), he proposed new procedures for treatment of hydrocephalus. These included the "Balkenstich method" and the "suboccipital puncture".[1]
Along with neurologist Joseph Babinski (1857–1932), the Anton–Babinski syndrome is named. Anton provided a detailed description and explanation of visual anosognosia and asomatoagnosia associated with the disorder.[2] Asomatoagnosia is a rare phenomenon where a patient is in denial of a body part.
With Paul Ferdinand Schilder (1886–1940), he performed investigations of movements in patients with chorea and athetosis. In his research of chorea, he identified scars in the lenticular nuclei.
