Jean-Marie André ^{A1, A3}, Jean-Pierre Didier ^{A2, A3}, Jean Paysant ^{A1, A3
A1} Nancy Regional Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Nancy, Nancy, France
^A2 Center of Rehabilitation and Convalescence, CHRU, Dijon, France
^A3 Faculty of Medicine, University of Bourgogne, Federative Institute of Research on the Handicap (IFR 25- RFRH), France

DOI: 10.1080/16501970410026107

The "learned non-use phenomenon" described by Taub, one of the most original recent contributions to rehabilitation medicine probably corresponds to what Henry Meige (1866-1940), who studied under J. -M. Charcot, described in hemiplegics in 1904 using the expression "functional motor amnesia". He specified in 1914 at the time of the Babinski description of anosognosia, that: "Even with educated subjects who are still relatively young we are sometimes confronted with strange incapacities that are not due to impotence, negligence, or lack of confidence in the results. [. . . ] With the transitory halting of the motility all memory of the function appears to have disappeared". Meige describes motor disorders that are: (i) distinct from lesional paralyses; (ii) secondary to the absence of activity; (iii) linked to a learning process; (iv) linked to a phenomenon of functional memory loss; (v) reversible; and (vi) motor re-education focusing on extended and repeated practice of the lost function: the same characteristics as the "phenomenon of learned non-use" described by Taub in monkeys then in man.