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Alien Hand Syndrome Causes Random Hand Movement
July 18, 2007 at 4:18 PM
General Health News
The afflicted person may sometimes reach for objects and manipulate them without wanting to do so, even to the point of having to use the healthy hand to restrain the alien hand.
A new study identified the areas of the brain involved in both voluntary and involuntary movement and found that neural activity was restricted to the primary motor cortex during the unconscious motor activity seen with AHS.
Led by Frederic Assal of University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, researchers conducted a study of a 70-year-old right-handed man who had AHS after suffering a large stroke in the right parietal lobe.
His left hand had normal motor function, with only slight weakness and clumsiness, but showed marked sensory loss. His alien movements consisted of involuntary gestures or grasping with his left hand, which he sometimes did not notice due to mild left visual neglect (a condition in which the patient is unaware of events in the left visual field even though the visual pathways are intact) as a result of the stroke.
The researchers performed two functional MRI experiments in which the patient performed simple motor tasks that allowed them to compare similar left-hand movements executed both consciously and unconsciously.
By contrasting periods with AHM with those in which the patient was not moving, the researchers found that the primary motor cortex was selectively activated, with more activity as AHM increased. Voluntary movements also activated the primary motor cortex, but other regions of the brain were activated as well.
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