Alien Hand Syndrome

Introduction:

Have you ever wonder how will you react if your hand without your will start hitting you, or suddenly if you were watching television, your hand changes the channel by remote but wait!! You were watching the match and whoosh! Its changed.

Actually this is not dark magic or any ghost or soul acting on one’s body as earlier people used to think but is a scientific condition where the person experiences how their limbs are acting against their will and that too in a strange way. This is used to describe various condition and is generally observed that it affects left hand.

Signs and symptoms:

Alien hand syndrome also popularly known as Dr.Strangelove syndrome. The person will not notice the reflex action undergone by the limbs until the action bring out his/her attention. It is evident that the exact reason was found to be disturbance in corpus callosum that connects two hemisphere of brain. This occur generally after surgery, when two hemisphere are separated.

This surgery is done in the person with extreme case of epilepsy, to serve the symptoms. This also occur after brain surgery in case of stroke, infection, tumors, neurosym, migraine.

Areas of brain associalted with AHS:

• Frontal lobe

• Occipital lobe

• Temporal lobe

• Neurological imaging and pathological research shows that Frontal lobe and corpus calossum are the most common anatomical lesions responsible for AHS.

Types:

There are two types of AHS :
Frontal AHS: It results in the dominant limb of the person and is associated with the grasping, groping, compulsive manipulation of tools. This occurs due to the malfunctioning of dominant hemisphere and anterior corpus callosum.

Callosal AHS: It requires intermanual conflicts and requires only anterior callosal lesions. It is explained as hemispheric disconnection manifested when there is the requirement of dominant hemisphere control.

CASE STUDY:
A 74 year old lady was diagnosed by Parkinson disease 4 years earlier the report. Earlier she experienced stiffness in her hands later followed by tremors. She often complained about stiffness and failure to loosen the group. Seizures in her right hand was observed from long time and later in her legs were also observed. On medical checkup it was found malfunction in corpus callosum.

In other case the 84 year lady complained about her hands throwing her handbag or taking things out of her handbag without her will. When she would realize what was happening till then she would lost many things. This was because in the surgery her corpus callosum was cut for different reason to relief symptoms but this originated alien hand syndrome,