Alien Hand Syndrome Research Paper

720 Words2 Pages

Alien hand syndrome is a neurological disorder (disorder in the brain). The person, who has alien brain syndrome, loses the feeling of one’s hand and their hand feels as if it is possessed by a force outside of one person’s control.
When a person makes a decision to take a drink from a cup, a signal originates in the frontal lobe of the brain; the frontal lobe’s signal plans and organizes what must take happen in order for the person to take a drink. When the person takes a drink, the brain gives specific instructions: reach for the cup, grasp the handle, bring it to lips, sip, swallow, return the cup, and release grasp. These signals are then sent to the motor strip. The primary motor cortex or motor strip, located in the Brodmann area …show more content…

The motor strip works with other motor areas such as the premotor cortex, the supplementary motor area, posterior parietal cortex, and several subcortical brain regions all to produce movements. The frontal lobe sends a signal to the motor strip, and before the person knows it, they’re drinking from a cup. Sending the signal successfully is in thanks to the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum sends nerves that connect and share information between the two hemispheres of the brain. Damage to these nerves results in things such as alien hand syndrome. This damage most often happens during brain aneurysms, in stroke patients and those with infections of the brain, but can also as a side effect of brain surgery, commonly after a radical procedure, often procedures that treat extreme cases of epilepsy. When the callosum is damaged in anyway, it leaves different sections of the brain disconnected and not able to communicate with the other half. With alien hand syndrome, one hand functions normally, carrying out wanted tasks without signaling the other hand, resulting in a hand that can act on its own, sometimes in dysfunctional and unwanted ways. The left hemisphere, which controls the right arm and leg, tends to be where language

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