Right-Sided Anarchic (Alien) Hand - A Longitudinal Study PDF

Nruropsychofogm, Printed in Great Vol. 29, No. II, pp. lll~ll27, Britain. RIGHT-SIDED 1991 0 0028-3932/91 $3.00~0.00 1991 Pergamon Press plc ANARCHIC (ALIEN) HAND: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY SERGIO DELLA SALA,*? CLELIA MARCHETTI~ and HANS SPINNLER~ *Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, San Paolo Hospit...

Nruropsychofogm, Printed in Great Vol. 29, No. II, pp. lll~ll27, Britain. RIGHT-SIDED 1991 0 0028-3932/91 $3.00~0.00 1991 Pergamon Press plc ANARCHIC (ALIEN) HAND: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY SERGIO DELLA SALA,*? CLELIA MARCHETTI~ and HANS SPINNLER~ *Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, San Paolo Hospital, Milan; tNeuropsychology Unit, Clinica del Lavoro Foundation, Medical Centre of Rehabilitation, Veruno (NO); and fFirst Department of Neurology, University of Milan, San Paolo Hospital, Milan (Received 29 January 1991; accepted 2 June 1991) Abstract-A patient with a bilateral frontal vascular lesion, encroaching upon the mesial cortex on the left and damage of the corpus callosum showed the ‘alien hand’ phenomenon on the right. The various hypotheses as to the nature of the lesion for the alien hand phenomenon to appear are discussed. It is proposed that an acute clinical condition, following a lesion of the corpus callosum only, should be differentiated from a chronic condition resulting from the additional fronto-mesial lesion. INTRODUCTION THE PHENOMENONcalled ‘alien hand’ (AH) consists of the occurrence of movements of an upper limb that are unintended although clearly directed to some purpose. The ‘alien’ hand, seems to act autonomously, carrying out complex movements against the subject’s verbally reported will, that can interfere,with the development of an intentional action that the other hand has begun. The subject is fully aware of the abnormal behaviour of one hand but he is not able to inhibit it. This is both unpleasant and frightening for him. Doubts abound as to the crucial site of the lesion and how large it has to be for AH to appear. Interpretations based on callosal lesion only All the reported cases of AH that have developed after only a callosal interruption show the phenomenon on the left side [l, 9, 541. This was interpreted as the result of the disconnection of the area devoted to complex motor activities in the left hemisphere [ 17, 30, 313 from the area on the right in which the motor cortex for the left hand is located. This would exclude right-handed subjects from having AH on the right. In support of this interpretation there are some patients reported with left AH whose neuro-radiological examination failed to show any additional involvement of the cortical areas [26, 511. Interpretations based on a requirement of a double, callosal and cortical, lesion After GOLDBERG described two patients with AH on the right side, the explanation involving the corpus callosum (CC) only, appeared inadequate and it was proposed that a SAddress for correspondence: Hans Spinnler, Clinica Neurologica I, Polo Didattico Studi, Ospedale San Paolo alla Barona, Via A. Stanabba di Rudini 8, 20142 Milano. III3 S. Paolo, Universita degli 1114 S. DELLA SALA. C. MARCHETTI and H. SPINNLER double lesion, namely, both of the CC and of the fronto-mesial cortex (precisely, of the Supplementary Motor Area, SMA) contralateral to the AH meets the essential pathological requirement of AH. Since this condition seldom occurs, it is worth describing each case, as this may contribute to a clearer definition and interpretation of AH.and will possibly enable us to develop a metanalysis. We describe a 3-year follow-up of a right-handed patient with callosal and bilateral frontal vascular lesion presenting with a stable right AH. CASE REPORT G.C. is a 56-year-old right-handed woman who first came to us in January 1988. A year before she suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage and was operated on 2 days later to clip two aneurisms of the anterior communicating artery. After she roused from a 20-day coma, the patient had language disorders and right hemiplegia. The language disorders (comprehension well-preserved, spontaneous speech nearly nonexistent, repetition possible and correct) was compatible with a transcortical motor aphasia syndrome. The disorder cleared up within a few months. The motor deficit also improved and was all but gone when we first saw her. In the first months after the operation her behavioural characteristics fitted both an adynamic (abulic-apatheticakinetic) and moriatic (‘Witzelsucht’) syndrome. Both of these features subsided with time and when we began to study G.C. only slight stable abulia remained. She was forgetful in everyday life with a clear-cut deficit of ongoing memory. As the motor symptoms cleared up, severe disturbances of organization of voluntary gestures and of bimanual coordination became apparent. The right hand frequently carried out complex activities that were not willed by G.C. These activities were clearly goal-directed and were well executed, but undesired by the patient, who used her left hand to try to stop them. For example, when the patient had a steaming cup of tea in front of her, the right hand proceeded to pick it up and bring it to her mouth, even though the patient knew that it was too hot and had just said she would wait a few moments until it had cooled. Nevertheless it needed the intervention of her left hand to replace the cup on the table. The will to do so was not sufficient to modify the directed but inappropriate behaviour of the right hand. On other occasions, when G.C. had a genital itch, the right hand scratched it vigorously, in view of other people, causing considerable embarrassment to the patient, who tried to stop the right hand with her left. These are only two examples ofmany such manifestations ofimpulsive, context-dependent autonomous behaviour of the right hand. At other times, the right hand interfered with intentional movements of the left hand, carrying out complex and organized activities that did not appear to be so closely context-dependent. For example, while the left hand was using some object, the right hand would try to grab it and use it, against the will of the patient, in some way different from the original plan. The patient considered her left hand to be the one she could trust, while the right hand, which could make motions completely without her wanting it to, was the untrustworthy one that ‘always does what it wants to do’. The patient often experienced this problem with the right hand during her daily activities and in order to complete the activity she wanted to complete, she had to prevent the ‘wayward’ right hand from interfering, sometimes by force (by hitting it or by sitting on it). The need to take these precautions, which had only fleeting effects, and the frequent failures produced a marked feeling of frustration. In spite of the inconveniences caused by this motor behaviour of the right hand, G.C. never denied (even in response to direct questioning) that this ‘alien’ hand belonged to her (i.e. she had no sign of asomatognosia). She never had a depressed or anxious reaction, but was rather annoyed by her symptoms. She was well aware of the problem and that the disturbance consisted exclusively of the right-hand functioning autonomously against her will. Neurological examination The neurological examination in January 1988 (i.e. a year after the rupture of the aneurism) showed slight paresis of the right limbs, which could still carry out all the movements. Movements for reaching or picking up objects placed in the peri-personal space were normal. Two-handed tasks, even relatively complex ones (e.g. making a package, folding a letter and placing it in an envelope), were done correctly and with good coordination of the two hands. Sensation was normal in all modalities. The right hand showed tonic grasping; there were no other cortical disinhibition signs or perseveration of motor acts. Neuroradiology The CT scan carried out in May 1987, showed a bilateral fronto-basal paramedian hypodensity, involving the anterior part of the CC and extending more to the left so as to presumably encroach upon the supplementary motor area of that side (Fig. 1). This could not be confirmed by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance because of the metal clips in the patient’s head. RIGHT-SIDED ANARCHIC (ALIEN) HAND: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY RIGHT-SIDED ANARCHIC (ALIEN)HAND: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY 1117 Neuropsychological examination A standard language examination, the Aachener Aphasie Test [ 14,331 (January 1988), showed no aphasic deficit. Writing with the right hand was normal. Neither writing nor drawing evidenced perseveration. The neuropsychological examination (see Table 1, first session) excluded global cognitive deterioration. There were memory deficits that did not fit into any classical amnesia syndrome, involving both short-term and long-term spatial and verbal memory. Autobiographical memory was also impaired; G.C. did not produce, however, confabulations. The patient scored below the cut-offs in some tests (Weigl Sorting Test, Elithorn Perceptual Maze) 115, 531 that are traditionally considered to be sensitive indices of frontal damage. The alien hand The audio-videotape of the test sessions was evaluated by two independent observers. During some of the neuropsychological tests which required manipulation or utilization of objects, a conflict between the two hands became evident, with each of them acting according to separate and often competing programmes. The patient always felt that the right hand was a disturbing element, even when it carried out an activity more adequately than the left. The feeling that the movements of the right hand were disturbing appeared to arise from the fact that the patient consciously willed (as was clear from her spoken descriptions) only what the left hand was doing, while what the right hand was doing was always unexpected. The activities of the right hand did not lessen when the arm was moved over the midline to the left hemispace, as they did in patient B.D. described by GOLDBERG , suggesting that our case did not have ‘hemispatial motor neglect’. There were many ‘callosal phenomena’; they are listed in Table 2. Whenever possible, we used the terminology of BOGEN. (1) Aphasic errors when writing with the left hand in response to dictation (aphasic agraphia of the left hand) (Fig. 2). The patient herself was aware of these errors and was surprised by them, but could not correct them with the left hand. (2) Errors of naming objects placed in the left hand and manipulated without visual control (tactile anomia of the left hand): a pen was called a knife, a key was called a spoon, a band was called a tennis racket, a fork a spoon, a ring a lid. The objects were manipulated correctly and they were recognized, though not named, when later presented mixed with new objects. Objects were named correctly when manipulated by the right hand. (3) Verbal orders executed by the left hand were defective (apraxia of the left hand) both when G.C. was asked to mime the action without using the real object and when she was asked to carry out gesture without significance or meaningful gestures (e.g. make the sign of the cross, give a military salute, etc.). (4) Relatively simple arithmetic calculations, which could sometimes be performed successfully vocally, were frequently erroneous when written (spatial discalculia). (5) A geometrical figure was copied correctly by both hands, but the proportions and dimensions were closer to those of the original in the copy made with the left hand. (6) Transfer of kinesthetic information from one arm to the other outside the visual control (for example, arm extended with the forearm flexed and the closed fist placed on the homolateral shoulder) was virtually impossible for both the left and right side (9 failures in 10 proposals, whether from right to left or left to right). Follow-up G.C’s AH stabilized over time, which constituted a chronic right AH. The patient herself said that it appeared within 2 months after her recovery from postoperative coma and we observed it for the first time 1 year later. The sign had not changed at an examination 2 years later. 1118 S. DELLA SALA, C. MARCHETTI and H. SPINNLER TABLE 1. CC’s performance in a formal psychometric battery and healthy baselines. All scores have been adjusted for age, education and sex. Range in brackets. The tests utilized are described in SPINNLER and TOGNONI except for the test for prose memory [S], the test of autobiographical memory [lo] and the test of the Towers of Hanoi G.C’s adjusted scores (1st session) G.C:s adjusted scores (2nd session, interval = 29 months) Controls’ inferential 5th centile Controls’ median score Control functions Attention Selective attention: Digit cancellation test ((r60) Inverted copying of gestures Intelligence and executive (&24) 30* 41.5 30 49 24 17.25 18.25 23.25 43.25 16.75 58.25 20.75 32 14.75 50 28.75 2* 0* 17.86 9.75 4.25 4* 4.75s 18.02 12.25 7.75 4.25 7.25 9 7 3.15 10.75 14.25 18 17 9.50 2.75 3.M 36 4.50 4.75 111 functions Verbal judgement (t&60) Raven’s progressive matrices set A, B, C, D (w8) Weigl’s sorting test (O-15) Elithorn’s perceptual maze test Towers of Hanoi test ((r18.80) Fluency on semantic cue (&inf) Free word association (t%inf) Instrumental functions Memory Verbal forward span (t%inf) Spatial forward span (O-10) Supra-span verbal learning Buschke-Fuld’s selective reminding technique (6180) Supra-span spatial learning (Corsi’s test) (G29.16) Serial position curve Primacy (G70) Recency (O-30) Prose memory (&150) Autobiographical memory (&45) 2.50* 3* 8* 5.25* 3.5 5 40 9.07 6.50 20 12 Il.50 3* 14* 7 16.50 6* 4.50 7.50 24 19 15.50 18.50 60 38 26.15 14 32.25 14 26.25 6.25 33 13.75 62 52* 62 56 52 52 69 69 21 23 7.50 26 19 8.5 17 20.75 2 26 31.25 7.25 Language Token test (&36) Sentence generation nouns (O-18) from two unrelated Praxis Ideomotor apraxia Right hand (O-72) Left hand (&72) Visual perception Length of segment discrimination Scrawls discrimination (t&32) Street’s completion test (&14) *Pathological (O-32) score, i.e. below the 5th centile of the normal distribution. RIGHT-SIDED ANARCHIC TABLE 2. G.C.‘s performance (ALIEN) HAND: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY in tasks devised to show a callosal Right hand No Agraphia Tactile anomia Ideomotor apraxia in response to verbal command: Pretend object utilization Intransive movements Meaningful gestures Constructional apraxia Spatial acalculia Cross-replication of arm and hand postures out of visual control 1119 syndrome Left hand Yes IO/l0 S/l0 9110 9.5/10 lO/lO 14/14 o/10 7110 4.5110 14114 Yes l/l0 l/10 The patient was not able to find strategies that would avoid or stop the conflict between the two hands, which could be resolved only temporarily by using force. Even the suggestion [21,23] that she should ‘talk to the hand’ did not prove effective. Three years after the subarachnoid hemorrhage, all the signs of callosal disconnection that we have described were still present. The ideomotor apraxia on imitation [lS], of the left hand, seen in the first examination, had improved noticeably (Table 1). The cognitive profile showed marked improvement in memory function and partial improvement in the so-called frontal tests (Table 1). However, there was still everyday evidence of disturbances of ongoing memory and her behaviour varied between inertia and facetiousness. DISCUSSION The anarchic hand Our patient with chronic right-sided AH had an extensive lesion of the corpus callosum (CC) and the fronto-mesial cortex on both sides. It is reasonable to think that the supplementary motor area (SMA) was more likely to be compromised on the left, given the larger mesial lesion on that side. The activities of the right hand were considered by the patient to be unwanted, and this feeling did not change with time. The autonomous movements were correct from the praxic viewpoint, they were neither aimless nor ataxic, not identifiable as dyskinesias. The patient disavowed the movements carried out by the right hand even when they fit the requirements of the tasks carried out. This behaviour cannot be interpreted as the consequence of hemispheric cognitive incompetence for some responses of the right hand, as was considered to be the case for LORING et al.? case J.M.. G.C. never considered that the AH that she could not control was not really hers; in fact, as in most cases in the literature, she always recognized the arm as hers. We agree with GOLDBERG that the term ‘alien hand’ is less appropriate than the term ‘wayward hand’ or, in view of the complete autonomy of the arm and its disruptive effect on the daily activities of patients who have one, perhaps the best would be ‘anarchic hand’. The interpretation of AH is made complicated even by linguistic misunderstanding. This same term has been used to describe phenomena that have little in common. BOGEN, for example, defined AH as a hand that ‘behaves in a way which the patient finds foreign or at least uncooperative’ (p. 313) and, with almost imperceptible shades of meaning, differentiates this from ‘intermanual conflict’ (p. 312), defined as a situation in which one hand ‘is acting at cross purposes to the other’, sometimes to the point of engaging in a real struggle S. DELLA SALA, C. MARCHETTI and H. SPINNLER FIG. 2. Some examples of words written by G.C. with the left hand. In addition to the reasonable clumsiness due to lack of experience in writing with the nondominant hand, there are many obvious paragraphias. It is noteworthy that all resulting responses are non-words. The patient correctly read what she had wrongly written, but was not able to correct it graphically, with the left hand. with the other, and from ‘autocriticism’, which consists of an ‘expression of astonishment’ (p. 313) by the patient who sees that one hand appears to be provided with its own autonomous volition and refers to it as it is not driven by his will: ‘the hand did such and such’. In reviewing previous reports, it turns out that the above-mentioned terms are often used interchangeably for very different situations: spontaneous and involuntary grasping by one hand of everything near it (with a need for the other hand to intervene to stop it from taking up things that the subject does not want) [24, 353, intervention of one hand to correct activities that are or are considered to be wrong , the experience of the impossibility of exerting voluntary control of uncoordinated movements by one hand in the case of optic RI~HT-~DED ANARCHIC (ALIEN) HAND: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY 1121 ataxia or even the involuntary movements of one hand during the course of corticobasal degeneration [20,40,41]. Usually these phenomena are described within variegated picture of acute interhemispheric disconnection symptoms and they are usually related to the ‘Main Etranghe’ Of ORION and JEDYNAK [l l] or to the ‘Diagnostic Dyspraxia’ of AKELAITIS [l]. However, there are obvious differences. The main ttrangdre described by BRION and JEDYNAK [ 1 l] consisted of a lack of recognition by the subject of his or her left hand when asked to touch it with the right hand without visual control. That is, the patients recognized one hand, but were not aware that they were dealing with their own left hand, in a kind of hemisomatoagnosia limited to the hand and to the tactile modality only. No movements that were not voluntary and not controlled by the subject were included in this picture. The ‘Diagnostic Dyspraxia’ of AKELAITIS [l] consisted, instead, of a fleeting appearance, during the short period immediately following a callosotomy, of motor activity that contradicted what the subject wanted to do. This phenomenon appeared in the patient as a strong conflict between the two hands, with the left hand systematically undoing what the right hand had just finished doing. Anatomo-functional correlating hypothesis of AH Table 3 summarizes the information about many of the patients with AH described in the literature. It also includes cases for whom it is not possible to speak of AH in the strict sense, but who had one or more of the phenomena associated with it. There is an extensive Japanese literature that has not been mentioned on the table; the reader is referred to a recent paper by TANAKA et al.. We considered it useful to include the largest amount of clinical information for each patient in this table. Attribution of a given symptom to a patient was based on the description of the authors rather than on what they named the symptom. When the authors did not include enough information to make this possible (e.g. CHAN et al. [ 12]), we used the term the authors had used. We used the above-mentioned definitions of BOGEN for AH, intermanual conflict and autocriticism. By ‘mirror movements’ we mean situations in which both arms cannot carry out different and complementary activities harmoniously, but are bound to mirror each other. The ‘callosal signs’ are those commonly reported for the syndrome of interhemispheric disconnection (see BOGEN, 1979 ). In detail, for the patients considered in Table 3 they were: tactile anomia of the left hand [8, 11,24,26,28,36,49-513, apraxia of the left hand [8, 12,24,26,36,51], agraphia of the left hand [8,11,12,26,28,36, 511, right constructive apraxia [ll, 25,28,51], left relative pseudo-hemianopsia [ 111, lack of ability in cross-replicating hand postures [ll, 12, 281, extinction in dichotic hearing of stimuli presented to the left ear , spatial discalculia and anomia for objects presented in the left visual field. The patient described by SHAHANI is not set forth in Table 3 inasmuch as he did not present with clear-cut alien behaviour. This is at odds with the frequent report of this case among the ‘alien’ references. Analysing the data in Table 3, it is possible to formulate some localizing hypotheses from the literature on AH, hypotheses already mentioned in the Introduction. (1) The hypothesis that a circumscribed lesion of the CC is sufficient is based essentially on the fact that the earliest descriptions of AH were made after surgical callosotomy and the phenomenon was found along with signs of acute interhemispheric disconnection [ 1,9,54]. This hypothesis seemed to have been confirmed by some cases with vascular lesions [6,28, 511 which did not have cortical lesions that could be detected by neuroradiological methods. Cases with left AH fit within a theoretical explanation, stemming from the apraxia domain, 1122 TABLE 3. Lay-out SERGIO DELLA SALA, CLELIA MARCHETTI and of findings reported in 35 patients presenting HANS SPINNLER ‘alien hand’ mnin twang&e, and/or intermanual Lesion AKELAITIS, 1944 [I] I BRIONdi JEUINAK,1972 [I I] WlLsoNet ol., 1977 1541 I Callosal tumor 2 Callosal f”mOrS 1 Left pericallosal an&ma 1 Surgical division of the CC BARBIZET et al., 1978 BEUWELMAN er al., 1980 [S] I I Go~ue~nc; et al., 1981 [Zl] WATSON & HEILMAN 1963 GOLOENBERO er ol., 1985 WATSON et al., 1986 LEVINE k RINN,1986 1291 GOLDBERG, 1987 GRAFT-RADFORD or al., 1987 MAGNANIer al., 1987 MCNABBet al., 1988 Surgical division of body and posterior half of genu of the CC Clinical dwgnosis of Marchiafava Bignami dxase CT: diminished density between the anterior horns of the lateral ventricles 1 CT: left fronto-mesial cortex infarction 1 CT: left fronto-mesial cortex infarction 1 CT: hemorrhage extending from the genu to the spenium of the CC. Coronal reconstructions showed this to extend above the CC 1 Cl: infarction of the anterior two thirds of the CC. of both cingulate gyri and the white matter underlvinh the upper and mesial parts of frontal lobes I CT: low densitv of the left mesial hemisohere and eenu and anterior body of the CC 1 CT: low density in the distribution of the left anterior cerebral artery not Involving the CC 1 CT: large right basal temporo-ocapital and small ventral postero-lateral thalamic infarcts + + R R R R R I R BANKSer of.. 1989 LEtcunnuA er al.. 1989 Lonlw 1 CT: ischemic infarctloo involving right anterior cinaulate wrus and SMA. CC onlv minimallv involved 3 CT: infarction on the left SMA, anterior &g&e gyrus and anterior CC 1 CT: infarction in the right SMA, anterior cingulate gyros and anterior CC 1 CT: infarction m the riaht SMA, anterior cineulate gyrus and anterior CC1 Autoosv:_ bilateral frontal damaee _ side1 _ (z on the rieht and callosal damage; additional damage on the right basal ganglia and thalamus 1 CT: hemorrhage in the fronto-mesial lobes bilaterallv: damage to thegenu and anterior portion of the CC. 1 CT: hemorrhage involvine the CC from the dorsorostra1 position of the g& to the most caudal part of the body 1 CT. hemorrhage extendmg from the dorsal part of the genu to the caudal third of the CC 1 CT: extensive hemorrhage from the rostra1 Dart of the genu to the dorsal splenium of the CC I Sureical section of the CC NGR: division of the CC, no additional lesion 1 NMR: small ischemic stroke of the anterior two-thuds of the CC of the cingulate gyrus and of the mesial superior frontal gyrus of both hemispheres (SMAs claimed 10 be spared) I CT: bdateral frontal infarction involving the CC. On the left side, lesion extending to SMA + CR) + CR) + (BIL) + (L) (R) + + (RI + (RI + CL) + CL) + CR) + CR) + + + (BIL) + (BIL) R I CHANB Ross, 1988 [I21 + (RI + (RI I CT, NMR: extensive infarction of the mesial surface of the right frontal lobe and of the body of the CC NMR: hemorrhage in the genu and most of the body of the CC: no evidence of infarction in the SMA I CT: reduced density in the mesial face of the left hemisphere, two thirds of the anterior portion of the CC and part of the parietal lobe 1 CT: recent ischemic lesion of the white matter in the left fronto-mesial region; a previous lesion in the left caudate nucleus and cortical atrophy 1 CT: extensive infarction of the left suoerior. frontome&l and parietal cortex and of thegenu and body of cc 1 No information + (RI + CR) + CR) Coordination problems + Coordination problems Coordination problems +? + (RI _ + + (L) _ + + (L) _ + (R) + (RI _ _ + + (L) R R + (RI + + (BIL) + + (R) + + (L) + t (RI (2 - J : Sign present: - : sign absent; +?: questionable sign presence: (R): n&-sided; (L): left-sided; (BIL): bilaterally sided; A: ambidextrous: (R)*: the right hand also occasronally showed ahen behawour. RIGHT-SIDED ANARCHIC (ALIEN) HAND: A LONGITUDINAL 1123.wum conflict and autocriticism. When information is missing, corresponding space is left blank speech. Left hemiparests and sensny changes: slurring of Schizoid pattern on Rorschach test. Sometimes she would set OK in bne directton but then she would find herself going in the opposite direction + + + (L) + (L) + (L) (R&g) + (U + (fleeting) + + + CR) + CR) + CL) 21 days: + 21 days. + 3 days: + + (L) 180 days: + + (RI and cerebral CT normal Activities of the left extremities were not improved cueing Right arm paresis, right leg paralysis by verbal 35 days: + 44 days: + + + + + + + Bilateral leg paresis; double mcontinence + Increased reflexes of the right leg and right extensor plantar response Right leg weakness + (R) + (R) + 40 days: + 90 days: + + + CL) + + CR) + (R) 42 days: + + (RI +? + CR) +? Bilateral left weakness of legs, the right being weaker than the Ataxic left hand: wual control did not improve petfotmawe. Left hemianopia, left spatial neglect; left sensory loss. The patient first thought of the left hand as naughty, then conceived it as a baby The pabent felt as d her left leg did not belong to her. Left leg weakness and ‘inconsistent’ ability to move the left arm +&I + 0-j + (R) Angiography Mutism for 4 weeks + Right leg weakness, right extensor plantar response + Patient mutacic, as in a state ol catatonia with improvement of vigilance, could repeat words and phrases + (Ll + Right arm paresis, right leg paralysis + (BIL) Hesitation Right leg weakness. In bimanual task, the two hands appeared to act quite independently 01 each other Right leg weakness Left leg paralysis, left extensor plantar response. Tendency to make fewer movements with the left hand + (L) + (L) + _ + a, + 13 years: - + (L) + &I CR)* 15 days: + + _ + u-1 + Abulic. 1 Bilateral + Left crural hyperreflexia, left extensor plantar response + Left crural hyperreflexia. left extensor plantar + Intermanual competition: the right hand corrected written verbal errors made by the left hand, and vice versa Left hand apraxia Right hand dysgraphia Extinction of the right ear on dichotic listening + + + (L) +(Rl 3 months: 1 year: + + I months: 3 years: + - + + ~~ to the site of the + u-1 + + (L) Paresis more severe tn the leg controlateral lesion + Left ahen foot. Bdateral plantar extensor response leg weaknesss. left extensor plantar response response 1124 S. DELLASALA,C. MARCHETTI and H. SPINNLER of a disconnection between the areas of programming on the left and those on the right for carrying out movements with the left hand. However, this does not apply to right AH of right-handed people. All patients with right AH have been found to have lesions that extend beyond the CC. In Table 3 there is only one partial exception to this: LEIGUARDA et al.% patient No. 3 had a right hand that occasionally behaved like the left AH. (2) The hypothesis of a double, contemporaneous lesion of the CC and of the fronto-mesial cortex of the hemisphere controlateral to the AH was proposed after the first description of two patients with right AH. This hypothesis states that AH is the result of an imbalance, in the hemisphere controlateral to the affected hand , between activity of the SMA-that directs intentional movements due to the inner context (so-called ‘predictive’ movements) [7, 18, 27]-and the activity of a lateral system, probably sited in the arcuate premotor area, which organizes automatic movements in response to external stimuli (so-called ‘responsive’ movements) [39,42]. There are some clinical confirmations of this in Table 3 [21, 35, 521, especially one anatomopathological finding and one electrophysiological finding. (3) There is a final hypothesis that seems to be a compromise between the two, put forward, though incidentally, by LEIGUARDA et al. (p. 1033). AH might occur because of an isolated callosal interruption and in this case it would be seen in the arm ipsilateral to the language and praxis dominant hemisphere, whereas the phenomenon would appear in the arm controlateral to the lesioned hemisphere if the lesion was also cortical. This possibility, however, appears to be contradicted by many cases and among them also by case No. 3 of the same authors. Except for our case G.C. who had marked stability of the right AH (follow-up of 3 years), BANKS et al.3 case No. 1 and TANAKA et d’s no other case to our knowledge (see Table 3) has been studied longitudinally: sometimes AH is described as fleeting and sometimes as persistent. GOLDBERG et al. suggested that the fleeting AH that appears after surgical callosotomy might be the result of cortical damage due to displacement during the operation of hemispheric structures contiguous to the CC. A similar explanation might be given for stroke patients with acute AH, hypothesizing passing functional damage (compression due to oedema) of the frontal structures: this was confirmed by ‘cortical signs’ in the patients described above. We propose the alternative hypothesis that only the callosal lesion is necessary for the appearance of AH, but that to continue there must also be a fronto-mesial lesion encroaching upon the SMA controlateral to the AH. The fronto-mesial lesion would be the basis of the lack of compensation of the acute syndrome and cause the ‘chronic AH syndrome’. Analogous mechanisms of compensation, possibly subcortical [34, 43, 441, have been hypothesized for other signs of callosal disconnection that tend to be compensated to a remarkable degree within a few months after operation. However, no ideal case to demonstrate this hypothesis has as yet been reported. Ideally such a case would be one with two-step damage: appearance of and regression of AH after a callosal lesion; reappearance and stabilization of AH after a later fronto-mesial lesion. This would be analogous to the situation that helped to demonstrate the partial right hemispheric compensation of an aphasia that appeared and partially regressed after a lesion of the left hemisphere and worsened again after a later lesion in the right hemisphere [6,25, 381 or the existence of a distributed network subserving the direction of spatial attention instead of a single parietal locus. Our case suggests that AH is a ‘frontal hand’, being characterized by a ‘frontal’ context- RIGHT-SIDEDANARCHIC (ALIEN) HAND: A L~NGI~DINAL STUDY 1125 driven disinhibition (impulsiveness). We are not dealing with two wills, that of the right hemisphere and that of the left hemisphere, in which only one is accessible to the patient is verbal report and the other acts as a ‘well-kept secret’, but with an erroneous control of actions: in one hemisphere the internal/external balance being normal and the other imbalanced because the internal is virtually absent. In conclusion, the AH can be conceived as a fragment of the frontal syndrome, demonstrating the possibility of separate lesions within a complex and extensive system of functional representation; such a system is very likely to encompass the fronto-mesial areas. Analysis of the cases in the literature and of our longitudinally studied case supports the hypothesis of a fractionation of AH in an acute and a chronic form. 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