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Medical condition
Alien hand syndrome
Other names
AHS; alien limb syndrome; ALS; Dr. Strangelove syndrome
Specialty
Psychiatry, Neurology
Alien hand syndrome (AHS) or Dr. Strangelove syndrome[1] is a category of conditions in which a person experiences their limbs acting seemingly on their own, without conscious control over the actions.[2] There are a variety of clinical conditions that fall under this category, which most commonly affects the left hand.[3] There are many similar terms for the various forms of the condition, but they are often used inappropriately.[4] The affected person may sometimes reach for objects and manipulate them without wanting to do so, even to the point of having to use the controllable hand to restrain the alien hand.[5] Under normal circumstances however, given that intent and action can be assumed to be deeply mutually entangled, the occurrence of alien hand syndrome can be usefully conceptualized as a phenomenon reflecting a functional "disentanglement" between thought and action.
Alien hand syndrome is best documented in cases where a person has had the two hemispheres of their brain surgically separated,[6] a procedure sometimes used to relieve the symptoms of extreme cases of epilepsy and epileptic psychosis, e.g., temporal lobe epilepsy. It also occurs in some cases after brain surgery, stroke, infection, tumor, aneurysm, migraine and specific degenerative brain conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, corticobasal degeneration[7] and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.[8] Other areas of the brain that are associated with alien hand syndrome are the frontal, occipital, and parietal lobes.[9][10][unreliable medical source?][8]
^Panikkath, Ragesh; Panikkath, Deepa; Mojumder, Deb; Nugent, Kenneth (1 July 2014). "The alien hand syndrome". Proceedings (Baylor University. Medical Center). 27 (3): 219–220. doi:10.1080/08998280.2014.11929115. PMC 4059570. PMID 24982566.
^Biran, Iftah; Giovannetti, Tania; Buxbaum, Laurel; Chatterjee, Anjan (2006-06-01). "The alien hand syndrome: What makes the alien hand alien?". Cognitive Neuropsychology. 23 (4): 563–582. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.537.6357. doi:10.1080/02643290500180282. ISSN 0264-3294. PMID 21049344. S2CID 15889976. The alien hand syndrome is a deeply puzzling phenomenon in which brain-damaged patients experience their limb performing seemingly purposeful acts without their intention. Furthermore, the limb may interfere with the actions of their normal limb.
^Aboitiz, F.; Carrasco, X.; Schröter, C.; Zaidel, D.; Zaidel, E.; Lavados, M. (2003). "The alien hand syndrome: classification of forms reported and discussion of a new condition". Neurological Sciences. 24 (4): 252–257. doi:10.1007/s10072-003-0149-4. ISSN 1590-1874. PMID 14658042. S2CID 24643561. The term "alien hand" refers to a variety of clinical conditions whose common characteristic is the uncontrolled behavior or the feeling of strangeness of one extremity, most commonly the left hand.
^Aboitiz, F.; Carrasco, X.; Schröter, C.; Zaidel, D.; Zaidel, E.; Lavados, M. (2003). "The alien hand syndrome: classification of forms reported and discussion of a new condition". Neurological Sciences. 24 (4): 252–257. doi:10.1007/s10072-003-0149-4. ISSN 1590-1874. PMID 14658042. S2CID 24643561. A large variety of complex, abnormal, involuntary motor behaviors have been described following callosal lesions which may or may not be accompanied by hemispheric damage, especially in the frontal medial region. Although the different terminologies used to describe these movements attempt to address their clinical specificity, there is a noticeable nosological confusion in the literature which results in assigning similar names, often inappropriate, to diverse phenomena and vice versa. One example of such confusion is the group of syndromes labeled as "alien hand"[1], "anarchic hand" [2, 3], "way-ward hand" [4, 5], "intermanual conflict"[6] and "diagonistic dyspraxia" [7, 8].
^Assal, Frédéric; Schwartz, Sophie; Vuilleumier, Patrik (2007). "Moving with or without will: functional neural correlates of alien hand syndrome". Annals of Neurology. 62 (3): 301–306. doi:10.1002/ana.21173. PMID 17638304. S2CID 14180577.
Lay summary in: "Alien Hand Syndrome: Nerve Impulses Can Cause Movement Even When Person Is Unaware". ScienceDaily. July 17, 2007.
^Munevar, Gonzalo (2012). "The Myth of Dual Consciousness in the Split Brain: Contrary Evidence from Psychology and Neuroscience" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-04-15.
^Belfor, Nataliya; Amici, Serena; Boxer, Adam L.; Kramer, Joel H.; Gorno-Tempini, Maria Luisa; Rosen, Howard J.; Miller, Bruce L. (2006). "Clinical and neuropsychological features of corticobasal degeneration". Mechanisms of Ageing and Development. 127 (2): 203–207. doi:10.1016/j.mad.2005.09.013. PMID 16310834. S2CID 35169781.
^ abAnderson, Alyssa (8 April 2022). "What Is Alien Hand Syndrome?". WebMD. Retrieved 3 October 2022.
^Kloesel, Benjamin; Czarnecki, Kathrin; Muir, Jeffery J.; Keller, A. Scott (2010). "Sequelae of a left-sided parietal stroke: Posterior alien hand syndrome". Neurocase. 16 (6): 488–493. doi:10.1080/13554794.2010.497154. PMID 20824573. S2CID 31374522.
^Mark, Victor W (November 29, 2014). "Alien hand syndrome". MedLink.
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