Olfactory and taste dysfunction after bilateral middle cerebral artery stroke

Acquired dysfunction of the sense of smell and taste is usually associated with orbitofrontal tumors or trauma and is rarely reported to have occurred after ischemic stroke. We report on a patient who noted impairment of the sense of smell and taste after a localized insular frontoparietal stroke and who also had a similar, mirror-image infarction in the other hemisphere. Injury to an area of the cortex responsible for the integration of taste and smell may have accounted for this patient's symptoms.