Chronic somatoparaphrenia: a follow-up study on two clinical cases

Somatoparaphrenia consists in abnormal or bizarre verbal reports about some parts of the body. Such a pathological condition usually lasts for days or weeks and is variably associated with other cognitive defects. In the present paper we describe exceptionally long-lasting somatoparaphrenia in two focal brain-damaged patients: GA who had a right hemorrhagic fronto-parieto-temporal stroke and AC who developed a left ischemic parieto-occipital lesion. The presence and severity of somatoparaphrenia did not change in either patient during a 2-year follow-up, whereas the two patients showed different evolution of anosognosia for motor disorders, severity of extrapersonal neglect and cognitive impairments. Moreover, impairment of position sense was associated with somatoparaphrenia in one patient only; neither patient showed personal neglect. The reported clinical observations suggest that somatoparaphrenia can be observed as a body-related chronic disorder and can outlast other cognitive defects, even if it arose in conjunction with them.