Case report of anosognosia for hemiplegia: A fMRI study

The aim of this study is to verify the functional activation in a patient with anosognosia for hemiplegia following left brain lesions.

We report a case of a 53-year-old right-handed female patient. She came to our rehabilitative unit with a diagnosis of an ischemic major stroke in the left internal carotid artery and important hemiplegia to the right side. She underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), during which she performed a motor imagery task.

The fMRI assessment showed an ischemic lesion in the frontotemporal and insular left areas. In the fMRI experiment, we revealed activation of the residual neural patterns of both hemispheres.

We underlined an interest in the compensation mechanism that involved neural networks near brain lesions and some areas of the contro-lesional hemisphere, suggesting that the synaptic plasticity permitted an intra and inter-hemispheric reorganization of the cerebral system.