Alien hand syndrome: The feeling that one's hand is possessed by a force outside of ones control. The syndrome typically arises after trauma to the brain, after brain surgery or after a stroke or an infection of the brain. A person with the alien hand syndrome can feel sensation in the affected hand but thinks that the hand is not part of their body and that they have no control over its movement, that it belongs to an alien.
Different types of brain injuries cause different subtypes alien hand syndrome. For example, take an injury to the corpus callosum (the area of the brain which connects the two cerebral hemispheres, the two halves of the brain). Such an injury in a right-handed person can give rise to purposeful movements of the left hand, while injury to the brain's frontal lobe of the brain can trigger grasping and other purposeful movements in the dominant right hand. More complex hand movements such as unbuttoning or tearing of clothes are usually associated with brain tumors, aneurysms or strokes.
There is currently no treatment for alien hand. All a patient can do to control the problem is to keep the hand busy by having it hold an object.
A collection of damn interesting things. ... There is a very real, very disturbing, and very rare medical condition called “Alien Hand Syndrome†(AHS).
An operation to control epilepsy leaves Karen Byrne with no control of her left hand, a condition known as Alien Hand Syndrome.
Alien hand syndrome is a rare disorder where one hand functions involuntarily. Read about alien hand syndrome and alien hand syndrome symptoms.
Alien hand syndrome: The feeling that one's hand is possessed by a force outside of ones control. The syndrome typically arises after trauma to the brain, after brain ...
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) -- Like victims in a horror film, patients with a rare syndrome known as 'alien hand' feel disassociated from one of their own hands ...