Imagine that you are typing on a computer and suddenly your left hand stopped and slapped your face suddenly for no reason? Or while you are sleeping then something strangling you and shockingly saw your left hand doing it? Scary isn't it? It is like a good concept in a horror movie but actually, it happens in real life though rarely. If ever you or someone you know experienced this kind of situation then you or that someone has a rare neurological condition called Alien Hand Syndrome.
Usually, it is the left hand that fails to follow the commands of the patients' master control, the brain. Sometimes, the left legs also rebel, not allowing the person to control both the arm and the leg. AHS can be caused by a stroke, trauma, brain tumor, *brain aneurysms, and other neurodegenerative diseases. Also, patients can acquire it from brain surgeries especially in the incision along the corpus callosum. Since our brain was divided into two hemispheres, the corpus callosum acts as a bridge of communication between the left and right brain regions. If damaged the two hemispheres cannot communicate properly which can lead the other hand out of control. Furthermore, patients are unaware of their weird movements because their parietal cortex, a brain region where information such as taste, temperature, and touch are integrated, or processed, is injured.
The unpleasant consequences due to AHS gives a lot of inconveniences in patients' life. Their uncontrolled hand does unintentional, sometimes self-oppositional actions such as picking an object, unbuttoning the buttoned part in their polo, reaching a stranger's gun, grabbing someone's butt, punching, or worst choking themselves. They feel disassociated on their own hand like it is possessed by a devil and in fact, some even named it.
Unfortunately, AHS has no cure yet. Possible treatments are cognitive therapy or using neuromuscular blocking agents to suppress at least the evil or weird activities done by the left hand.
But do not use AHS as an excuse for punching someone's face you really despised and satisfy your evil desire of looking him or her being in pain, you sadist.
*mayo clinic's definition: a bulge or ballooning in a blood vessel in the brain; can leak or rupture, causing bleeding into the brain (hemorrhagic stroke)
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