A mind of it's own...

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Hare Krishna.

 

Brain Injury Gives Hand a Mind of Its Own

 

 

Updated 7:37 AM ET September 8, 2000

By Patricia Reaney

LONDON (Reuters) - A rare, poorly understood and often misdiagnosed brain

injury is causing sufferers to lose control of a hand so it behaves as if it

has a mind of its own, an Italian scientist said Thursday.

 

Dubbed the "Dr Strangelove Syndrome" after the character created by the late

comedian Peter Sellers in the film of the same name, anarchic hand sufferers

have one hand that performs against their will.

 

"This is a bizarre symptom," Professor Sergio Della Sala, of the University

of Aberdeen in Scotland, told the British Association for the Advancement of

Science festival.

 

"There are patients with lesions in the frontal lobes of the brain who have

one hand that behaves in capricious ways. So one hand performs actions that

the patient does not want to perform."

 

Because they cannot control what one hand will do, the two hands often end

up fighting with each other much like Sellers' Dr Strangelove character.

 

In the 1964 black comedy the wheelchair-bound scientist's hand kept

attacking him and going into a Nazi salute which he continually tried to

stop with his other hand.

 

"The patients are exactly like Peter Sellers. They come and they slam their

hand and they shout: 'my hand does things that I don't want to do,"' Della

Sala told a news conference.

 

One patient he treated arrived with the anarchic hand tied behind her back

because she was afraid of what it would do.

 

Another patient had difficulty eating a fish meal because the anarchic hand

kept putting leftover fish bones back into her mouth.

 

"The phenomenon greatly distresses sufferers and disrupts their daily life,"

he said, adding that it is so grotesque it often borders on the comic.

 

Only 40 cases of the syndrome have been recorded in medical literature, with

the first reported in Germany in 1909.

 

Della Sala believes it has occurred more frequently but that sufferers were

misdiagnosed and treated for psychiatric problems.

 

The condition is caused by damage to the supplementary motor areas of brain

which can occur during an accident, injury or stroke. It can happen to

anyone and to either hand.

 

One case of anarchic foot has also been documented, according to Della Sala.

 

Hare Krishna --

 

ys, Balarama Dasa