KM Viray
8. Alien Hand Syndrome
This rare neurological disorder typically arises after trauma to the brain, after brain surgery, after a stroke or because of 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.
Alien hand syndrome is best documented in cases where a person has had the two hemispheres of their brain surgically separated, a procedure sometimes used to relieve the symptoms of extreme cases of epilepsy. It also occurs in some cases after brain surgery, stroke, infection, tumor, aneurysm, and specific degenerative brain conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Cases vary from person to person. Some experience the alien hand unbuttoning a shirt or simply touching parts of the face, while extreme cases include the hand grasping the throat of the person.
