Unveiling covert disownership after stroke: a neuropsychological and neural approach.
Brain communications January 1, 2025 Eugénie Cataldo, Eda Tipura, Corrado Corradi-Dell'Acqua et al. 4 citations
About 30% of stroke patients show a subtle form of body part disownership—a feeling that a hand, arm, leg, or part of the face does not belong to them—that standard verbal interviews miss. Using brain lesion analyses and network-based modeling in 105 hospitalized stroke patients and 55 healthy controls, the study found that this covert disownership involves widespread disconnections between temporo-occipital and parietal networks, as well as fronto-basal and occipital pathways, rather than damage to a single brain region. Key structures implicated include the right insula and basal ganglia for upper limb ownership, and the left superior longitudinal fasciculus for right hand disownership. The findings suggest that sensitive, non-verbal assessments are needed to detect this disorder early after stroke, and that understanding brain damage as network disruption can improve rehabilitation.