Disturbed Mental Imagery of Affected Body-Parts in Patients with Hysterical Conversion Paraplegia Correlates with Pathological Limbic Activity

Brain Sciences

Arnaud Saj¹  Noa Raz²  Netta Levin²  Tamir Ben-Hur² 

[1] Department of Fundamental and Clinical Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva 1211, Switzerland; E-Mail:;Department of Neurology, Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem 91120, Israel; E-Mails:

关键词: conversion disorder;    hysteria;    body-processing;    mental-imagery;    insular cortex;    anterior cingulate cortex;    fMRI;   

DOI  :  10.3390/brainsci4020396

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Patients with conversion disorder generally suffer from a severe neurological deficit which cannot be attributed to a structural neurological damage. In two patients with acute conversion paraplegia, investigation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed that the insular cortex, a limbic-related cortex involved in body-representation and subjective emotional experience, was activated not only during attempt to move the paralytic body-parts, but also during mental imagery of their movements. In addition, mental rotation of affected body-parts was found to be disturbed, as compared to unaffected body parts or external objects. fMRI during mental rotation of the paralytic body-part showed an activation of another limbic related region, the anterior cingulate cortex. These data suggest that conversion paraplegia is associated with pathological activity in limbic structures involved in body representation and a deficit in mental processing of the affected body-parts.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.