By Amy Norton
NEW
YORK (Reuters Health) - French scientists have pinpointed the part of the brain
that tells the arm to reach out and grab what its owner desires. They stumbled
across the ''urge to grasp'' control in the brain while observing a patient with
the seizure disorder epilepsy.
In the February issue of the Journal of
Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, researchers report on the case of a 30-year-old
woman with epilepsy. To locate the part of the brain that gave rise to her seizures,
Dr. Philippe Kahane and his colleagues at the Universite Joseph Fourier in Grenoble
implanted electrodes into the patient's brain. They found that electrical stimulation
within a brain area called the anterior cingulate sulcus ``incited the patient
to act.''
Zapping the brain area caused the woman to have an ''irresistible
urge to grasp something'' and her eyes began to wander in search of an object.
When her eyes were "wandering movement'' rather than grasping an object--suggesting
that the effect of stimulating this brain area depended on visual guidance, the
researchers report.
Kahane told Reuters Health that this finding could
have implications for epilepsy surgery, the goal of which is to remove the part
of the brain that triggers seizures. For some "urge to move'' or involuntary
movements such as grasping. A deeper knowledge of what governs human movement
in general may help doctors better understand epileptic seizures, Kahane added.
In
addition, he noted, the brain area his team identified may be part of a larger
network involved in other conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.
"One
may imagine,'' he said, "that (these) regions could be a target to treat
surgically. ''SOURCE: Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry |
