Acute transitory head mislocalization – a novel syndrome of pathological embodiment in a patient with traumatic brain injury – a case study

ABSTRACT

Feeling of body ownership is a complex process with different brain mechanisms involved in integrating the varied and multiple representations of the body . The ability to discriminate between one’s own and others’ body parts can be lost after brain damage. We report a unique case study of a patient with head injury who experienced a phenomenon where he felt that his head was positioned with another person standing next to him. We describe this as a form of pathological embodiment and call it the “head mislocalization” phenomenon. We report his clinical findings and using the methods of lesion mapping and lesion network mapping postulate the neural mechanisms for this symptom.

KEYWORDS:

• Pathological embodiment
• alien head
• extra-striate body area

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Credit author statement

A.T.Prabhakar – conceptualization, data acquisition, analysis, write-up, figure preparation and editing

Srija Inturi – Conceptualization, data acquisition, analysis, editing

Anupama Roy- conceptualization, data acquisition, software, analysis, editing

Sharath Kumar – data acquisition, review editing

Kavitha Margabandhu – software, analysis,editing

Jessica Michael – Review, editing

Thanusha Prasad.K – Review, editing

Data availability statement

Data will be available on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.