Monday, March 7, 2011

homunculus and stroke rehab

motor homunculus (Latin: little man).
After finally seeing my MRI and the damaged areas in my brain I started looking for a brain map to see what actually was destroyed and came across the motor and sensory homunculus maps.
Motor ones can be found here
http://www.brainconnection.com/med/medart/l/homunculus.jpg
or here
http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_06/i_06_cr/i_06_cr_mou/i_06_cr_mou_1b.jpg
or here
http://www.vis.caltech.edu/~zoltan/szeged8/img8.htm
Sensory ones are here:
http://www.amareway.org/holisticliving/06/sensory-homunculus-cortical-homunculus-motor-homunculus/

According to the researcher who looked at my MRIs the infarct did not get into the sensory map. That may be true but my senses are still weaker than they should be so I think the connection out from the sensory map may have been damaged. By looking at the motor homunculus I can now see why I could wiggle my toes 2.5 years after my event. That area of the brain was spared and just needed to find a way thru or around all the dead space.I haven't quite figured out why my facial muscles still work, looking at my MRI it looks like that area is totally gone.
Nothing here is of immediate use to your rehab but if your doctors were writing up case studies they should be using these kinds of maps to explain what was damaged. And with these strokes could be compared to each other. What a novel idea! Standardized documentation and then we could easily start statistically mapping therapies to damage.

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