Question

Question1

Behavioral changes can vary and are based on the stroke’s severity as well as the part of the brain in which the stroke occurs. What are the differences in symptom presentation related to communication for a right-sided vs. left sided stroke?

Answer 1

Ans) The left side of the brain deals with putting information in order and analyzing things in a more sequential way. It handle superior for reading and writing, and is probably more responsible for positive emotions such as joy. People with left-sided strokes may have trouble with skilled movements, depression and speech.

- In contrast, the right side of the brain has a more big-picture, large-scale processing style. It pulls information together, seems better at handling new information, and is probably more responsible for negative feelings. People with right-sided strokes may have problems with music, melody in speech, confusion and anxiety reactions.

- It is also important to consider whether a stroke has affected the front or back of the brain.

- For example, strokes affecting the front of the brain tend to affect the ability to recall verbs. Conversely, strokes that occur in the back of the brain may cause problems recalling nouns. And strokes affecting the back of the brain (on either side) tend to disrupt the way we make sense of what our eyes (and various other senses) perceive.

- For the stroke survivor the complexity of the brain can be good, but also frustrating, news. It's beneficial that multiple brain regions are involved in every human function and experience. This is because stroke damages specific areas of the brain, leaving others intact and sometimes able to take over some lost function. But that same complexity makes every patient's symptoms so often seem to be “exceptions to the rule” — hard for clinicians to pin down, assess with precision and predict with accuracy.

- Neuropsychologists approach evaluations of patients' brains after stroke with the general differences between the left and right hemispheres in mind.

- But we are also aware that the brain is far too complicated and elegant an organ to be reduced to such simple terms. It is this very fact that enables us in stroke rehabilitation to work so hard for and hopefully with stroke survivors to mobilize different parts of the brain to try to compensate for damage that may have occurred primarily on one side or the other.