Abstract:

We reported a 50-year-old female patient with left supplementary motor area infarction who presented right lower limb apraxia and investigated the possible causes using transcranial magnetic stimulation. The patient was able to walk and climb stairs spontaneously without any assistance at 3 weeks after onset. However, she was unable to intentionally move her right lower limb although she understood what she supposed to do. The motor evoked potential evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation from the right lower limb was within the normal range, indicating that the corticospinal tract innervating the right lower limb was uninjured. Thus, we thought that her motor dysfunction was not induced by motor weakness, and confirmed her symptoms as apraxia. In addition, these results also suggest that transcranial magnetic stimulation is helpful for diagnosing apraxia.

Key words: nerve regeneration, lower limb apraxia, supplementary motor area, cerebral infarct, transcranial magnetic stimulation, corticospinal tract, stroke, neural regeneration