[Cheiro-oral syndrome following a cortical brain infarction in the precentral gyrus and at the base of the central sulcus. A case report].

We report a patient who manifested cheiro-oral syndrome following a cortical brain infarction without involvement of postcentral gyrus. A 67-year-old man was admitted to our hospital because of sudden paresthesia in his right face and right thumb and index finger. His cranial magnetic resonance imaging disclosed that the infarction was located in the left precentral sulcus and at the base of the central sulcus, while the left postcentral gyrus was not involved. His sensory symptom was attributed to the lesion of the Brodmann's area 3a, which is located at the base of the central sulcus. We postulate that the lesions responsible for cortical cheiro-oral syndrome are dispersed more widely than those for thalamic or pontine ones, since the somatotopy of face and hand in the cortex is distributed more extensively than that in the thalamus or pons.