PATHOANATOMIC CORRELATION BETWEEN POSTSTROKE PATHOLOGICAL CRYING AND DAMAGE TO BRAIN-AREAS INVOLVED IN SEROTONERGIC NEUROTRANSMISSION

Background and Purpose The aim of the study was to correlate the sever ity of poststroke pathological crying with lesion size and location. M ethods Twelve selected stroke patients were ranked in terms of overall clinical severity of the syndrome of pathological crying, and the siz e and location of the stroke lesion(s) were determined by magnetic res onance imaging. Results The patients with the clinically most severe p athological crying had relatively large bilateral pontine lesions with out lesions in the hemispheres. The intermediate group had bilateral c entral hemispheric lesions, and the clinically least affected patients had mainly unilateral large subcortical lesions. Conclusions Poststro ke pathological crying may be attributable to stroke-induced partial d estruction of the serotonergic raphe nuclei in the brain stem or their ascending projections to the hemispheres.