Transient compulsive hyperphagia in a patient with a thalamic infarction

Eating disorders are associated with various psychiatric and neurological diseases. Pathological eating behaviour ranges from reduced to excessive appetite, dysregulation of hunger and satiation signals, and odd food preferences. Hyperphagia and anorexia are reported in lesions (mostly tumours) involving the ventromedial hypothalamus.1 Moreover, eating disorders also occur in temporal lobe tumours, temporal lobe epilepsy, and advanced states of degenerative disease with neuronal loss in the medial temporal lobe. Hyperorality is part of the Kluver-Bucy syndrome which occurs in patients with bilateral mesial temporal lesions.1 We report a patient in whom compulsive hyperphagia was associated with a medial thalamic ischaemic stroke.