The common name for a disruption of blood supply to the brain is a stroke. It is caused by a blockage to an artery in the brain. The blockage is from some type of embolus: a blood clot, a fat embolus, or an air bubble. When the blood cannot travel through the artery, the surrounding tissue that is deprived starves and dies. Strokes will often result in the loss of very specific functions. A stroke in the lateral medulla, for example, can cause a loss in the ability to swallow. Sometimes, seemingly unrelated functions will be lost because they are dependent on structures in the same region. Along with the swallowing in the previous example, a stroke in that region could affect sensory functions from the face or extremities because important white matter pathways also pass through the lateral medulla. Loss of blood flow to specific regions of the cortex can lead to the loss of specific higher functions, from the ability to recognize faces to the ability to move a particular region of the body. Severe or limited memory loss can be the result of a temporal lobe stroke.

Q. All of the following are true of strokes except …