Brain injury from a stroke can affect the senses, speech and the ability to understand speech, behavioral patterns, thought patterns and memory. Paralysis on one side of the body is common. Stroke also can cause depression, as survivors think they re now less than whole.
Stroke often causes people to lose feeling in an arm or leg, or suffer diminished sight in one eye.
The loss of feeling or visual field results in a loss of awareness, so stroke survivors may forget or ignore their weaker side, a problem called neglect. As a result, they may ignore items put on their affected side, having trouble reading, or dress only one side of their bodies and think they re completely dressed. Bumping into furniture or doorjambs is also common. A stroke can affect seeing, touching, moving and thinking, so a person s perception of everyday objects may be changed. Stroke survivors may not be able to recognize and understand familiar objects the way they did before.