Fig. 2: Lesion distribution by major brain areas.

a Lesion distribution for all cases in the literature review. b Lesion distribution for cases with vascular lesions. c Lesion distribution for cases with non-vascular lesions. d Comparison of lesion distribution for tumor cases identified in this literature review (n = 19) with tumor distribution described by Ostrom et al. for a large patient database (n = 169934)¹⁴. In what brain tumors are concerned, regions were defined according to the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology (ICD-O), without considering tumours originating from the meninges (n = 14), ventricles (n = 2), cranial nerves (n = 1), or of unspecified origin (n = 4). “Other Brain” refers to lesions spanning multiple areas (C71.8: “neoplasm involving two or more sites, corpus callosum and tapetum”) or when areas were insufficiently specified (C71.9: “intracranial site, cranial fossa not otherwise specified, anterior cranial fossa, middle cranial fossa, posterior cranial fossa and suprasellar”). “Cerebrum” refers to multiple subcortical structures (C71.0: “basal ganglia, central white matter, unspecified cerebral cortex, cerebral hemisphere, cerebral white matter, corpus striatum, globus pallidus, hypothalamus, insula, internal capsule, island of Reil, operculum, pallium, putamen, rhinencephalon, supratentorial brain not otherwise specified and thalamus”). ^aDoes not include the following case series, which did not provide enough information on individual lesion etiology: Carran 2003, Robinson 1988, Starkstein 1987 and Starkstein 1991 (See Supplementary Material for complete references – Supplementary Table S3). *p value < 0.05.