Rationale: A 72-year-old male had suffered from head trauma resulting from injury to his frontal area by an electrical grinder while working at his home.
Patient concerns: He lost consciousness for approximately 10 minutes and experienced continuous post-traumatic amnesia.
Diagnoses: He was diagnosed as traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage in both frontal lobes, intraventricular hemorrhage, and subarachnoid hemorrhage, and underwent decompressive craniectomy and hematoma removal.
Interventions: The patient's Glasgow Coma Scale score was 5. At 2 months after onset, when starting rehabilitation, he showed no spontaneous movement or speech; he remained in a lying position all day with no spontaneous activity.
Outcomes: On 2-month diffusion tensor tractography, decreased neural connectivity of the caudate nucleus to the medial prefrontal cortex (PFC, Broadmann area [BA]: 10 and 12) and orbitofrontal cortex (BA 11 and 13) was observed in both hemispheres.
Lessons: Akinetic mutism following prefrontal injury.