Apathy is commonly defined as lack of, or diminished, emotion, interest, concern, interest and motivation manifesting as poor engagement with others and loss of pleasure in usual interests. Occurs in various medical condition (stroke, HIV, dementia and Parkinson disease) and other psychiatric disorders. It has been related with thalamus stroke, and seen on clinical practice as a blunted emotional response and indifference.

We have tried to link cases of apathy associated with thalamic stroke and systematically review the literature for similar case reports.

We have searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, IBIDS, and the Cochrane Collaboration Database until October 2015. Published case reports of apathy in persons who had suffered a brain stroke were selected.

Support the evidence in the literature of the multidimensional nature of apathy and correlate the psychiatric manifestation with the neurological findings. We find similar case reports that could support the anatomical subtract of the apathy and it's also correlated with the previous data reports.

These findings are discussed and interpreted in the seeking of regarding the neurobiological substrate of apathy.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.