We report herein the case of a 27-year-old woman with neuropsychiatric lupus who experienced disturbance of consciousness and left hemiparesis. Steroid treatment was initiated and symptoms resolved within 2 months. T2- and diffusion-weighted imaging revealed signal hyper intensity in the right cerebral cortex. Apparent diffusion coefficient values in these lesions increased, but normalized over 2 months. These findings indicate that cortical lesions in patients with neuropsychiatric lupus could represent vasogenic oedema.