People can have reduced spontaneous movement {akinesia}.
Protofibrils can appear in motor neurons, and plaques can appear there later {amyotrophic lateral sclerosis}| (ALS) {Lou Gehrig's disease}. Mao Tse-tung, David Niven, Stephen Hawking, and Dmitri Shostakovich had it. Superoxide dismutase can have mutations. ALS starts in axons. It first affects fast-twitch and fast-fatigue muscle fibers, then fast-twitch and fatigue-resistant muscle fibers, and then slow-twitch muscle fibers.
Nerve damage can cause poor muscle coordination and unsteady posture, movements, eye movements, and speech {ataxia}.
People can have twisting or writhing movements {athetosis}.
Subthalamic-nucleus damage can cause ballistic movements {ballismus}.
People can be slow in making and controlling voluntary ballistic movements {bradykinesia}.
In dementia, sudden stimuli or strong efforts can cause facial contortions and tears {bulbar palsy}, without unhappiness.
People can have movement disorders {dyskinesia}|.
People can have increased movement {hyperkinesis}|.
People can have involuntary tremors in resting arms and legs, stiffness in movements, akinesia, and bradykinesia {Parkinsonism} {Parkinson's disease} {shaking palsy} {idiopathic paralysis agitans} {hypokinesia}. Posture, mood, and activity changes can have no pain, little sensation loss, and little consciousness loss. Eye movements can be small or slow. Untreated Parkinsonism leads to crouching and immobility.
cause
Metal poisoning, oxygen deficiency, strokes, infections, and drug overdoses can cause Parkinsonism. Substantia-nigra dopamine neurons degenerate. Dopaminergic-neuron degeneration causes slow movements. Parkinsonism involves alpha-synuclein, which makes amyloid plaques {Lewy body} in brain cells.
Basal-ganglia damage disrupts unconscious motor plans, and perceptions cannot guide actions. Because perceptions and motor actions are not conscious, consciousness cannot use other behaviors to compensate.
treatment
Dopamine and L-DOPA treat Parkinson's disease.
incidence
One to 1.5 million people in USA have Parkinson's disease.
factors: age
Parkinsonism is a late-middle or old-age degenerative disease.
factors: genetics
Parkinsonism is not hereditary.
drugs
Reserpine causes motionless, humped back, splayfooted posture, and coarse, whole body tremor, which resembles Parkinson's disease.
Antibodies can damage myelin and make weak muscles {multiple sclerosis}|. Patients can be unable to recognize objects by touch.
Motor neurons can have damage {muscular dystrophy}|.
Spinal-cord inflammation {myelitis} can cause muscle-function loss.
After posterior-parietal-lobe damage, people cannot connect seeing with reaching or pointing {optic ataxia}.
Brain damage, typically from rubella, Rh factor, jaundice, or head injury, can cause infants to have bad posture and little control over movement {palsy}| {cerebral palsy}.
Sensory nerve tracts can degenerate {spinal ataxia}.
Fifth cranial nerve can feel sharp pain or shock in jaw or cheek {trigeminal neuralgia} {tic douloureux}|. From 6 to 12 years, children can have restlessness and/or twitching, symptoms of tension from repressed needs or conflicts.
Patients with bilateral focal frontal-lobe lesions can use objects within reach though told not to do so {utilization behavior sign}, because they have no inhibition.
Muscles can have oscillations {tremor, muscle} {muscle tremor}|. Normally, damping by cerebellum inhibits agonist and antagonist contractions to eliminate oscillations and smooth movement.
People can not perform low and small movements {cerebellar action tremor}, only larger movements.
Gamma-efferent nerve-system overstimulation makes limbs tremble {intention tremor}.
Anterior-cingulate damage causes inability to speak, move, or be conscious {akinetic mutism}.
People can lose sense qualities and voluntary motion {catalepsy}|. Body stays in one position.
Muscles can become rigid in one position {catatonia}|.
Children can get polio {infantile paralysis}|.
People can have paralyzed limbs before amputation and stay paralyzed after {learned paralysis} [Ramachandran, 2004].
People can be conscious but unable to move or express reports {locked-in syndrome}| [Bauby, 1997] [Celesia, 1997] [Feldman, 1971].
Brain or peripheral-nerve damage can cause motor-function loss {paralysis}|. Hysteria can have paralysis. Paralysis does not affect emotions or consciousness.
People can be unable to move arms and legs {paraplegia}|.
Syphilis, encephalitis, brain damage, or cerebral arteriosclerosis can cause general paralysis and organic psychosis {paresis}.
Virus {poliovirus} can paralyze by destroying motor nerve cells {polio}| {poliomyelitis}.
Paralysis can alternate with muscle spasms {spastic paralysis}.
When deep-sea divers breathing air rise too quickly, nitrogen dissolved in blood expands to form painful bubbles {bends}|.
Deep-sea divers breathing air act drunk {nitrogen narcosis}| {rapture of the deep}. Nitrogen narcosis begins at 30 meters deep and prevents working below 60 meters. Oxygen and helium mixtures {heliox} or oxygen, helium, and nitrogen mixtures {trimix} replace air to prevent bends and allow working. Heliox distorts voices and conducts heat efficiently.
People can be unable to make purposeful skilled movements and to move in response to verbal commands {apraxia, muscle disease}, though they can comprehend words.
types
People can persevere in making distorted movements {ideomotor apraxia}, use previous movements in current movements, and show no difference between left and right limbs or meaningful and meaningless tasks.
People can have impaired motor-element selection and sequencing {ideational apraxia}, caused by problems in brain association areas that input to motor programs.
brain
Disconnecting Wernicke's area from motor centers causes apraxia. Language-hemisphere lesions impair action sequences. Animal brain lesions do not cause apraxia.
comparison
Aphasia and apraxia have no qualitative relation.
People with left-hemisphere supramarginal-gyrus damage can have no paralysis but cannot imitate imagined motions well {ideo-motor apraxia}. They can perform skills correctly if skills do not require imagination. They cannot judge if another's actions are intentional.
Dyskinesia {chorea}| can have too much dopamine in brain movement-control centers and cause quick muscle contractions. People can twist or writhe in athetosis. Huntington's chorea is hereditary. Syndenham's chorea is from rheumatic fever. Drugs, hormonal disorders, and blood vessel problems can cause chorea.
Dominantly inherited disorders {Huntington's chorea} {Huntington chorea} {Huntington's disease} can result from expanded glutamine repeats in HD proteins.
symptoms
At first, patients fidget, have spontaneous movements, and appear clumsy. Later, jerking and writhing affect face, tongue, and arms.
biology
A chromosome-4-tip autosomal dominant gene can cause Huntington's chorea. Cytosine-adenine-guanine nucleotides {CAG repeat, Huntington's} repeat in middle too many times, making too many glutamines. Proteins clump together {polyglutamine disease, Huntington's} to make protofibrils and later plaques. Cerebrum shrinks, ventricles enlarge, and midbrain caudate nucleus and putamen have damage. Cytosine-anything-guanine regions {CxG region, Huntington's} make DNA hairpins, so copies are longer.
After streptococcus infection, children 5 to 15 years old can have twisting chorea {St. Vitus' dance}| {Syndenham chorea}.
Corpus-callosum and prefrontal-region damage causes hand to move, though people do not will movement {alien hand syndrome}|. People say that their hand is doing things itself.
After corpus-callosum damage, hands undo each other's work {anarchic hand syndrome}. Hands seem to act in opposition.
4-Medicine-Disease-Kinds-Organ-Nerve
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Date Modified: 2022.0225