Chapter 26: Neurological Disorders Flashcards
What are brain tumors?
A mass of cells whose growth is uncontrolled and serves no useful function.
What are malignant tumors?
Cancerous tumor. Lacks distinct border and may metastasize
What are benign tumors?
Non-cancerous tumor
Metastasize
The process by which cells break off of a tumor, travel through the bloodstream, and grow elsewhere in the body.
What are glial tumors?
Tumors that arise from glial cells.
What is a glioblastoma?
Come from poorly differentiated glial cells (they don’t look like normal cells). The most aggressive types of tumors.
Astrocytomas?
From astrocyte cells (support neurons): Some grow slowly, others grow quickly.
Oligodendrocytoma?
Tumor common in children
Medulloblastoma?
A tumor that begins in the cerebellum and is the most cancerous brain tumor in children.
Meningioma?
A tumor made up of meninges.
What is a seizure?
A period of sudden, excessive activity of cerebral neurons.
What is multiple sclerosis?
An autoimmune demyelinating disease. It usually affects people in their late 20s to 30s.
Dementia
A term that refers to different conditions characterized by cognitive and functional decline.
What is frontotemporal dementia?
A condition involving behavior/personality and language deficits that is due to frontal involvement. Symptoms
include having diminished spontaneous conversation. Short-term memory is also impaired due to disorganization in encoding and retrieval.
What are the neurological markers of Alzheimer’s disease?
-Enlarged ventricles due to brain atrophy
-neurofibrillary tangles
-Acetylcholine levels are diminished.
What is observed in the brain of someone who has vascular dementia?
Damage in brain blood vessels
What is progressive fluent aphasia?
Loss of object knowledge, naming difficulty (anomia), and loss of facial recognition ability.
What is a hemorrhagic stroke?
Strokes caused by the rupture of a blood vessel with bleeding in the surrounding tissue.
What is an obstructive stroke?
occlusion (obstruction)of blood vessels by a thrombus or embolus.
What are generalized seizures?
A seizure that is characterized by EEG abnormalities over the entire brain. This disorder is often genetic. There is a loss of consciousness involved.
