Neurology- Movement Disorders/Brain Lesions/Strokes/etc. Flashcards
What is athetosis and what commonly causes it?
slow, writhing, snake-like movements, especially in the fingers due to lesions of basal ganglia (e.g. Huntington)
What is chorea and what commonly causes it?
sudden, jerky, purposeless movements due to lesion of basal ganglia (e.g. Huntington)
chorea= dancing
What is an dystonia and what commonly causes it?
sustained, involuntary muscle contractions (exs: Writer’s cramp; blepharospasm (sustained eyelid twitch)
What is an essential tremor and what commonly causes it?
a high-frequency tremor with sustained posture (e.g. outstretched arms), worsened with movement or anxiety
How can essential tremor be tx?
EtOH (probably not healthy)
BBs and primidone
What is hemiballimus and what commonly causes it?
sudden, wild flailing of 1 arm +/- ipsilateral leg caused by a contralateral subthalamic nucleic lesion (e.g. lacunar stroke)
What is an intention tremor and what commonly causes it?
a slow, zigzag motion when pointing/extending toward a target caused by cerebellar dysfunction
What is myoclonus and what commonly causes it?
sudden, brief, uncontrolled muscle contraction common in metabolic abnormlaities such as renal or liver failure
What is a resting tremor and what commonly causes it?
uncontrolled movement of distal appendages that is alleviated by intentional movement
Commonly seen in Parkinson disease
What are the symptoms of Parkinson disease?
TRAPS
Tremor (pill-rolling tremor at rest)
Rigidity
Akinesia
Postural instability
Shuffling gait
Parkinson is a degenerative disorder of the CNS associated with what histologic findings?
Lewy bodies, composed of a-synuclein (intracellular eosinophilic inclusions) (below)
and loss dopaminergic neurons (ie. depigmentation) of substantia migra pars compacts

What causes Huntington disease?
AD trinucleotide repeat disorder on chromosome 4 leads to neuronal death via NMDA-R binding and glutamate toxicity
When does Huntington typically present first?
20-50 yo
How does Huntington present initially?
choreiform movements, depression, aggression, and/or dementia
What lab values are indicative of Huntington disease?
elevated dopamine
decreased GABA and Ach
in brain
What is aphasia?
the inability to speak or understand language caused by brain damage
What is dysarthria?
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor-speech system and is characterized by poor articulation of phonemes.
In other words, it is a condition in which problems effectively occur with the muscles that help produce speech, often making it very difficult to pronounce words. It is unrelated to any problem with understanding cognitive language. Any of the speech subsystems (respiration, phonation, resonance, prosody, and articulation) can be affected, leading to impairments in intelligibility, audibility, naturalness, and efficiency of vocal communication.
Dysarthria that has progressed to a total loss of speech is referred to as ______
anarthria.
What are some major types of aphasia?
- Broca
- Wernicke
- Conduction
- Global
- Transcortical motor
- Transcortical sensory
- Mixed transcortical
need to do all of pg 460
What would a bilateral lesion to the amygdala cause?
Kluver-Bucy syndrome-disinhibited behavior (e.g. hyperphagia, hypersexualityi, hyperorality)
Bilateral lesion to the amygdala is associated with what?
HSV-1
Lesion to the frontal lobe causes what?
Disinhibition and deficits in concentration, orientation, and judgement; pts may have reemergence of primitive reflexes
Lesions of the nondominant parietal-temporal cortex cause what?
hemispatial neglect syndrome (agnosai of the contralateral side of the world)
Lesions of the dominant parietal-temporal cortex cause what?
Gerstmann syndrome:
agraphia (An acquired neurological disorder causing a loss in the ability to communicate through writing, either due to some form of motor dysfunction or an inability to spell)
acalculia (loss of the ability to perform simple arithmetic calculations)
finger agnosia
left-right disorientation











