Terms 2 Flashcards
Analgesia
A deadening or absence of the sense of pain without loss of consciousness.
Atrophy
a wasting or decrease in size or physiologic activity of a part of the body because of disease or other influences. A skeletal muscle may undergo atrophy as a result of lack of physical exercise or neurologic or musculoskeletal disease. Cells of the brain and central nervous system may atrophy in old age because of restricted blood flow to those areas
Chorea
a condition characterized by involuntary purposeless, rapid motions, as flexing and extending of the fingers, raising and lowering of the shoulders, or grimacing. The movements often appear to be well coordinated. In some forms the person is also irritable, emotionally unstable, physically weak, restless, and fretful.
- Huntington’s disease
Cogwheel rigidity
an abnormal rigor in muscle tissue characterized by jerky movements when the muscle is passively stretched. The condition is often found in cases of Parkinson’s disease.
Fasciculation
a localized uncoordinated, uncontrollable twitching of a single muscle group innervated by a single motor nerve fiber or filament that may be palpated and seen under the skin. In anesthesia it refers to muscle twitches that occur with administration of the depolarizing muscle relaxant succinylcholine. It also may be symptomatic of a number of disorders, including dietary deficiency, cerebral palsy, fever, neuralgia, polio, rheumatic heart disease, sodium deficiency, tic, or uremia.
Hemiparesis
Slight paralysis or weakness affecting one side of the body
Paralysis
the loss of muscle function, sensation, or both. It may be caused by a variety of problems, such as trauma, disease, and poisoning. Paralyses may be classified according to the cause, muscle tone, distribution, or body part affected
Paresthesias
A prickly, tingling sensation
Quadriplegia
paralysis of all four limbs
Spasticity
a form of muscular hypertonicity with increased resistance to stretch. It usually involves the flexors of the arms and the extensors of the legs. The hypertonicity is often associated with weakness, increased deep reflexes, and diminished superficial reflexes. Moderate spasticity is characterized by movements that require great effort and lack of normal coordination. Slight spasticity may be marked by gross movements that are coordinated smoothly but combine selective movement patterns that are incoordinated or impossible.
Tremor
a continuous repetitive twitching of skeletal muscle, usually palpable and visible. The diseases characterized by tremor only, the tremor syndromes, may be caused by degenerative disease of the nervous system, e.g. hypomyelinogenesis, and by many toxins, especially plant ones. Tremor is also a sign in many other diseases of the nervous system.
Xanthochromia
yellowish discoloration of the skin or spinal fluid. Xanthochromic spinal fluid usually indicates hemorrhage into the central nervous system and is due to the presence of xanthematin, a yellow pigment derived from hematin.
Somatoform
: denoting physical symptoms that cannot be attributed to organic disease and appear to be psychogenic.
Ataxia
Loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement
Bradykinesia
abnormal slowness of movement
Clonus
: A form of movement marked by contractions and relaxations of a muscle, occurring in rapid succession, after forcible extension or flexion of a part
Dystonia
A movement disorder characterized by sustained muscle contractions that result in writhing or twisting movements and unsual body postures
Flaccid
Lacking firmness, resilience, or muscle tone
Hemiplegia
Paralysis affecting only one side of the body.
Paraplegia
Complete paralysis of the lower half of the body including both legs, usually caused by damage to the spinal cord.
Postictal
following a seizure.
Seizure
A paroxysmal episode, caused by abnormal electrical conduction in the brain, resulting in the abrupt onset of transient neurologic symptoms such as involuntary muscle movements, sensory disturbances and altered consciousness.
Syncope
a faint; temporary loss of consciousness due to generalized cerebral ischemia.
Pleocytosis
presence of a greater than normal number of cells in the cerebrospinal fluid.
Psychosomatic
Referring to physical symptoms that are caused or significantly influenced by emotional factors.
Affect
The subjective and immediate experience of emotion attached to ideas or mental representations of objects. Has outward manifestations that can be blunted, flattened, broad, appropriate or inappropriate. This is external whereas mood is internal and external
Broca’s aphasia
A condition characterized by either partial or total loss of the ability to express oneself, either through speech or writing. Hearing comprehension is not affected. This condition may result from a stroke, head injury, brain tumor, or infection
delirium
A temporary state of mental confusion resulting from high fever, intoxication, shock, or other causes, and characterized by anxiety, disorientation, memory impairment, hallucinations, trembling, and incoherent speech.
delusion
an idiosyncratic false belief that is firmly maintained in spite of incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.
dementia
Deterioration of intellectual faculties, such as memory, concentration, and judgment, resulting from an organic disease or a disorder of the brain, and often accompanied by emotional disturbance and personality changes
echolalia
Psychopathological repeating of words or phrases of one person by another; tends to be repetitive and persistent. Seen in schizophrenia esp. catatonic
flight of ideas
Rapid succession of fragmentary thoughts or speech I which content changes abruptly and speech may be incoherent. Seen in mania
hallucination
: A sensory experience of something that does not exist outside the mind. A person can experience a hallucination in any of the five senses. Auditory hallucinations are a common symptom of schizophrenia.
lethargy
sluggishness or fatigue; a feeling of listlessness.
neologism
: A new word or phrase of the patient’s own making often seen in schizophrenia (e.g., headshoe to mean hat), or an existing word used in a new sense; in psychiatry, such usages may have meaning only to the patient or be indicative of the underlying condition.
perseveration
the involuntary and pathologic persistence of the same verbal response or motor activity regardless of the stimulus or its duration. The condition occurs primarily in patients with brain damage or organic mental disorders, although it may also appear in schizophrenia as an association disturbance. It is caused by a neurologic deficit.
obtundation
a greatly reduced level of consciousness. The patient is not yet comatose but is close, arousing only with very strong stimulus
orientation
awareness of one’s environment with reference to time, place, and people.
Wernicke’s aphasia
a form of aphasia affecting comprehension of written and spoken words, possibly caused by a lesion in Wernicke’s center. The patient may articulate normally, but speech is incoherent, with malformed or substitute words and grammatical errors
Annular
ring shaped
Beau’s lines
transverse depressions that appear as white lines across the fingernails as a sign of an acute severe illness such as malnutrition, systemic disease, thyroid dysfunction, trauma, or coronary occlusion.
