Encephalitis is inflammation of the brain. The severity can be variable with symptoms including reduction or alteration in consciousness, headache, fever, confusion, a stiff neck, and vomiting. Complications may include seizures, hallucinations, trouble speaking, memory problems, and problems with hearing.
Parkinsonism is a clinical syndrome characterized by tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity, and postural instability. Both hypokinetic as well as hyperkinetic features are displayed by Parkinsonism.These are the four motor symptoms found in Parkinson's disease (PD) – after which it is named – dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD), and many other conditions. This set of symptoms occurs in a wide range of conditions and may have many causes, including neurodegenerative conditions, drugs, toxins, metabolic diseases, and neurological conditions other than PD.
Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is a type of dementia characterized by changes in sleep, behavior, cognition, movement, and regulation of automatic bodily functions. Memory loss is not always an early symptom. The disease worsens over time and is usually diagnosed when cognitive impairment interferes with normal daily functioning. Together with Parkinson's disease dementia, DLB is one of the two Lewy body dementias. It is a common form of dementia, but the prevalence is not known accurately and many diagnoses are missed. The disease was first described by Kenji Kosaka in 1976.
Encephalitis lethargica is an atypical form of encephalitis. Also known as "sleeping sickness" or "sleepy sickness", it was first described in 1917 by neurologist Constantin von Economo and pathologist Jean-René Cruchet. The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless. Between 1915 and 1926, an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica spread around the world. The exact number of people infected is unknown, but it is estimated that more than one million people contracted the disease during the epidemic, which directly caused more than 500,000 deaths. Most of those who survived never recovered their pre-morbid vigour.
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), frontotemporal degeneration disease, or frontotemporal neurocognitive disorder encompasses several types of dementia involving the progressive degeneration of the brain's frontal and temporal lobes. FTDs broadly present as behavioral or language disorders with gradual onsets.
The health of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, has long been a subject of popular controversy. Both his physical and mental health have come under scrutiny.
Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a late-onset neurodegenerative disease involving the gradual deterioration and death of specific volumes of the brain. The condition leads to symptoms including loss of balance, slowing of movement, difficulty moving the eyes, and cognitive impairment. PSP may be mistaken for other types of neurodegeneration such as Parkinson's disease, frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The cause of the condition is uncertain, but involves the accumulation of tau protein within the brain. Medications such as levodopa and amantadine may be useful in some cases.
Idebenone is a drug that was initially developed by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other cognitive defects. This has been met with limited success. The Swiss company Santhera Pharmaceuticals has started to investigate it for the treatment of neuromuscular diseases. In 2010, early clinical trials for the treatment of Friedreich's ataxia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy have been completed. As of December 2013 the drug is not approved for these indications in North America or Europe. It is approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for use in Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) and was designated an orphan drug in 2007.
Viral encephalitis is inflammation of the brain parenchyma, called encephalitis, by a virus. The different forms of viral encephalitis are called viral encephalitides. It is the most common type of encephalitis and often occurs with viral meningitis. Encephalitic viruses first cause infection and replicate outside of the central nervous system (CNS), most reaching the CNS through the circulatory system and a minority from nerve endings toward the CNS. Once in the brain, the virus and the host's inflammatory response disrupt neural function, leading to illness and complications, many of which frequently are neurological in nature, such as impaired motor skills and altered behavior.
Memory disorders are the result of damage to neuroanatomical structures that hinders the storage, retention and recollection of memories. Memory disorders can be progressive, including Alzheimer's disease, or they can be immediate including disorders resulting from head injury.
Tauopathies are neurodegenerative diseases involving the aggregation of abnormal tau protein. Tangles are formed by hyperphosphorylation of the microtubule protein known as tau, causing the protein to dissociate from microtubules and form insoluble aggregate. Various neuropathologic phenotypes are identified based on the specific engagement of anatomical regions, cell types, and the presence of unique isoforms of tau within pathological deposits. The designation 'primary tauopathy' is assigned to disorders where the predominant feature is the deposition of tau protein. Alternatively, diseases exhibiting tau pathologies attributed to different and varied underlying causes are termed 'secondary tauopathies. Some neuropathologic phenotypes involving tau protein is Alzheimer's disease, Pick disease, Progressive supranuclear palsy and corticobasal degeneration.
A neurodegenerative disease is caused by the progressive loss of structure or function of neurons, in the process known as neurodegeneration. Such neuronal damage may ultimately involve cell death. Neurodegenerative diseases include amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, multiple system atrophy, tauopathies, and prion diseases. Neurodegeneration can be found in the brain at many different levels of neuronal circuitry, ranging from molecular to systemic. Because there is no known way to reverse the progressive degeneration of neurons, these diseases are considered to be incurable; however research has shown that the two major contributing factors to neurodegeneration are oxidative stress and inflammation. Biomedical research has revealed many similarities between these diseases at the subcellular level, including atypical protein assemblies and induced cell death. These similarities suggest that therapeutic advances against one neurodegenerative disease might ameliorate other diseases as well.
Klazomania refers to compulsive shouting; it has features resembling the complex tics such as echolalia, palilalia and coprolalia seen in tic disorders, but has been seen in people with encephalitis lethargica, alcohol use disorder, and carbon monoxide poisoning. It was first reported by L. Benedek in 1925 in a patient with postencephalitic parkinsonism. Little is known about the condition, and few cases have been reported.
An aging-associated disease is a disease that is most often seen with increasing frequency with increasing senescence. They are essentially complications of senescence, distinguished from the aging process itself because all adult animals age but not all adult animals experience all age-associated diseases. The term does not refer to age-specific diseases, such as the childhood diseases chicken pox and measles, only diseases of the elderly. They are also not accelerated aging diseases, all of which are genetic disorders.
Constantin Freiherr von Economo was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist of Romanian origin. He is mostly known for his discovery of encephalitis lethargica and his atlas of cytoarchitectonics of the cerebral cortex.
Central nervous system diseases or central nervous system disorders are a group of neurological disorders that affect the structure or function of the brain or spinal cord, which collectively form the central nervous system (CNS). These disorders may be caused by such things as infection, injury, blood clots, age related degeneration, cancer, autoimmune disfunction, and birth defects. The symptoms vary widely, as do the treatments.
Bradyphrenia is the slowness of thought common to many disorders of the brain. Disorders characterized by bradyphrenia include Parkinson's disease and forms of schizophrenia consequently causing a delayed response and fatigue. Patients with bradyphrenia may describe or may manifest slowed thought processes, evidenced by increased latency of response and also involve severe memory impairment and poor motor control. The word 'bradyphrenia' originates from the ancient Greek meaning 'slow mind.'
Collapsin response mediator protein family or CRMP family consists of five intracellular phosphoproteins of similar molecular size and high (50–70%) amino acid sequence identity. CRMPs are predominantly expressed in the nervous system during development and play important roles in axon formation from neurites and in growth cone guidance and collapse through their interactions with microtubules. Cleaved forms of CRMPs have also been linked to neuron degeneration after trauma induced injury.
The neuroscience of aging is the study of the changes in the nervous system that occur with ageing. Aging is associated with many changes in the central nervous system, such as mild atrophy of the cortex that is considered non-pathological. Aging is also associated with many neurological and neurodegenerative disease such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, dementia, mild cognitive impairment, Parkinson's disease, and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.
The encephalitis lethargica epidemic lasted from around 1918 to 1930. The cause is still unknown. Though the cause was once attributed to the coinciding Spanish flu epidemic, modern research has disputed this claim. The mortality was as high as 20%
