"Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind."
-Jeffrey Eugenides
Neuroscience/psych blog by a neuroscientist in training. I mostly review articles and try to synthesize what I deem important/interesting. Enjoy!
-Jeffrey Eugenides
Neuroscience/psych blog by a neuroscientist in training. I mostly review articles and try to synthesize what I deem important/interesting. Enjoy!
List: Interesting Psychiatric Terms
- Abulia or aboulia: In neurology, refers to a lack of will or initiative. Thus, the patient is unable to act or make decisions independently
- Akataphasia (Kraepelin 1896): disorder of thought expression in speech and results due to dissolution of logical order of trains of thought.
- Alogia: refers to poverty of speech generally seen in chronic psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and sometimes in in advanced dementia.
- Anhedonia refers to a state of mind in which the subject finds no pleasure in anything. This is characteristic in severe depressive states and schizoid personality disorder.
- Anwesenheit : refers to the feeling of presence of something or some person. It can be seen in normal grief reaction, schizophrenia and some emotionally arousing situations.
- Cataplexy: an attack of muscular flaccidity especially in response to extreme emotional stimuli. It has to be differentiated from syncope where consciousness is lost and heart rate goes slow.
- Confabulation: the confusion of imagination with memory, and/or the confusion of true memories with false memories.
- Cotard’s syndrome: nihilistic delusional syndrome in which, for example, the patient believes that he denies his own existence or existence of his body parts and belongings etc. and has a firm conviction about that. This can be seen usually in schizophrenia and severe depressive states especially in context of a bipolar disorder.
- Extracampine hallucinations: hallucinations beyond the possible sensory field, e.g., ‘seeing’ somebody standing behind you is a visual extracampine hallucination experience.
- In écho de la pensée, meaning “thought echo” in French, thoughts seem to be spoken aloud just after being produced. The patient hears the ‘echo’ of his thoughts in the form of a voice after he has made the thought.
- Dementia pugilistica, also called “chronic traumatic encephalopathy”, “pugilistic Parkinson’s syndrome”, “boxer’s syndrome”, and “punch-drunk syndrome”, is a neurological disorder which affects career boxers and others who receive multiple dazing blows to the head. The condition develops over a period of years, with the average time of onset being about 16 years after the start of a career in boxing.
- Folie a deux is a delusional disorder shared by two or more people who are closely related emotionally. One has real psychosis while the symptoms of psychosis are induced in the other or others due to close attachment to the one with psychosis. Separation usually results in symptomatic improvement in the one who is not psychotic.
- In Fregoli syndrome, the person has a delusional belief that different people are in fact a single person who changes appearance or is in disguise. The delusional person often believes that he or she is being persecuted by the person he or she believes to be in disguise.
- Gegenhalten is a catatonic phenomenon in which the subject opposes all passive movements with the same degree of force as applied by the examiner. It is slightly different from negativism, in which the subject does exactly the opposite to what is asked in addition to showing resistance.
- Idée fixe is an alternate term for an overvalued idea. In this condition, a belief that might seem reasonable both to the patient and to other people comes to dominate completely the patient’s thinking and life.
- In Kluver-Bucy syndrome, a patient will display placidity, hyperorality, hypersexuality, and hyperphagia. This condition results from bilateral destruction of the amygdaloid bodies of the limbic system.
- In logoclonia, the patient often repeats the last syllable of a word. Symptom of Parkinson’s Disease.
- Moria is the condition characterized by euphoric behavior, such as frivolity and the inability to act seriously. In addition there is a lack of foresight and a general indifference.
- Pallilalia is characterized by the repetition of a word or phrase i.e. the subject continues to repeat a word or phrase after once having said. It is a persistent phenomenon.
- Palinacousis refers to a phenomenon in which the subject continues to listen to a word, a syllable or any sound, even after the withdrawal of stimulus.
- Reduplicative paramnesia is a delusional misidentification syndrome in which the patient’s surroundings are believed to exist in more than one physical location.
- The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological is a psychological response sometimes seen in a hostage, in which the hostage exhibits loyalty to the hostage-taker, in spite of the danger (or at least risk) in which the hostage has been placed. Stockholm syndrome is also sometimes discussed in reference to other situations with similar tensions.
- Torpor in psychopathology is usually taken to mean profound inactivity not caused by reduction in consciousness.
- In vorbeigehen or vorbeireden, a patient will answer a question in such a way that one can tell the patient understood the question, although the answer itself may be very obviously wrong. For example “how many legs does a dog have?” - “six”. This condition occurs in Ganser syndrome and has been observed in prisoners awaiting trial. Vorbeigehen (giving approximate answers) was the original term used by Ganser but Vorbeireden (talking past the point) is the term generally in use (Goldin 1955). This behaviour is also seen in people trying to feign psychiatric disorders (hence association with prisoners)
- Wahneinfall is alternate term for autochthonous delusions. This is one of the types of primary delusions in which a firm belief comes into the patient’s mind ‘out of the blue’ or as an intuition, hence called delusional intutition. Other types of primary delusions include delusional mood (or atmosphere), delusional (apophanous perception) and delusional memories.
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Psychopathology is a term which refers to either the study of mental illness or mental distress or to the manifestation of behaviours and experiences which may be indicative of mental illness or psychological impairment.
Neuroscience/psych blog by a neuroscientist in training. I mostly review articles and try to synthesize what I deem important/interesting. Enjoy!
