Uncommon Brain Disorders
The mind is full of intricacies, canals of thought that lead to brilliance, introspection, self-discovery, or discovery of something else altogether. Our minds can lock away the trauma in our lives or put a spotlight on the greatest moments, make us rethink our entire lives based on a singular, amazing instant.
The brain is a physically complex instrument. Although it’s capable of all those things, it is ultimately vulnerable to a number of diseases. Gamma knife treatment has been a very effective means of treating all sorts of diseases, from metastatic brain tumors to acoustic neuroma. Some trigeminal neuralgia treatments utilize the gamma knife procedure.
Here are some not-so-common disorders that can affect the brain and mind.
Trigeminal Neuralgia
Imagine pain. Sharp stabs or electrical shocks. Imagine that pain affecting in your face. Now imagine that you cannot control that pain or pinpoint the main cause of that pain. That’s a pretty accurate depiction of trigeminal neuralgia.
Trigeminal neuralgia is a nerve disorder affecting the trigeminal nerve. This nerve carries pain, feeling, and sensation from the brain to the skin of the face. The disorder can affect part or all of the face, including the surface of the eye.
There is no known specific cause as of yet, though multiple sclerosis and pressure on the trigeminal nerve (as caused by a swollen blood vessel or a tumor) can lead to trigeminal neuralgia. Because pinpointing a cause remains so difficult, figuring out a cure for treatment is a bit of a challenge. Your physician may prescribe certain medications to reduce pain and the rate of attack. If the disorder is caused by a tumor, removing it usually relieves pressure to cure the pain. Stereotactic radiosurgery may also prove an effective treatment.
Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness)
The human face is important to identification. Recognizing a person’s face seems like such a natural thing. You don’t even think about it. It just happens. Prosopagnosia is a disorder wherein the ability to recognize faces is impaired.
Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is normally caused by acute brain damage, but a congenital form of the disorder has been proposed. This form of the disorder can be inherited by about 2.5% of the population.
We all have trouble recognizing faces and names every so often, but prosopagnosia is so much more severe than that. Prosopagnosics have difficulty recognizing people they’ve encountered many times before. In extreme cases, they fail to even recognize people they spend significant amounts of time with, like their spouses, family or children. A common complaint of prosopagnosics is an inability to follow TV shows or movies because they can’t keep track of character identities.
Some prosopagnosics have difficulty making sense of faces, while others report that faces don’t look distinct in any way. Currently, there is no effective therapy or treatment for those affected. Many suffering from prosopagnosia have to learn to rely on non-facial information, like hair, clothing, voice, or gait. However, as the face is an important identifying feature in memory, prosopagnosics can find it difficult to keep track of information about people or socialize normally.
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