Category: Terminology
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What Is Balance?
Balance is the ability to maintain one’s center of mass without falling over. Whether standing, walking, running, riding a bicycle, on a gymnast’s balance beam, etc., this is done using one’s: Vestibulo-ocular reflex a.k.a. VOR (i.e., inner ears and vision) Proprioception (i.e., the sense of one’s own physical orientation) Physical coordination All of these involve…
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Terminology: Causes, Symptoms
The modifiers acquired, sporadic, episodic, and idiopathic—how are they all related? Understanding the terms almost doesn’t help, because some people use the terms mutually inconsistently. In this article, I use ataxia in its most general sense, as a cerebellar disease. Causes First, let’s consider the causes of ataxia. There are two categories: hereditary (i.e., genetic)…
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SCA Terminology
I know exactly what kind of hereditary ataxia that I have, but some questions have been nagging me recently: I have spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA), and I know this is causing my cerebellum to degenerate. But why is it called spinocerebellar ataxia? Is my spine involved in the disease? Does my spine or rather the neurons…