Weird Psychological Disorders by Paige Sumowski

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Weird Psychological/Neurological Disorders
These are pretty crazy. 

Apotemnophilia
This is when someone has an obsessive desire to cut off a healthy limb or to become paralyzed from the waist down. Patients generally preferred amputating the leg, rather than the arm, and most patients wanted to cut off a limb from the left side of their body. The main explanation at the moment is that apotemnophilia is driven by sexual compulsion, however, some studies have observed individuals with apotemnophilia who needed to cut off their leg "to feel complete." 



Alien Hand Syndrome
This syndrome was investigated after a 77-year-old woman complained that her hand was moving without her mind's control. She was watching TV, and her hand starting stroking her face and hair as if it wasn't her own. This generally caused by brain tumors, aneurysms, degenerative diseases of the brain, and, as in the woman's case, a stroke.
These lesions will be in the corpus callosum (this connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain), the posterior parietal cortex (controls planned movements and your awareness of where your body is in space), the motor cortex (controls movement), and anterior cingulate cortex (controls decision-making).

These people are being attacked by their own hands. 


Hemispatial Neglect
This one is crazy. Hemispatial neglect occurs in the parietal lobe, which, as I mentioned earlier, controls your awareness of where you are in space. (This is what allows you to close your eyes and touch your nose with your pointer finger.) People with hemispatial neglect don't know that half of their body is there. Everything you touch, taste, feel, smell, see, believe, perceive-- it all happens in your brain. So if their brains don't believe they have another half of their body, they won't see it, they won't feel it. The best part: they don't know they have hemispatial neglect. Imagine if someone told you you have a third arm. You'd think they're crazy!
As seen above, those with hemispatial neglect only drew or marked up half the picture, because that's all they knew existed. 

Anton's Syndrome
People with Anton' Syndrome are blind due to damage in their occipital lobe, the part of the brain responsible for sight. But they do not know they're blind. Although the damaged occipital lobe cannot use the information coming from the eyes, it processes its own information, and that person believes they are seeing what their occipital lobe made up. So how do researchers and physicians know they're blind? They described objects that were not there, fell over furniture, and walked into walls.
Here is brain imaging showing damage to the occipital lobe. 


Which disorder did you find most interesting? Have you guys heard of any other disorders? Please comment below! 


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Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4094630/   (Apotemnophilia)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4059570/ (Alien Hand Syndrome)
https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/75/1/13 (Hemispatial Neglect)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2827161/ (Anton's Syndrome)




Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 29, 2020 at 4:57 PM

    Bro what the heck. Anton's Syndrome really got me. It makes me think about how we all have a blind spot and our mind just improvises and makes up what we see there to fill it in and that's why if you cover one eye and move toward one of those wacky pictures with, for example, a yellow dot on a red background at one point the dot will disappear because it's in your blind spot and your brain sees a lot of red so it just fills it in with red.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMay 29, 2020 at 6:08 PM

    These are insane!

    ReplyDelete
  3. DanielleJune 1, 2020 at 10:45 AM

    The are nuts and the first one about needing to cut of a limb to feel complete is crazy! Did your psychoanalytical lens prompt this? : )

    ReplyDelete

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