Discussion:
Solutions dealing with various disease case studies.
These solutions discuss case studies dealing with Polio, senile dementia, a mass found in the brain, and a man found to lack a corpus callosum.
On performing an autopsy on a 60-year-old man, a medical student found that the man had no corpus callosum. Apparently, the man had functioned well neurologically; his medical history reported no neural dysfunctions. Explain why this finding does or does not surprise you.
Lucy is suffering from right-sided paralysis and sensory loss. She cannot speak at all. Cerebral angiography and a CAT scan have shown no cerebral vascular defects, but the CAT scan did reveal a left-sided mass wedged between the diencephalons and the basal nuclei. Using your knowledge of anatomy, explain Lucy's symptoms in terms of the specific lesion site.
Mrs. April Masal, a 68-year-old woman, is brought to her doctor by her daughter, who fears that her memory loss, mental dullness, and word-finding problems mean that she has progressive and irreversible senile dementia. Medical history elicits the facts that she lost her husband 6 months previously, has been extremely depressed, and is taking sleeping pills and not eating properly. What would the doctor hypothesize about the probability of senile dementia in this case?
Pam contracted polio before she had an opportunity to obtain the vaccine and found that the disease affected the neural innervation of her legs. She experienced significant muscle atrophy. Why did this happen?