In the article we will talk about a rather serious problem of a psychological, physiological nature. It's about sensory disturbance. We will consider the varieties of such a pathology, its causes and manifestations, we will characterize the selected types.
What does it feel like?
Sensation is one of the important functions of the mental activity of a living being. It allows us to evaluate the specific properties of both the surrounding world and our own. The physiological basis here will be the sense organs - sight, smell, touch, hearing, taste.
They "tell" whether the object in front of us is warm or cold, large or small, sounding or silent.
Classification of sensations
Sensation receptors are also divided by specialists into several categories:
- Interoceptive. Representation of our internal state, processes inside the body.
- Proprioceptive. Information about the position of the body in space, the actions performed.
- Exteroceptive. What givesidea of the world around - the five senses known to everyone.
Varieties of violations
To define the type of sensory disturbance, experts use the following terms:
- Anesthesia. The patient has no sensation at all.
- Hypesthesia. The weakening of this type of activity is characteristic. How is the violation of sensations expressed here? For example, a bright light will be perceived as sickly dull, a sharp aroma - a barely perceptible smell, a loud sound - weak.
- Hyperesthesia. On the contrary, it is an intensification of sensations. Violations opposite to those described above are observed. Subdued light will seem bright to the patient (in a dimly lit room, he can only wear sunglasses), a person will complain about the rigidity of soft bed linen, get irritated at the slightest touch, and so on.
- Paresthesia. Here already complaints are purely about unpleasant sensations, moreover, without the presence of real irritants in reality. For example, the patient will complain of tingling, burning, feeling that an electric current is passing through his body. Or another example. Sitting in a warm room, a person begins to notice imaginary signs of frostbite - numbness of the fingertips, trembling, and so on. It must be said that the clinical picture of this violation of sensation is unstable, changeable, varied in duration and intensity of manifestations.
- Senestopathy. In this case, the patient notes imaginary discomfort already from his ownbody, internal organs. However, any real, explaining this somatic pathology, the disease has not been established. It is difficult for a person to describe in detail, specifically, everything that he (supposedly) experiences. Basically, patients use comparisons in this type of disturbance of sensation. For example, the patient says that his intestines are moving, some organ is growing in size, he feels like the wind is passing through his ears, etc.
- Phantom syndrome. This violation of sensations (development of sensations is observed after the operation) is typical for patients who have lost some kind of limb or organ. It seems to a person that he feels the lost part, even feels how it hurts.
Causes of disorders
The causes of sensory disturbance are as follows:
- The defeat of the central, peripheral areas of the sensory organs-analyzers, as well as the CNS routes leading to them.
- The mechanism of self-hypnosis is the nature of psychogenic, phantom pains.
- Injury to the conductive nerve trunks can lead to impaired sensation of pain.
- Depressive syndrome as a result of inconclusive examinations that do not bring any sense of treatment.
- Sensitivity threshold (too high or too low) causes hypertension or hypoesthesia.
- Mental disorders - for the development of hysterical anesthesia.
Let's now specifically analyze the symptoms, the characteristics of each type of sensation pathology.
Hyperesthesia
Go to this form. The development of sensations (violationsensations - hyperesthesia) here of this type:
- General decrease in the threshold of sensitivity. Patients emotionally perceive this negatively, with irritation.
- The result of the above is a sharp increase in the patient's susceptibility to even the weakest stimuli.
- The patient begins to complain about things he didn't notice before - the sound of rain outside the window, passing cars, dim light from a distant room.
Hyperesthesia is one of the manifestations of asthenic syndrome. It accompanies many mental, somatic diseases. How the main symptom characterizes neurasthenia.
Hypesthesia
The processes of disturbing sensation here are:
- The patient's sensitivity threshold decreases.
- This fact is accompanied by a feeling of the surroundings as dull, faded.
- The patient complains that he ceases to distinguish colors, the taste of food. Sounds seem distant, muffled.
Hypesthesia is characteristic of depressive states. It will reflect the general pessimism of the patient.
Hysterical anesthesia
By its nature, it will be a functional disorder that makes itself felt after a mental trauma. Most characteristic of patients with demonstrative character traits.
Symptoms of disturbed sensation here are:
- The patient is absolutely sure that he has completely ceased to feel the world around him.
- Possible loss of hearing or vision.
- There is a loss of tactile, pain sensitivity.
- Typical areas of cutaneous innervation will not always correspond to areas of skin anesthesia.
- The presence of unconditioned reflexes. A striking example is the "eye-tracking" reflex. Vision is preserved here, but the gaze is fixed on some object and does not move with the turn of the patient's head.
- Reaction to cold may persist in the absence of pain sensitivity as such.
- The occurrence of pathologically perverse, atypical sensations.
Anesthesia can last quite a long time in hysterical neuroses.
Paresthesia
A fairly common neurological syndrome. It is observed with lesions of the peripheral nerve trunks. For example, with alcoholic polyneuropathy. How is paresthesia expressed for the patient? He will complain of numbness, tingling, and goosebumps.
But often paresthesias can be related to something else. This is a transient violation of the blood supply to a separate organ. To illustrate, we give simple examples. The man slept in an uncomfortable position for a long time. Or he devoted several hours to strenuous walking, for example, playing sports. Paresthesia has also been reported in patients with a history of Raynaud's disease.
Cenestopathy
Is already a symptom of a mental disorder. The sensations of each patient are subjective, unusual and varied.
Their indefinite, incomparable nature makes it difficult for patients to somehow describe their symptoms - signssenestopathies. So far, experts have settled on the conclusion that each person's senestopathic sensations will be unique, unique in their manifestation, only remotely similar to others.
Impaired sensation and perception
These pathologies are often closely related, if not inseparable. Perception gives the organism, in contrast to sensation, already a complete picture of the subject. But the physiological basis is the same - the sense organs. The result of perception is a complete figurative, sensual representation of something.
Disorders associated with perception, like sensory disturbances, are divided into several categories in psychology:
- agnosia;
- illusions;
- hallucinations;
- psychosensory disorders.
A brief look at the features of each type of pathology.
Agnosia
This includes cases of non-recognition of the object, the inability of the patient to mention its name, purpose.
Related to nervous diseases. There are visual, auditory, etc. agnosia. Within the framework of psychiatry, anosognosias are studied - not recognizing one's own disease. Characteristic in tumor processes, tuberculosis, hysterical disorders, alcoholism, etc.
Illusions
For this perceptual disorder, it is characteristic that the patient sees a real-life object as something else, something that it is not by its nature. For example, a piece of glass looks like a coin, a bathrobe looks like a silhouette of a person, and so on.
Internally divided into threetype:
- Physical illusions. They are caused by the external environment in which the misperceived object is located.
- Physiological illusions. Associated with the work of the senses of the patient himself.
- Psychic illusions. Another name is affective. Here the perception is influenced by the emotional state in which the person is located - fear, despair, euphoria.
Illusions as a disturbance of perception do not always indicate the presence of a mental illness.
Another classification divides them according to perceiving receptors - auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory.
Hallucinations
Violation of perception, in which a person sees an object that does not exist in reality. At the same time, he cannot critically comprehend the very fact of a hallucination.
There are many classifications of this violation. Let's take a look at a few.
By difficulty:
- elementary;
- simple;
- difficult.
By receptors:
- Visual. These are both single and multiple images.
- Auditory. Noises, sounds or voices. The latter can make whole speeches, explain something to the patient, tell, give orders. Voices are neutral, offensive to the patient, indifferent, addressing their message to him personally. The most dangerous ones here are imperative, forcing you to do something.
- Tactile.
- Flavourful.
- Olfactory.
Other species:
- Visceral - it seems thatforeign beings live in the body.
- Functional - arise under the influence of an external stimulus.
- Dominant - will reflect the trauma that led to the development of mental illness.
- Hypnagogic/hypnopompic - transition from wakefulness to sleep/and vice versa.
Psychosensory Disorders
Here, some object, a phenomenon that really exists, will be perceived by a person correctly, but in a certain distorted form.
Within the group - their own varieties:
- Derealization. Distorted perception of the environment. It seems to the patient that the world has become somehow different, people walk wrong, buildings stand incorrectly, and so on. Someone claims that the objects have increased for some reason, someone - that they have decreased. Depression sufferers testify that the world has lost color, has become boring.
- Depersonalization. With the somatopsychic form, the patient is worried that the size of his body and weight have changed. For example, his head became huge, he lost a lot of weight for no reason (while actually maintaining body weight). The autopsychic form is expressed differently. A person talks about global restructuring of his personality, attitude to the world, loved ones.
We have sorted out what violations of sensations can be. You know the causes, symptoms and characteristic manifestations. It is important to distinguish them from pathologies associated with perception, which we also touched upon in the article. The latter are more ambitious, since they do not affect a separate sensation, but a holistic perception of an object orphenomena.
