Just finished putting together my LAST lecture for the class. Now all I have to do is write a test for Friday and grade them and the papers that will get turned in then, too.

Yay!!

Here's Today's Neuro Bit:

Schizophrenia means "divided mind". It was first reported in 1896 by Emil Kraepelin, who called it "dementia praecox", and is only marginally better understood today. About 0.1% of the population (1 person in 1000) is schizophrenic. The phrase "Thorazine shuffle" was coined by mental health staff who observed the characteristic rigidity that Thorazine induced in patients who took the drug for many years.

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You asked for it, you got it.

Parkinson's Disease strikes the neurons of the Nigrostriatal pathway, that is, the dopamine-releasing neurons whose cell bodies reside in the Substantia Nigra and synapse in the striatum (also known as the caudate/putamen). You generally have to lose about 90% of those neurons to get any symptoms. Really. The CNS covers its own a$$.

Interestingly enough, Huntington's Disease strikes the reciprocal connections, from the caudate to the SN, and elsewhere.....

Here's a brainstem cross-section of a PD patient and a person who died from something else. Not surprisingly, the substantia nigra is the black band near the bottom-middle.

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