In the article we will talk about a rather serious problem of a psychological, physiological nature. This is a violation of sensations. We will consider the varieties of such a pathology, its causes and manifestations, and we will characterize the distinguished types.
What are sensations?
Sensation is one of the important functions of the psychic activity of a living being. It allows us to evaluate specific properties of the world around us, as well as our own. The physiological basis here will be the senses - vision, smell, touch, hearing, taste.
They “say” whether the subject is warm or cold, large or small, making sounds, or silent.
Classification of sensations
Sensory receptors are also divided by specialists into several categories:
- Interoceptive. The idea of our internal state, processes within the body.
- Proprioceptive. Information about the position of the body in space, the actions performed.
- Exteroceptive. What gives an idea of the world is the five sensory organs known to everyone.
Types of violations
To determine the type of sensory impairment, specialists use the following terms:
- Anesthesia. The patient has no sensation at all.
- Hypesthesia The weakening of this type of activity is characteristic. How is disturbance expressed here? For example, a bright light will be perceived by a dull patient, a sharp aroma - by a hardly perceptible smell, a loud sound - by a weak one.
- Hyperesthesia This, on the contrary, is an increase in sensations. Violations opposite to the above are observed. The muffled light will seem bright to the patient (in a dimly lit room, he can only be in sunglasses), a person will complain about the stiffness of soft bedding, be annoyed by the slightest touch, and so on.
- Paresthesia. Here the complaints are purely about discomfort, moreover, without the presence of real stimuli in reality. For example, the patient will complain of tingling, burning, a feeling that an electric current passes through his body. Or another example. Sitting in a warm room, a person begins to notice imaginary signs of frostbite in himself - numbness of the fingertips, trembling and so on. It must be said that the clinical picture of this disturbance of sensation is variable, variable, varied in duration and intensity of manifestations.
- Senestopathy. In this case, the patient notes imaginary unpleasant sensations from the side of his own body, internal organs. However, any real disease explaining this somatic pathology has not been established. It is difficult for a person to describe in detail, specifically everything that he (allegedly) experiences. Basically, patients use comparisons with this type of sensory impairment. For example, a patient says that his intestines are moving, an organ is growing in size, he feels as if wind is passing through his ears and so on.
- Phantom Syndrome. This violation of sensations (the development of sensations is observed after the operation) is characteristic of patients who have lost some limb, organ. It seems to a person that he feels the lost part, even feels how it hurts.
Causes of disorders
The causes of sensory impairment are as follows:
- The defeat of the central, peripheral regions of the sensory organs-analyzers, as well as the central nervous system routes leading to them.
- The mechanism of auto-suggestion is the nature of psychogenic, phantom pains.
- Damage to the conduction nerve trunks can lead to a violation of the sensation of pain.
- Depressive syndrome as a result of unsuccessful examinations that do not bring any meaningful treatment.
- The threshold of sensitivity (too high or too low) is the cause of hypertension or hypesthesia.
- Mental disorders - for the development of hysterical anesthesia.
Let us now specifically analyze the symptoms, the characteristic of each type of pathology of sensation.
Hyperesthesia
We pass to this form. The development of sensations (impaired sensation - hyperesthesia) here is of this type:
- General decrease in the threshold of sensitivity. It is emotionally perceived by patients negatively, with irritation.
- The result of the above is a sharp increase in the patient's susceptibility to even the weakest irritants.
- The patient begins to complain that he had not noticed 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. As the main symptom characterizes neurasthenia.
Hypesthesia
The processes of impaired sensation here are as follows:
- The patient lowers the threshold of sensitivity.
- This fact is accompanied by a sense of the surrounding as dull, faded.
- The patient complains that he no longer distinguishes colors, the taste of food. The sounds seem distant, muffled.
Hypesthesia is characteristic of depressive states. It will reflect the general pessimistic mood of the patient.
Hysterical anesthesia
By its nature, it will be a functional disorder, which makes itself felt after a mental trauma. Most characteristic of patients with demonstrative traits.
Symptoms of impaired sensation here are:
- The patient is absolutely sure that he completely ceased to feel the world around him.
- Imaginary loss of hearing or vision is possible.
- There is a loss of tactile, pain sensitivity.
- Typical skin innervation zones will not always correspond to areas of skin anesthesia.
- The presence of unconditioned reflexes. A vivid example is the "eye tracking" reflex. Here, vision is preserved, but the gaze is fixed on some object and does not move with the patient's head turning.
- A reaction to cold may persist if there is no pain sensitivity per se.
- The appearance of pathologically perverse, atypical sensations.
Anesthesia can persist for quite a while with hysterical neurosis.
Paresthesia
A fairly common neurological syndrome. It is observed with lesions of the nerve peripheral trunks. For example, with polyneuropathy alcohol. How is paresthesia expressed for the patient? He will complain of a feeling of numbness, tingling, and say that goosebumps are creeping over his body.
But often paresthesia can be associated with another. This is a transient violation of the blood supply to an individual organ. To illustrate, we give simple examples. The man slept for a long time in an uncomfortable position. Or he devoted several hours to strenuous walking, for example, playing sports. Paresthesia is also noted in patients with a history of Raynaud’s disease.
Senestopathy
It is already a symptom of a mental disorder. The sensations in each patient are subjective, unusual and varied.
Their indefinite, non-comparable nature leads to the difficulty for patients to describe their symptoms somehow - signs of senestopathy. So far, experts have come to the conclusion that the senestopathic sensations in each person will be unique, unique in their manifestation, only by distant signs similar to others.
Disturbances in sensation and perception
These pathologies are often closely related, or even inseparable. Perception gives the body, in contrast to sensation, an already complete picture of the subject. But the physiological base is the same - the sense organs. The result of perception is a complete figurative, sensual representation of something.
Disorders associated with perception, as well as impaired sensations, in psychology are divided into several categories:
- agnosia;
- illusions;
- hallucinations;
- psychosensory disorders.
Briefly consider the features of each type of pathology.
Agnosia
This includes cases of unrecognition of the subject, the patient's inability to mention its name, purpose.
Refers to nervous diseases. Distinguish between visual, auditory and so on. agnosia. In the framework of psychiatry, anosognosia is studied - unrecognition of one's own disease. They are characteristic of tumor processes, tuberculosis, hysterical disorders, alcoholism, etc.
Illusions
It is characteristic of this perceptual disorder that the patient sees a real existing object as something else, something that it is not by its nature. For example, a piece of glass seems to be a coin, a bathrobe - a silhouette of a man and so on.
Inside, it is divided into three types:
- Physical illusions. They are determined by the external environment in which the incorrectly perceived object is located.
- Physiological illusions. Associated with the work of the senses of the patient himself.
- Mental illusions. Another name is affective. Here perception is influenced by the emotional state in which the person is - fear, despair, euphoria.
Illusions as a violation of perception do not always indicate the presence of a mental illness.
Another classification divides them into receptors - auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, and taste.
Hallucinations
A violation of perception, in which a person sees an object that does not exist in reality. At the same time, he himself cannot critically interpret the fact of hallucination.
There are many classifications of this violation. A brief look at some.
By complexity:
- elementary;
- simple;
- complicated.
According to the 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. The voices are neutral, offensive to the patient, indifferent, addressing his message personally to him. The most dangerous here are imperative, forcing to do something.
- Tactile.
- Flavoring.
- Olfactory.
Other types:
- Visceral - it seems that foreign creatures live in the body.
- Functional - arise under the influence of an external stimulus.
- Dominant - will reflect the trauma that caused the development of mental illness.
- Hypnagogic / hypnopomic - the transition from wakefulness to sleep / and vice versa.
Psychosensory Disorders
Here, an object, a phenomenon that really exists, will be perceived by a person correctly, but in a certain distorted form.
Inside the group - its own varieties:
- Derealization. Distorted perception of the environment. It seems to the patient that the world has become somehow different, people are going wrong, buildings are not right, and so on. Someone claims that for some reason the objects have increased, someone - that they have decreased. Suffering from depression indicate that the world has lost its color, became boring.
- Depersonalization. With the somatopsychic form, the patient is worried that his body size and weight have changed. For example, the head became huge, he lost weight very unreasonably (while actually maintaining body weight). The autopsychic form is expressed differently. A man speaks of global restructuring of his personality, his attitude to the world, relatives.
We have sorted out what disturbances in sensations can be. You know the causes, symptoms and characteristic manifestations. It is important to distinguish them from pathologies related to perception, which we also touched on in the article. The latter are more ambitious, since they do not offend a separate sensation, but a holistic perception of an object or phenomenon.