The 12 most important brain diseases

In our body, the brain is the king organ. It is a fundamental structure that allows our survival and that regulates and coordinates such vital processes as breathing and heart rate, as fundamental as perception or movement or as complex as reasoning, learning, emotion and skills executive. The health of this organ is essential for us.

However, there are multiple conditions that can affect and damage it, with serious consequences for survival and adaptation to the environment. In this article we are going to talk about some of these conditions, brain diseases.

Diseases of the brain

There are a large number of factors that can alter the morphology and functioning of the human brain throughout the life cycle. Roughly, we can classify brain diseases into different categories, depending on its cause.

1. Genetic diseases and disorders

Some brain disorders and diseases are caused by genetic factors that alter the function and morphology of this organ. Certain mutations in some gene they generate an abnormal functioning of the organism, affecting in this case the brain in certain ways. This type of brain disease usually manifests itself in the early stages of development, either during fetal development or during infancy of the individual, although in some cases the symptoms may appear in the adulthood.

In this sense we can find alterations such as fragile X syndrome, Down syndrome or neuronal migration alterations that can end up generating significant mental disorders.

Another genetic disorder is found in Huntington's Korea, genetic and neurodegenerative disease characterized by the presence of non-voluntary movements in the form of twists and turns and by personality changes and the progressive loss of functions executive.

2. Metabolic diseases

The existence of metabolic diseases can cause serious damage to the brain if they are not treated, by depriving the brain of elements necessary for its development.

An example of this type of brain disease is found in the phenylketonuria, which is a metabolic disorder which causes the absence of the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase which in turn prevents the metabolism of tyrosine from phenylalanine, causing it to accumulate in a toxic way to the system highly strung. Diabetes can also cause problems at the brain level, as the brain requires glucose for its proper functioning.

3. Diseases and strokes

The network of blood vessels that irrigates the brain and provides it with the oxygen and nutrients necessary for its survival is another element that can be altered by different diseases. Its malfunction can cause the death of more or less large brain areas depending on the type of vessels affected and their location, either from anoxia or from asphyxia caused by spills.

Although they are not properly diseases but rather the result of them, strokes are in fact one of the most common causes of death, we are talking about a stroke or a stroke.

Disorders such as angiopathies, the presence of aneurysms or even metabolic disorders such as diabetes can cause the weakening or excessive stiffness of the vessels, which can break or become clogged.

4. Brain diseases caused by infection

Infections in the brain can cause the brain to stop working properly due to inflamed and compressed against the skull, stop receiving the substances you need to survive, that increases intracranial pressure or that it is affected by harmful substances that alter its functioning or produce neuronal death.

One of the best known disorders is encephalitis or inflammation of the brain, in which the brain becomes inflamed and symptoms such as fever, irritability, malaise, tiredness, weakness, seizures, or even death. Another similar problem is meningitis or inflammation of the meninges that surround the brain.

Apart from it, some viruses, such as rabies, or the invasion of some parasites they can also cause severe illnesses. Other infections that can alter brain function include syphilis or HIV infection.

There are also diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob or prion disease, which arises from an infection caused by prions or proteins without nucleic acid and causing dementia.

5. Brain tumors

We can consider as a tumor that uncontrolled and expansive growth of the tissues of some part of the body, which can be benign or malignant and cause a wide variety of symptoms depending on the affected area. But even if we are not dealing with cancer, a brain tumor can pose a serious risk for survival, as it causes the brain to compress against the skull.

There are a large number of brain tumors depending on the type of cell from which the tumor arises and from its degree of malignancy, such as astrocytomas, oligoastrocytomas, ependymomas or glioblastomas.

7. Neurodegenerative diseases

Many of the above diseases can be solved with proper treatment or cause an alteration that if It may or may not limit the rest of the life and the evolution of the patient, it maintains specific effects that do not evolve as worse. However, there are multiple diseases that cause progressive neuronal deterioration and death, with what the individual is losing capacities little by little until his death. These are neurodegenerative diseases.

Within this type of disease the best known are those that are included within the set of dementias, such as Alzheimer's, or diseases that cause them such as Parkinson's, or the aforementioned Huntington's chorea and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Apart from these, other diseases such as multiple sclerosis and the amyotrophic lateral, although these do not only affect the brain but also the whole nervous system.

8. Trauma

Although head injuries are not a brain disease per se, they can be caused extremely easily by both by the consequences of the blow in question and by the kickback of the opposite part of the brain when bouncing against the skull.

Strokes can be caused very easily, as well as infections and other types of damage. For example, nerve connections can be broken of hard body between the two brain hemispheres, or diffuse brain damage. It can also generate hypersensitization of some groups of neurons and generate epilepsy.

9. Illnesses caused by substance use

Other brain diseases can come from abusive use or withdrawal from certain substances, which alter the normal functioning of the brain or destroy neurons in certain parts of the body. This is what happens, for example, with alcohol or certain drugs such as cocaine or heroin.

For example. we can observe disorders such as delirium tremens or the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (which begins in the first place with an encephalopathy in which the subject has altered consciousness, hallucinations, tremors to then move on to Korsakoff syndrome in which the patient presents retrograde and antegrade amnesia among other alterations cognitive).

Apart from the consumption and addiction to these substances, we can also find other types of disorders such as produced by food poisoning or poisoning by lead.

10. Malformations

The presence of congenital or acquired malformations of the brain or skull They can involve severe alterations in brain function, especially when they occur during the growth stage by hindering the normative development of the brain.

Some examples that stand out within this type of brain diseases are hydrocephalus, anencephaly, microcephaly or Crouzon's disease.

11. Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a brain disease that occurs due to an unbalanced functioning of neuronal groups, which are hypersensitized and react abnormally to stimulation.

This causes the subject to manifest alterations such as seizures, sudden loss of consciousness, malaise, memory difficulties, anomia or alterations in executive functions.

This disorder can be caused by a large number of disorders and accidents, such as trauma, encephalitis, strokes, tumors, or malformations. However, in some cases it is not possible to determine the cause of the seizures.

• Related article: "Epilepsy: definition, causes, diagnosis and treatment"

12. Disconnection syndrome

Another very dangerous brain disorder is the disconnection syndrome, in which one part of the brain loses connection with another or others in such a way that nervous information cannot be integrated efficiently. One of the best known is the callosal disconnection syndrome, in which for some reason the corpus callosum suffers some type of sectioning or spillage that prevents information from one hemisphere from coordinating and traveling to other.