Movement disorders

This term covers a series of pathologies characterised by an alteration in movement control, either in excess or lack thereof.

The most common movement disorder in the general population is essential tremor, although it is not the reason for visits to the neurosurgeon as it is generally benign. One of the movement disorders which presents most incidence for neurosurgical action is Parkinson’s disease as its course is progressive and often incapacitating.

All these clinical profiles have an underlying alteration of the mechanisms that control movement. These patients present a lesion in the extrapyramidal pathway, a series of brain nuclei whose function is to co-ordinate and refine the movements originating in the cerebral cortex. Any alteration in these mechanisms either due to a defect or excess inhibition/activation of certain pathways will cause these movement disorders.