I often read that MSA can have autonomic, cerebellar, pyramidal and extrapyramidal symptoms. It’s time for me to get into these pyramidal things, I didn’t know about them before and the topic was always too scientific for me. But I stumble over again and again to ignore it. As it turns out, I just realize that there are pyramidal and extrapyramidal systems. I have always summed that up as one coherent thing. So even more complex than I thought but summarizing wasn’t that wrong.
I am interested in this topic because as a MSA-C patient I have a lot of problems with movement sequences and so I keep coming across these terms. By movement problems is meant my walking weakness, that my legs do what they wants to do, that I walk around like a drunken sailor, that objects fall out of my hand, that I am unable to perform gentle movements, i.e. I do not put a water bottle down, I smash it. If I want to pick up a pen, then my hand goes through, with a swing that I can hardly brake, I say “grab” the pen as if it were escaping. Sometimes I run, if there was no wall to stop me, I would run all the way to Australia. The fact that a lot of people tilt to the side, i.e. have problems with the position of the upper body, probably has to do with damage. All this has to do with pyramidal and extrapyramidal systems (PS and EPS).
The two are only available in duo. And this concept is also characteristic only for primates, mammals and vertebrates do not have this concept at all. So there is the proof: I am not a worm.
PS is assigned to the arbitrary motor skills and thus the fine motor skills, EPS is the functional correlate for the gross motor skills.
Damage to the pyramidal tract within the brain initially results in flaccid paresis with impairment of fine motor skills. The totality of all occurring neurological changes is summarized under the term pyramidal tract sign.
So if the well-known Babinski reflex is positive, we know why. In the case of damage to the pyramidal tract, the otherwise suppressed connections come into effect again. Thus the Babinski reflex becomes positive. This primitive reflex is normally suppressed in adults by the activity of the pyramidal tract. In infants it can still be triggered physiologically. If damage is present, adults now also notice this reflex, which is typical for infants.
The whole thing is about various nerves and nerve cords that have their place in different areas of the brain and/or in the spinal cord and perform an extremely complex function. Damage caused by disease, for example, strongly influences the functionality and triggers the most diverse irregularities of varying degrees of severity. Dopamine is the most important neurotrasmitter (messenger substances that transmit excitation from one nerve cell to other cells at chemical synapses) of EPS. Various posture, movement or reflex disorders can be the result of damage.
Now I know a little more, but unfortunately this knowledge affects my brain not in the way I would like it to. To be smart and sick is nice, but I would love to be healthy and dumb.