We discover five strange pathologies that affect our senses and that mainly have their origin in the brain.
Anosmia
Theloss or reduction of the sense of smell(anosmia) is the most common abnormality of smell and taste. The first symptom of those who suffer from it is an alteration that makes food perceive as tasteless, since the distinction between one flavor and another is based largely on smell. Serious sinus infections or radiation therapy used for cancer can affect or destroy cells of smell. However thehead trauma, often caused by car accidents, is the most common cause of loss of smell.
Motion blindness
In 1980 a patient from Munich, Germany, approached Josef Zihl, a neuropsychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, because he wasunable to detect when things were moving around him or in his own hands. The strange blindness to movement of the woman was the result of aapoplexythat had damaged specific areas of his brain. What she lost – the ability to see objects moving through space – is a very important aspect of vision. In animals, this ability is essential for their survival:both predators and their prey depend on being able to detect movement quickly.
Ageusia
Areduced or loss of sense of taste(ageusia) is usually the result of disorders that affect the tongue. Examples are a very dry mouth, heavy smoking (especially pipe smoking), radiation therapy to the head and neck, and the side effects of drugs such as vincristine (an anticancer medicine) or amitriptyline (an antidepressant).
Color blindness
Color blindness is calleddaltonismo, and affects about 10% of the population, in most cases with difficulties to distinguish red from green. A more exceptional case is themonochromatism, in which all colors are seen as different shades of the same color. The total absence of color perception, generally accompanied by poor visual acuity, is calledacromatognosia.
Sindrome de Riley-Day
It is the inability to feel pain. The patienthas a sense of touch, but the sensations that should cause pain do not. People who suffer from this disease are unable to realize that they have suffered injuries, burns or broken limbs, so they usually die very young due to accidents or accumulation of wounds.
