DYSAESTHESIA

dysaesthesia: translation

   The term dysaesthesia comes from the Greek words dus (bad) and aisthanesthai (to notice, to perceive). It translates loosely as 'bad feeling'. The term dysaesthesia is used as a generic term for a number of unpleasant tactile and somatic percepts such as tingling (i.e. "paraesthesia), burning, numbness, a feeling of pins and needles, coldness, wetness (i.e. a hygric sensation or "hygric hallucination), pain (i.e. "hyperalgesia, " allodynia), and the perceived absence of body parts (i.e. " acenesthesia or asomatognosia). Some types of dysaesthesia are associated with peripheral conditions such as small fibre neuropathies, neuromata, and nerve traumata, whereas others are associated with parietal lobe pathology, due, for example, to multiple sclerosis or to " aurae occurring in the context of paroxysmal neurological disorders such as migraine and epilepsy.

   References

   Critchley, M. (1953). The parietal lobes. London: Edward Arnold & Co.