Neuropsychiatric Spells — Practical Neuropsychiatry

Atypical Spells

The brain can do amazing things. Experiences such as floating out of your body, strange, dreamlike perceptual experiences, prolonged panic attacks, or feeling like your body is melting. These experiences can leave you feeling crazy, but as with so many things, knowledge is power. We hope these articles help you understand these, often scary, experiences and feel empowered to seek appropriate treatment if that is best for you.

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Spells 101

Within the fields of neurology and psychiatry, there is an entire subset of symptoms that come and go in various patterns. For lack of a better word, they are referred to as spells.

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

One of the more controversial topics in neurology and psychiatry is the connection between Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) and atypical disorders of mood and behavior. Classic training in neurology or psychiatry may give providers a strong opinion about this topic, but a true look at the literature and sufficient experience with patients tends to produce more humility.

Common Hallucinations

Our culture has taught us to fear the word, but Hallucinations are part of our everyday lives. We each have a different experience when presented with the same sensations. Maybe we are very attentive towards what we are looking at, and our brains blur and ignore the background. Maybe you are lost in thought and day dream entire landscapes, ignoring the input from your eyes. Images and sounds in our dreams are hallucinations. That buzz on your thigh when your phone isn’t even in your pocket is a hallucination. It could be argued that we have more hallucinations than real perceptions on any given day.

The First Break

While many neuropsychiatric spells and syndromes can be scary to patients, none is more frightening and confusing than the First Break. That is a term used for the first time a patient develops psychosis. It is mostly used in primary thought disorders like schizophrenia, but at the beginning there is no way of knowing what will come. Importantly, the same symptoms can occur in severe depression, mania, and many different medical conditions.

Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness

The first thing patients need to know about dizziness is that it is very complex. The most complex thing about dizziness is that the word has so many potential meanings.