BRADIPSYCHIA: CHARACTERISTICS, DISEASES AND TREATMENTS - NEUROPSYCHOLOGY - 2024

The bradipsiquia is a neurological symptom that is characterized by generating a remarkable mental sluggishness, mental or thought. People with bradypsychia develop their cognitive processes more slowly than usual and thoughts develop slowly.

The slowness of thought that bradypsychia generates is characterized by being pathological and abnormally high. Thought processes that are slightly slower than normal but do not have a negative impact on the person are not included in this term.

Bradypsychia is a disorder that frequently appears in pathologies that impair cognitive functions, such as dementia disorders or schizophrenic disorders.

Characteristics of bradysychia

Bradypsychia is a formal thought disorder that is defined by the generation of an exaggerated slowness in the cognitive processes; a slowness in thought.

Bradypsychia is the opposite alteration to tachypsychia, which defines the presence of excessively high and fast thinking.

In this sense, the term bradypsychia is not used to determine slightly slow or slower than normal thought processes.

Each person can have certain qualities of mental speed, as well as higher or lower IQ percentages. However, bradypsychia does not refer to the intellectual level that each person presents, but rather defines a pathological quality in which thinking is abnormally slowed down due to the presence of a certain brain alteration or damage.

Related diseases

Bradypsychia is a disorder caused by the injury or alteration of the functioning of the subcortical regions of the brain. As the superior or cortical areas are preserved, the content of the thought is usually not affected.

This means that people with bradypsychia do not usually have loss of memory or other cognitive abilities, but simply have markedly slowed thought processes.

However, this is not always the case, since the appearance of bradypsychia depends on the underlying disease or condition. Depending on the pathology causing the symptom, bradypsychia may appear together with other alterations and manifestations.

Alzheimer disease

Alzheimer's disease is the main neurodegenerative pathology, which generates a great variety of alterations in cognitive processes in a progressive and chronic way.

The main manifestations of Alzheimer's have nothing to do with slow thinking, since the disease primarily affects cortical regions of the brain.

Thus, the disease usually begins with the appearance of learning difficulties, lack of memory or deterioration of cognitive processes such as attention, executive functions or orientation.

However, with the passage of time, the disease begins to affect all regions of the brain, so bradypsychia usually appears in advanced stages of Alzheimer's.

Vascular dementia

Vascular dementia encompasses a wide variety of pathologies that are characterized by the onset of a dementia syndrome due to suffering from vascular lesions in the brain regions.

In this case, the presentation of bradypsychia will depend on the areas of the brain damaged due to the microinfarcts suffered by the subject. However, these disorders frequently affect the subcortical regions and present bradypsychia regularly among their symptoms.

Huntington's disease

Huntington's disease is a serious, hereditary and degenerative neurological pathology. The disorder causes mental and motor alterations that progress slowly for about 15-20 years. Specifically, three main groups of symptoms have been proposed.

The first would be formed by the signs of subcortical deterioration and would include bradypsychia. The second constitutes the presence of signs of frontal deterioration such as alterations in mental or written calculation, and the third includes aphasic-apraxo-agnosic signs.

Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to progressive disability due to the destruction of neurons in the substantia nigra. The most typical symptoms of this pathology are motor, through the typical tremors and slowness of movement that Parkinson's causes.

Likewise, the slowness that this disease causes also tends to extend to the cognitive areas, producing bradypsychia and deterioration of other subcortical mental processes.

Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder that generates a wide variety of manifestations. Among them, the alogia stands out, an alteration that characterizes a series of cognitive dysfunctions caused by the disease.

The cognitive alterations of schizophrenia can be very varied and among all the symptoms, bradypsychia is one of the most prominent.

Depression

In recent years, research has grown that has focused on studying the cognitive alterations that mood disorders can cause.

In the case of depression, the decline in mood can cause alterations in the processes of attention, concentration and thinking. All these processes do not appear to be damaged but they tend to be slower than normal.

Chronic alcoholism

Finally, although there are many substances that can slow down the cognitive functioning of people, alcoholism seems to be the condition of drug abuse that is most positively related to the appearance of bradypsychia.

Treatment

Bradypsychia is a specific symptom that appears as a manifestation of a specific disease, so its treatment must be based on the intervention of the underlying pathology.

In some cases, such as depression, the cognitive alterations caused by the pathology may disappear when the alteration is reversed.

However, the majority of diseases that cause bradypsychia are characterized by being chronic, so the symptom can only be treated palliatively.

References

1. Jódar, M (Ed) et al (2014). Neuropsychology. Barcelona, ​​Editorial UOC.
2. Javier Tirapu Ustárroz et al. (2012). Neuropsychology of the prefrontal cortex and executive functions. Editorial Viguer.
3. Lapuente, R. (2010). Neuropsychology. Madrid, Plaza edition.
4. Junqué, C. I Barroso, J (2009). Neuropsychology. Madrid, Ed. Synthesis.
5. Bryan Kolb, Ian Q. Whishaw (2006): Human Neuropsychology. Editorial Médica Panamericana, Barcelona.