An upper motor neuron lesion (also known as pyramidal insufficiency) is a lesion of the neural pathway above the anterior horn cell of the spinal cord or motor nuclei of the cranial nerves. This is in contrast to a lower motor neuron lesion, which affects nerve fibers traveling from the anterior horn of the spinal cord to the relevant muscle(s).
Upper motor neuron lesions occur in conditions affecting motor neurons in the brain or spinal cord such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury and cerebral palsy.
Read more about Upper Motor Neuron Lesion: Symptoms, Corticospinal/pyramidal Tract
Famous quotes containing the words upper and/or motor:
“But that beginning was wiped out in fear
The day I swung suspended with the grapes,
And was come after like Eurydice
And brought down safely from the upper regions;
And the life I live nows an extra life
I can waste as I please on whom I please.”
—Robert Frost (18741963)
“The motor idles.
Over the immense upland
the pulse of their blossoming
thunders through us.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)