Dizziness is an imprecise term that can refer to a sense of disorientation in space, vertigo, or lightheadedness. It can also refer to disequilibrium (balance disorder) or a non-specific feeling such as giddiness or foolishness.
Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of moving or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties walking. It is typically worse when the head is moved. Vertigo is the most common type of dizziness.
Vertigo typically indicates a problem in a part of the vestibular system. Other causes of dizziness include presyncope, disequilibrium, and non-specific dizziness.
Psychological problems are related to vertigo in a complex way. They may both be a cause as well as a consequence of dizziness.
We are not talking about chronic vertigo — As Clark pointed out, “The patient with chronic dizziness should never be labeled with psychogenic dizziness. Chronic does not mean psychogenic. Chronic means that health care has been unsuccessful.”
Psychological abnormalities are common in the general population, even more common in those who are ill, and are certainly also common in individuals with vertigo. Many studies suggest that about 50% of persons who present to clinics for dizziness have psychological disorder, mainly anxiety. Studies of patients with dizziness also suggests that they mainly have reactive anxiety and depression.
The vestibular system, in vertebrates, is a sensory system that provides the leading contribution to the sense of balance and spatial orientation for the purpose of coordinating movement with balance. Together with the cochlea, a part of the auditory system, it constitutes the labyrinth of the inner ear in most mammals.
The brain uses information from the vestibular system in the head and from proprioception throughout the body to enable the mammal to understand its body’s dynamics and kinematics (including its position and acceleration) from moment to moment. How these two perceptive sources are integrated to provide the underlying structure of the sensorium is unknown.
A sensorium (plural: sensoria) is the apparatus of an organism’s perception considered as a whole, the “seat of sensation” where it experiences and interprets the environments within which it lives. The term originally entered English from the Late Latin in the mid-17th century, from the stem sens- (“sense”). In earlier use it referred, in a broader sense, to the brain as the mind’s organ (Oxford English Dictionary 1989). In medical, psychological, and physiological discourse it has come to refer to the total character of the unique and changing sensory environments perceived by individuals. These include the sensation, perception, and interpretation of information about the world around us by using faculties of the mind such as senses, phenomenal and psychological perception, cognition, and intelligence.
Sometimes called the “sixth sense,” proprioception is crucial for controlling our movements and knowing where our body is in space. While senses such as sight convey information to the brain from the outside world, proprioception allows us to perceive the inner state of our bodies. Unlike the other senses, there is no single sensory organ, nor are we consciously aware of proprioceptive signals that the brain receives.
Proprioception forms the basis for distinguishing “self ” from “nonself.”
Many scientists have suggested that the brain has a stored “body model.”
They noted that the brain receives inadequate information about the size and shape of individual body parts for picturing the actual space occupied by the body. According to their hypothesis, the brain uses previous interactions with our environment to create an accurate mental map of the body.
Poetry is about words, meaning pieces and, or inputting logs in record keeping. When pieced together as a coherent benevolent pattern, they create an abstract (mind) phenomenon. A mental map in which the sense of order, symmetry, balance, beauty, rhythm, flow, vibration, and orientation, are present in logical equilibrium.
