Abstract
Tremor as a sign of brain malfunction has been a topic of speculation and conjecture for over 400 years (see Capildeo, this volume, chapter 20). From a neurological point of view, the customary approach to this problem has been that of attempting to link, causally, the anatomical location and extent of central lesions to the nature of the functional abnormalities. Indeed, over the years the variances of tremor that may be seen following single or combined lesions at different sites in the CNS of man as well as of experimental animals have been described in great detail. This approach has yielded an enormous wealth of clinical information. However, the lack of a set of mechanism-related concepts serving as a common denominator for these observations has impeded the development of a truly systematic classification of tremor. Moreover, on occasion, the purely phenomenological approach has yielded conflicting views, leading to disagreement regarding both the nomenclature and the genesis of this class of motor abnormality. Thus, as underlined by Marsden (this volume, chapter 4), the categories of disagreement are many and at times quite profound, one much aired being that of the central versus peripheral nature of several of the human tremors.
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LlinĂ¡s, R.R. (1984). Rebound excitation as the physiological basis for tremor: a biophysical study of the oscillatory properties of mammalian central neurones in vitro. In: Findley, L.J., Capildeo, R. (eds) Movement Disorders: Tremor. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06757-2_10
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