Motor disorders include a large group of disorders that affect coordination, movement, or vocal tics. These disorders often lead to involuntary movements or bodily actions that stem from the body’s nervous system. All of the following disorders have the same common symptoms, including involuntary jerking, twitching, muscle spasms, or issues with your gait.
Every time the body moves, the brain communicates to the muscles in the body to initiate movement and control that movement. The brain is constantly creating new neural pathways that help fine tune movements and allow coordination and flexibility as you age. Motor disorders are caused by issues within either the brain, nervous system, or neural connections that control movement.
Dyspraxia is most often diagnosed during childhood. It can be diagnosed by looking at both your fine and gross motor skills. Children with dyspraxia often are first labeled as having a motor delay because they may sit, crawl, stand and walk later than their peers. As they grow older, they may have difficulties with more fine motor skills, such as tying their shoes, buttoning shirts, using scissors, writing, or even skipping. Once diagnosed, patients may need physical and occupational therapy to master gross and fine motor skills. Dyspraxia is a lifelong condition, but with appropriate treatment, it can be managed.
This motor disorder is characterized by repetitive movements such as head banging, rocking movements, hand flapping, self-hitting or biting. Skin picking, thumb sucking, and pulling hair are other examples. If the repetitive movement is harmless such as thumb sucking, then often the movement goes unnoticed. However, if it is self-injurious such as self-hitting or biting, then it becomes more of an issue. In this case, stereotypic movement disorder may be treated with both medication and therapy.
Motor disorders come in many different varieties in children and adults. They can cause minimal to no distress in some patients or can be very bothersome depending on their severity.