Lesion
Lesion | |
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Specialty | Pathology |
A lesion is any damage or abnormal change in the tissue of an organism, usually caused by injury or diseases. Lesion is derived from the Latin laesio meaning "injury".[1] Lesions may occur in plants as well as animals.
Types
There is no designated classification or naming convention for lesions. Since lesions can occur anywhere in the body and the definition of a lesion is so broad, the varieties of lesions are virtually endless. Generally, lesions may be classified by their patterns, their sizes, their locations, or their causes. They can also be named after the person who discovered them. For example,
Location
Lesions are often classified by their tissue types or locations. For example, a "skin lesion" or a "
Cause and behavior
If a lesion is caused by a
Size and shape
Lesion size may be specified as gross, meaning it is visible to the unaided eye, or
Lesions may also be classified by the shape they form. This is the case with many
Research using lesions
Brain lesions may help researchers understand brain function. Research involving lesions relies on two assumptions: that brain damage can affect different aspects of cognition independently, and that a locally damaged brain functions identically to a normal brain in its "undamaged" parts.[6]
Sham lesion is the name given to a control procedure during a lesion experiment. In a sham lesion, an animal may be placed in a stereotaxic apparatus and electrodes inserted as in the experimental condition, but no current is passed, and therefore damage to the tissue should be minimal.
Research with humans
Humans with brain lesions are often the subjects of research with the goal of establishing the function of the area where their lesion occurred.[7]
A drawback to the use of human subjects is the difficulty in finding subjects who have a lesion to the area the researcher wishes to study. As such, transcranial magnetic stimulation is often used in cognition and neuroscience-related tests to imitate the effect.[8]
Research with animals
Using animal subjects gives researchers the ability to study lesions in specific body parts of the subjects, allowing them to quickly acquire a large group of subjects. An example of such a study is the lesioning of rat hippocampi to establish the role of the hippocampus in object recognition and object recency.[9]
Notable lesions
- Morel-Lavallee lesion
- Bankart lesion
- Perthes Lesion
- Stener lesion
- SLAP lesion
Diabetes-associated lesions
Bone lesions
Brain lesions
Skin lesions
- Melanocytic nevus
- Skip lesion
- Osler's node
- Keratoderma blennorrhagicum
- Dermatosis papulosa nigra
- Leukemid
- Janeway lesion
- Kaposi's sarcoma
- Nevus spilus
- Chronic scar keratosis
Gastrointestinal lesions
Endodermal lesions
Misc. disease-associated lesions
- Ghon focus
- Benign lymphoepithelial lesion
- Multiple sclerosis lesions
- Herpes labialis
- Tropical ulcer
- Herpetic whitlow
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f "Lesion...What Does The Doctor Mean?". MedicineNet. Retrieved 2016-03-03.
- S2CID 23254704.
- ^ Bennett, D. Lee; El-Khoury, Georges H. (6 May 2004). "General approach to lytic bone lesions". Appliedradiology.com. Retrieved 2016-03-03.
- ISBN 978-0-7216-5704-2.
- ISBN 068340007X.
- S2CID 15557071.
- PMID 27311080.
- doi:10.3791/51735
- ^ Albasser, Amin, Lin, Iordanova, Aggelton. Evidence That the Rat Hippocampus Has Contrasting Roles in Object Recognition Memory and Object Recency Memory