There are certain symptoms a person can experience, when suffering from a brain tumor. However, people having these symptoms might not have a tumor or the symptom is caused by another medical condition. The symptoms are divided into general symptoms caused by the tumor pressuring the brain or the spinal cord, and specific symptoms occurring when a specific part of the brain is not working as a result of the tumor thus depending on the location of the tumor. Different therapy methods like surgery or chemotherapy can cause new symptoms. The most experienced symptoms are discussed in this chapter and include:

• general symptoms
  • headaches
  • seizures
  • memory problems
• specific symptoms
  • mood swings
  • cognitive changes

General Symptoms

Headache

With 50% of patients having a brain tumor headaches are one of the most common symptoms though not every headache comes from a brain tumor. Still there are some distinctive features that points toward a brain tumor.

• the headaches persists the whole day, but is strongest in the morning and gets better during the day
• usually not treatable by normal headache medication
• may be accompanied by vomiting
• exercising or other sudden movements increase the pain

Because the brain itself has no pain receptors, the headache is caused by the tumor pressuring and blocking pain sensitive blood vessels.

Seizures

Another common symptom are seizures, also called convulsions, with an amount of 60% of people having a brain tumor experiencing them at least once. Seizures are involuntary movements or spasms of a persons muscles caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. If a tumor interfers the electrical signals through which the body's nerve cells communicate with each other a seizure can occur. People may experience different types of seizures, which are listed below:

• Myclonic Seizures
  
  • single or mutliple muscle twitches/spasms
• Tonic-Clonic Seizures
  • loss of consciousness and body functions
  • can result in a short period of non-breathing and turning blue
  • the aftereffects are weakness, numbness and sore muscles
• Sensory Seizures
  • change in vision, smell while remaining consciousness

Seizures can occur at any time though there might be a warning like an headaches or a change of mood. Often seizures are the first hint when diagnosing a brain tumor.

Memory Problems

Memory often is impacted when a patient suffers from a brain tumor. The changes can be caused by the tumor itself or by the therapy. The fatigue, as another common symptom, makes these issues even worse. There are several processes in the brain concerning memory that can be influenced.

To gather information from environment encoding and aqcuisition is used. Short-Term and long-term memory are the storage where information is saved that is needed for only a few seconds or a longer period of time. The Process which moves information from short-term to long-term memory is called consolidation. And at last we need retrieval to get information stored in our brain.

If one of those processes seems to get worse, there may be a brain tumor.

Specific Symptoms

Mood Swings and Cognitive Changes

Specific symptoms vary because they are dependent on the location of the tumor. The frontal lobe is responsible e.g. for movement and the mood, the temporal lobe for speech and behaviour and the parietal lobe for intelligence and reasoning. So the area of the brain is often linked to the symptoms a patient experiences. For more information on the specific functionality of different parts of the brain see Brain Anatomy.

So tumors can affect the language, the ability to concentrate and even the character of a person. What complicates things even more is the psychological and emotional impact a brain tumor can cause. More than half of all patients are estimated to have a change in their behaviour.

The degree to which these changes occur depends on the exact location, the size and the growth rate of the tumor.

Bibliography

1. http://www.abta.org/
2. http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/brain-tumor/symptoms-and-signs