Euphoria, pathological laughing and crying

Abstract

Many literature data have described both euphoria and pathological laughing and crying in MS patients.Euphoria is considered a pathological condition when the emotional resonance is disproportionate to the real situation. It has been regarded as a consequence of cognitive impairment or one of the consequences of the loss of reasoning skills resulting from severe involvement of the frontal lobes and their connections. Pathological laughing and crying is one of the four most common affective disorders described in MS, characterized by sudden, uncontrollable and incongruous episodes of laughing and crying that may occur alternately and are not associated to any stimulus. Currently, the exact neurological basis of of this disorder is not fully understood; according to one of the first hypotheses it is determined by the loss of voluntary inhibition of a presumed center controlling laughing and crying located in the brainstem (disinhibition hypothesis), able to regulate breathing and facial movements associated with laughing and crying.