Talk:Athetosis

Being worked on: Monday March 21, 2011 - Friday March 25, 2011

This page is being worked on this week (Monday March 21, 2011 - Friday March 25, 2011) for a neuroscience improvement project in the class BI481 at Boston College. The link to our page is: User:NeuroJoe/BI481 Spring 2011 BrianJLike (talk) 02:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll keep an eye on it. Please feel free to ask questions on this page if you run into any difficulties. Looie496 (talk) 02:46, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

By the way, if you are going to write about this topic, I strongly suggest that you take a few minutes to go to youtube and search for "athetosis" -- if will help you get a grasp of what this condition actually is. Looie496 (talk) 02:58, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I just added a few section titles with nothing under them. Please leave them up for the next two days while my group partners and I add our work to each section. Thanks. BrianJLike (talk) 02:21, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Fast comments

First of all I have to congratulate you for the quality and quantity of the refs you have found. After a fast look at the article I have some comments.

• I am making some comments for all students at User talk:NeuroJoe/BI481 Spring 2011. Take a look at them since many are applyable here (some detailed below)
• Several problems when adding citations: inline citations in wikipedia go after and not before the full stop of the sentence, there is no space between the full stop and the ref, and after the ref goes a space before the next sentence. A correct example would be "Hello world, I feel great today.[1] Today is sunny."
• The Wikipedia manual of style for medicine articles (See WP:MEDMOS) has a proposal of organization into sections for different kind of articles (i.e: recommended sections for an article on a disease, or in an anatomy article, etc.). Following such proposals will make articles consistent with other wikipedia articles, and will also help you to organize them without forgetting important data.
• In this sense some sections might be worth renaming to follow conventions in WP:MEDMOS: "signs and symptoms" instead of "symtoms" "research directions" instead of "current reasearch" and so on.
• Also "History" usually goes at the end of the article instead than at the beginning.
• I also miss an epidemiology section: there should be info on it out there
• Most "red links" in this article actually exist in wikipedia: you will have to search further for the correct terms (For example: it is haloperidol, motor cortex, globus pallidus...

More as I have time. Bests.--Garrondo (talk) 09:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all of your comments (and watching our project throughout the course). We've made just about all of the changes that you've recommended. In terms of epidemiology, since athetosis is often seen with cerebral palsy, we have statistics in terms of what percentage of people with cerebral palsy have athetosis. Thanks again BrianJLike (talk) 04:35, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

GA nomination

I am about to quick-fail the nomination, and would like to explain why. An article should not be nominated until it is close enough to a GA state to get there with relatively minor improvements. This article contains a lot of good material but it also has major problems. Here is the biggest problem: that article describes athetosis as a disorder and as a condition, but it isn't either of those things, it is a symptom. This makes the whole organization of the article inappropriate -- if nothing else, a symptom can't have symptoms. There are several other important issues that ought to be addressed before the article is nominated. Failing it now does not prevent it from being renominated at any time, but please do not renominate it without first discussing here on the talk page whether it is ready. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 00:22, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Here are a couple of additional issues:

1. When references are given to books (as opposed to articles), it is good to specify the page where the material appears, otherwise the reference is very difficult to verify. One place where this comes into play is the claim in the article that damage to the hippocampus can produce athetosis. As a hippocampus specialist myself, I find this difficult to believe -- but I have no way of checking the source, since it is an entire book.
2. The concept of dystonia is closely related, and its relationship with athetosis ought to be described in the article, at least briefly.

More to come. Looie496 (talk) 00:44, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Looie that it is premature to nominate as GA... I also think that it is better to think of athetosis as symptom than as a disease... so some of my comments above are not fully appropiate (although others are). Nevertheless some interaction between editors of this page and regular wikipedia editors would be a a "must" as expressed by Looie since both Looie and me, and probably other people would make several comments that should be adressed before another GAN. Nevertheless the article is quite promising and the article has improved a lot in a few days so I would hate if this quick fail demotivated you. --Garrondo (talk) 17:29, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Peer Review/Comments

This article is very interesting, informative, and well organized. One of the main things that I appreciated about this article is that I feel that it is understandable to the common reader. There is not an excessive amount of biological or medical terms that distract or confuse the reader. I also think you did a good job of linking the right amount of articles within the text of your topic. However I will point out that some of your links do not actually link to other Wikipedia articles. These unlinked terms appear in red. Now I’ll make a few suggestions that I hope will help you make your article that much better. First, I think you need to clearly state whether athetosis is a disorder, a condition, or a symptom. It is called each of these things throughout the article which causes some confusion. In terms of language, I found one sentence that does not make sense. It might either be incomplete or a typo may have occurred. The sentence is found in the section titled, “Treatments” and the sentence reads, “Since athetosis is Many different medicines can be used, including…” Also in the “Treatments” section, you may want to consider expanding and further discussing some of the items that you mentioned. For example, what aspects of the condition do the different medicines target? What symptoms do the specific medications relieve? I particularly enjoyed the “Social implications” section because it provided a nice balance between the medical effects of athetosis as well as the social effects. Finally, you reference a couple different research topics under the section, “Current research”. I think you may want to consider expanding on some of these topics because they are slightly vague and do not provide a lot of detail. Additionally, if you could possibly tie in some current cases of people who suffer from athetosis I think that could also provide another interesting aspect to your article. I picked out some very specific points for my suggestions because, overall, I think your article is very well written and very educational. You did a great job for the first time around and I wish you the best of luck with your editing! (NeuroCaroline (talk) 07:11, 8 April 2011 (UTC))

Hi, I am one of the authors of this article participating in the project for our neuroscience class. I read through the peer reviews and comments made previously and I must say I appreciate all the input from the wiki users on various sections that could help improve the quality of our article. I also have a few quick suggestions on each section written by my group peers. First, in the introduction section, I like the fact it includes a brief summary about the definition, symptoms and the treatment for the condition. I would also throw in a quick concluding sentence in the end about the status of currently ongoing research and how it could potentially contribute to developing new treatments for the disorder. Second, in the "Causes" section, I like how it proposes several causes supported by particular studies; I think Ibrahim did a good job relating them to specific molecules and neurotransmitter and explaining the pathways leading to the appearance of the symptoms, a lot of materials being relevant to the topics we covered in our neuroscience class. I think we could improve the section by creating more links to original wikipedia pages, for example, links to "stroke," "hyperbilirubinemia," "phospholyration," "gliosis," "neurotransmitter" and "demyelination," just in case the readers want to know more about the underlying mechanisms and the factors contributing to the cause of the disorder. Under the Asphyxia section, the mechanism as to how the inhibition of reuptake of dopamine neurotransmitters happens from hypnoxia could be more elaborated. Also, as someone previously suggested, inserting the subtitles for each paragraph as done in "Related disorders" section might be a neat way to organize the subparagraphs. Finally, in the "Related disorders" section, I like how each disorder is neatly organized into subsections and most importantly, Brian did a good job defining each disorder including the symptoms and causes, as well as interesting facts and statistics about the Cerebral Palsy. If more information could be provided regarding the other sections we researched on Athetosis such as the history of the conditions or the social implications as well, I think it would make the article more informative and thorough. All in all, I am glad to be working on this topic and contributing our knowledge learned from the neuroscience course to help the readers understand the disorder underlying neuronal complications. Changhf(talk) 24:52, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I have a few quick comments regarding your article. Overall, I thought you did a great job explaining athetosis, and I was able to reach a general understanding of the topic by the end of your article. I have a couple of suggestions about small things that I think could improve your page. The first is in reference to your linking to other wikipedia pages. I found myself wondering what certain technical terms were or who a certain person was (for example, W.A. Hammond) and wanted more information. It would be a lot easier if I could click from your wikipedia page directly to that link rather than opening a new window to search. Furthermore, you linked to multiple pages that do not exist (i.e. pallidus, thalamic stroke, etc.). I looked up pallidus and found it under "globus pallidus" so I fixed the link for you. I left the text "pallidus" in place and simply connected it to the globus pallidus page. If that was not what you wanted, feel free to change it back. My other suggestion is that the section under causes could be made more clear. You list two main causes, and I think if you make those two causes larger subcategories (formatted like you did for the related disorder section) that might help the causes stand out more and result in a quicker understanding by readers as to the causes of athetosis. Katie44gb (talk) 22:06, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you did a good job of explaining your topic, I was able to understand what athetosis is after reading your page and it was well written overall. I just have a few minor comments. The first sentence in “causes” is a little confusing – do you mean that degenerations of the basal ganglia is due to both complications at birth and sometimes damaged by stroke? Maybe try re-wording it. Other than that, the rest of the “causes” section is clear and well written. Watch out for some of the links you’ve created. For example, “thalamic stroke,” “haloperidol,” “subthalamotomy” and “linear filtering” among some others do not link to any pages (they appear red on your Wikipedia page). Also, on our page we had some trouble with citing sources, one editor made a comment that on Wikipedia you should put all of the citations at the end of the sentence and not in the middle, which you do in a few places. Maybe look up the guidelines for citing sources on Wikipedia. Also the beginning paragraph in the “treatments” section is a little repetitive; you mention more than once that relearning movements only works in select situations. Under symptoms you mention that athetosis can be caused by lesions in different brain regions, this may be better to put under your causes section instead and just describe the symptoms that children could suffer from under symptoms. Randiew390 (talk) 20:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey, Good work! Here's what I think could still be looked at, it's not a lot because you did a fantastic job, so I am aiming to nit pick!

1. In the final section, current research, the link for linear filtering does not lead to the article but for the article's edit section. 2. If you changed the heading title "history of the condition" to just "History," it would be more concise (and the Wikipedia heading's are meant to be short). The public would still recognize that you are providing them with a history of the condition, athetosis, without you actually needing to include all of those words. Humans rate repetition. 3. in the symptoms section the sentence "which progressively worsen into the adolescence and at times of emotional distress.[7]," is awkward, because adolescence is usually present without the article the preceding it and using a conjunction to connect a life stage of years and shorts periods of distress is strange. Try something like "which worsen during adolescence and other times of emotional distress." Though I think just the "the" needs to be removed. 4. the following sentence in that section could go full circle and end as ..." or retarded acquirement oof sitting balance, associated with injury to the abovementioned areas in the brain. Science words confuse a lot of people, and they often just skim such section over, especially after a series of anatomical terms. 5. The Treatments section has a grammatical error " Since athetosis is Many different medicines can be used, including: " 6. If you went into reasons why curare is impractical, even if it was only a sentence, that would be helpful, otherwise that comment is distracting. Content is appropriate and the depth of coverage is also, so Keep it up! Sylwiahandz (talk) 22:15, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

===from Great start on the article! You did a great job explaining the effects of Athetosis as well as possible treatments. I do have a few suggestions that may help improve the article a bit. The end of the introductory sentence is a bit confusing ("The condition...cause itself"). Maybe try something like "Athetosis does not occur alone but often presents as a symptom of other neuromuscular diseases as is the case in cerebral palsy." Another suggestion I had was splitting up the "Causes" section into several subcategories with one sub-section titled "asphyxia" and separate one titled "neo-natal jaundice". I also came across a few syntax, spelling, and other writing errors. 1. At the end of the first paragraph in "treatments" seems to be a bit redundant in explaining that only certain situations will benefit from retraining 2. The second sentence in the second paragraph under "treatments" appears to be cut off. 3. In the last paragraph of the "treatment" section the word "obvious" is used to describe the benefits of surgical treatment. However, this may not be obvious for the reader. 4. There was a spelling error under the sub-section "pseudoathetosis" ("they" --> "the")? 5. The last paragraph refers to athetosis as a "disorder" where other sections of this article have referred to it as a "condition" and "symptom". Which of these three correctly describes athetosis?

Best of luck in your revisions. Hope this helped. Migliozzi88 (talk) 17:30, 7 April 2011 (UTC) [edit]

Overall, this was an excellently written article and it clearly and concisely presents the condition of athetosis and outlines both the physiological and social aspects of the disorder. However, while I was reading through it I noticed several areas that could use some slight improvement. First, in the introduction section, the final sentence caused me to stumble and I had to read it through a second time to get a clear understanding. I believe part of the problem originates with the word repetition within the same sentence. I would suggest that you rewrite it … I would do something like “Treatments for this condition are not very effective, and in most cases, are aimed at simply alleviating the associated symptoms, rather than correcting the cause of the disorder itself.” --- just realized as I refreshed the page that someone posted while I was typing this and said relatively the same thing so make sure you look at it --- Second, for a quick fix in the causes section you should link to hyperbilirubinemia, I believe it is the first time you mention the word, and I know that it will link to the bilirubin page, but it will link to the specific section and could be useful for some readers. Third, I know it was already mentioned by somebody else, but you need to create some consistency with your description of the topic. In the introduction and the first couple sections you treat athetosis as a separate disorder. However, when you reach the treatment section you begin referring to it as “the symptom”. I would suggest that you clearly refer to it as a symptom throughout the page, or at least refrain from switching back and forth. Also there is another linking issue in the treatments section. You currently have cerebral motor cortex as a link with no page, however if you simply use the code cerebral motor cortex it will link to the motor cortex page (which is the page you want just with a different name) and your text will remain the same. One last comment, the see also section should only include topics that you did not already link to in the text of your page, so dyskinesia should be the only link in there. Other than that your page looks great. Good Luck. Oconnedp (talk) 01:39, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi! I think that this article is very clear and very well written. In general, I feel as though almost everything presented itself without any kind of contradictions or need for clarity. You do mention that athetosis is normally a symptom of another disease which is where I become slightly confused. When you describe the causes of athetosis, you present it as a condition of its own. But you also list it as a symptom of cerebral palsy. And to clarify, I'm not sure if you would consider cerebral palsy a disease because, for the most part, it occurs due to some kind of trauma. It actually says in the cerebral palsy Wikipedia article that, "In order to be diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy the damage that occurred to the brain must be non-progressive and not disease like in nature." As for your dead end links, Haloperidol does have a Wikipedia article, but it's misspelled in yours. The actual article is 'motor cortex' that's why yours doesn't like up. And I'm assuming subthalamotomy is similar to the invasive procedure of thalamotomy which does have an article. You could probably redirect the link there. Good luck! Dbaush (talk) 02:45, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this article was informative and contained a lot of great information. I felt that there are some portions that could be organized or worded a little differently. The introduction is structured a little oddly and difficult to follow, and I think it can be worded differently to make more sense and be more concise. Also, I think the History of the Condition subsection should simply be titled History. In that same section, the discovery of athetosis is attributed to a certain individual and his literature on the piece is mentioned as well. Are there links to which you can link these? If not, you may want to considering adding more about or where more on the origin of the condition can be found. I also noticed that the "linear filtering" link in the Current Research subsection leads to an incomplete page. Other than that, I think you guys have a great page. The Causes section in particular was very thorough and addressed the physiology of the condition very well. Good luck with your final edits! Cynthia Cepeda(talk) 10:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey! I read through the article and some of the other peer reviews and I agree with the comment that the writing was pretty straightforward. My main concern or point of confusion was when Athetosis is described as a condition/ disorder but is a symptom for other diseases. I think that the symptoms heading should be renamed; the content is solid and I'm sure accurate, but it adds to the confusion on whether or not athetosis is a medical condition. The links for certain words don't work so they either don't have a page or is posted under a different name. Overall it was a very thorough article with a good amount of sources. Good luck on the rest of your edits! Micah Sy(talk) 12:09, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Good work pulling together this information in a concise manner. It was very straight forward and straight to the point. After reading this through and reading the comments made by the other peers I have a few suggestions. I agree that the wording in the intro, causes, social implications, and treatment sections were a bit confusing. Maybe try splitting your thoughts into more than one sentence so that it is easier to follow. Also, try to refrain from using condition as often as you do in the intro. As mentioned before, take care when linking words that are not currently present on wikipedia. Instead, try to offer a brief definition after mentioning the term. In terms of content, I think a little more connection should be made with this "condition" and the relating diseases. Maybe try to talk about when one would expect to see Athetosis develop in these other diseases/conditions. Also, I noticed under treatments you offer a preferred method but then say it is uneffective. I think if you guys offered more elaboration as to” why” it would make it the sections more comprehensive. Finally, one last suggestion is to consolidate the references listed at the bottom of the page. Make sure to use the same format when you are citing so that identical sources aren’t interpreted as new ones. Overall, this looks good; I hope my comments were of some help! Good luck with the rest of the project! Bazoberr (talk) 06:53, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions

Thanks for the suggestions, we'll be making changes over the next few weeks and be sure to incorporate the things that you've mentioned. BrianJLike (talk) 00:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

End of Boston College BI481 Project

Nice job Brian, Abe and Hannah. In general the article is in great shape, the few small issues that remain: 1. Listing links in a "see also" section doesn't give the reader an idea of why those topics are important unless they're put into context in your article. And if they are, you really don't need them in a separate list at the bottom. 2. There are still a few spots where Athetosis is referred to as a condition or disorder instead of a set of symptoms. 3. For some of the peer review comments above, justification was not given for changes that were not made. NeuroJoe (talk) 20:20, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Quick review

I think you've made good progress on this article. If you're still hoping for a successful GA review, please go through the article and look for these things:

• Needless use of the passive voice (as in: "Mistakes were made. The passive voice was used. Responsibility was shirked") and other forms of verbosity. You're not trying to pad your word count, so you don't need to say "It is proposed" or "It can be seen that" or such wordy phrases.
• The lead is too short. Try writing one two- or three-sentence paragraph about the causes, and another about the symptoms and treatment.
• There's no epidemiology section, and people usually like to know at least if it's rare disease. If there are no sources on this point, then there should be no section—but if they exist, please add one.
• Please read WP:MEDMOS and check your language. As an example of something you might want to revise, "patients" (all people with athetosis, or only those receiving medical care for it?) don't usually "suffer" from anything on Wikipedia.
• You probably need more inline citations.
  • Specifically, you probably need more duplicated inline citations, because some GA reviewers [and it's luck of the draw, except that it won't be me] want an inline citation after every sentence that contains a scientific fact... which is basically every sentence.
  • IMO a somewhat more reasonable approach is to bracket groups of facts supported by a single source, so that if you have (for example) five sentences in a row (in the same paragraph) supported by a source, then sentence #1 and #5 end with the citation, and the middle ones don't. On the other hand, if the intervening sentences contain any numbers or language involving quantitative comparisons, no matter how vague (e.g., "more likely"), then those sentences will probably want their own copy of the inline citations.
  • Also, it's good form to add a citation for any sentence that makes a specific, direct claim of cause. It decreases the odds of the citation coming astray of the important fact if someone incautiously re-organizes a paragraph.
• Under ==Social implications==, the WP:INTEXT attribution to the journal is probably unnecessary (it's an uncontested fact, right?).
• Consider adding a few more wikilinks. Most of the people reading this won't know basic brain anatomy. Make sure every "anatomy lesson word" is linked at least the first time, and also the "most important" time, if that's not the first time. For example, thalamus should be wikilinked (once) under ==Thalamic stroke==, because the reader might have skipped it earlier, but now realize that he needs to know what that is—or might have skipped straight to that section, and never seen the original link.
• Content question: Does thalamic stroke happen in adults? The article is kind of child-focused. Does this ever appear in previously healthy adults?

Good luck! WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)