I learned neuroanatomy in medical school.
Cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, thalamus, cerebellum, brainstem, spinal cord. I memorized names, located structures, and studied which connects to which.
The neuroanatomy of those days was like a map.
What is where.
Which nerve starts where and travels where.
Which symptoms follow damage to which place.
It was important study, but most of it stayed in the books.
Then Parkinson’s disease brought that map inside my own body.
On flat ground the first step will not come, yet in front of stairs the foot goes up.
At a narrow doorway the body freezes, yet ask me to step over a line on the floor and I can move again.
Forward is blocked, yet one step sideways and I can set off again.
Standing still the body is stiff, yet riding the beat of music, walking sometimes gets a little easier.
It was strange.
The muscles have not disappeared.
The legs are not paralyzed.
The strength to move is still there — yet at certain moments, movement will not begin.
Then the problem cannot lie in the muscles alone.
Could it be in the circuits that select a movement, start it, and keep it going?
That question sent me back to neuroanatomy.
Not for an exam this time.
I wanted to know why I stop.
From then on, I began to see neuroanatomy not as a list of structures but as the story of movement.
That is how I want to write here as well.
I will not begin by memorizing structures.
I will start from what happens in the body.
Why is the first step hard?
Why are stairs sometimes easier?
Why do a visual line or a rhythm bring movement back?
Why, in Parkinson’s disease, does automatic movement collapse even when plenty of strength remains?
Why does dyskinesia arise, and why is tremor tied to yet another circuit?
Follow these questions one by one, and you will naturally meet the motor cortex, then the basal ganglia, then the cerebellum and brainstem.
The neuroanatomy I relearned was that kind of study.
Neuroanatomy is not the memorizing of brain-structure names.
It is understanding, as circuits, why I move, why I stop, and why I can move again.
And this time I will not look for those circuits only in books.
I will trace them starting from the movements I experience every day.