Ataxia is a neurobiological disorder that affects coordination of voluntary muscle movements and results in unsteady gait, lack of balance, and difficulty with fine motor skills. The author chose to study Ataxia because they had childhood problems with stability. In a video, a woman named Stephanie Wilkins describes her journey with Ataxia, including how her symptoms progressed over years from tumbling to needing a walker and developing other mobility issues. Ataxia is caused by damage to different parts of the cerebellum and spinal cord from various factors like genetics or trauma. The symptoms depend on which parts of the cerebellum are damaged, affecting gait, arm movements, handwriting, and more. Studying At

1. Ataxia is a neurobiological disorder that affects a person’s ability to coordinate voluntary
muscle movements. It often results in unsteady gait, lack of balance, and difficulty with fine
motor skills. I chose to write my final project on Ataxia because I have always had problems
with my stability (although I was never diagnosed with Ataxia). These problems were much
more prominent in my childhood - I seemed to trip and fall often, I had very poor coordination,
and sometimes I struggled with my gait. When I grew older my imbalance became much milder
and it stopped bothering me, but I always remained curious about balance and coordination.
This is exactly why I was fascinated when I discovered the importance of the cerebellum in
coordinating movements, and decided that I would like to do my final project on a disorder
which affects this function, such as Ataxia.
In order to learn more about the daily lives of people with Ataxia, I watched a video in which a
lady called Stephanie Wilkins describes her Journey with Ataxia. Stephanie explains: “I knew
that there was something going on because I was starting to tumble and I couldn’t wear heels
any longer”. She continues and describes that very quickly (in the course of a few years) her
symptoms got much worse: she had to stop playing sports, and she couldn’t dance with her
husband anymore: “We used to dance at every New Year’s Eve party and at weddings, but that
was now gone for me”. Her co-workers couldn’t understand her hand writing, and her
management thought she was drunk because of her walking. After 6 years of trying to
understand the cause of her symptoms, she finally tested positive for Ataxia. As the years went
by, her symptoms progressed: she stopped driving, started using a walker, developed a shaky
voice and limbs, and began to choke on water. In the end of the video, Wilkins explains that
what worries her the most is that her children might have inherited this disease from her. It
truly seems that Ataxia has had devastating effects on her quality of life.
Ataxia is caused by many factors, including trauma, genetic mutations, strokes, tumors, and
even certain medications. There are many types of Ataxia: Sensory Ataxia, which is caused by
damage to the sensory nerves which provide information to the cerebellum; Cerebellar Ataxia,
caused by damage to the cerebellum itself; Spinocerebellar Ataxia, which is caused by damage
to the spinal cord as well as the cerebellum (and includes issues with movement and mobility in
addition to issues with coordination); and so on.
The symptoms of Ataxia, of course, depend on the parts of the Cerebellum which are damaged:
if the Vermis is damaged, symptoms include unsteady gait, frequent falls, and disordered
speech; Damage to the Paravermis will affect arm movements; Damage to the Lateral Lobes will
result in difficulty with fine hand movements (such as writing and painting); And if the Flocculus
is damaged, the patient will struggle with eye movements and keeping track of moving things.
Of course, in the case of Spinocerebellar Ataxia (which is the type of Ataxia which Wilkins
suffers from), there might be additional symptoms, caused by damage to the spinal cord. It is
now clear that Wilkins’s symptoms stem from damage to different parts of her Cerebellum. In
addition, Wilkins’s story demonstrates how the functions of the Cerebellum can have

2. tremendous effects on our quality of life, and how coordination of movement plays a much
bigger role in our lives than we might think.
In conclusion, this course has had a great influence on the way that I understand and analyze
human functions and everyday phenomena. It made me appreciate how incredibly complex and
wonderful the human brain is, and it had definitely lit a passion in me to continue and study
neuroscience in the future. Moreover, it seems that I finally have some answers to questions
that always fascinated me, such as how neurons communicate, what each part of the brain is
responsible for, how hearing works, and what is the neurological difference between reflexes
and voluntary movements. I realized how many things can go wrong in the nervous system, and
how amazing it is that, for the most part, it manages to orchestrate the different functions of
our body incredibly well. Even the functions that might seem the most trivial to us, such as
maintaining steady gaze and posture, recognizing familiar faces, or understanding speech, can
be so incredibly complicated and detrimental to human life. Truly, this course had changed the
way that I view the world around me, and it made me appreciate the complexity of our great
nervous system.