Talk:Aphagia

Consider adding differential diagnosis

Thank you for your page on Aphagia which was truly helpful. My major concern is that most of the research on swallowing is about dysphagia. You also mentioned that aphagia can develop into dysphagia in some cases. However,it's still quite confusing what are the differences between these two definitions. Maybe you can add some details about the differential diagnosis.Diamondsysu (talk) 03:59, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Middlebury College Assignment

Hello users and editors of Wikipedia,

We are a group of two students from Middlebury College on an assignment to expand this topic as part of a course in Neuroscience. Our work will end officially in December of 2013. We hope you find this information useful.

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Comments

As a person who didn't know what Aphagia was before reading your page, I can say that it was helpful and informative, but the language informality can be improved, and lack of clarity was a bit confusing at times. My first suggestion has to do with clarity. The first sentence of the page makes the reader fully aware of the definition of Aphagia: "Aphagia is the inability or refusal to swallow." However, in the "Classification" section you only discuss behavioral aphagia. If this is true, it should be noted that this behavioral aphagia only takes into account the "refusal to swallow" aspect of the first sentence. You might want to include the 'inability' aspect of aphagia in the classification section, even though it was partially mentioned in the causes section. If research about the 'inability' to swallow is sparse, perhaps mention that this is why you didn't discuss it in the 'Classification' section. In terms of language, you should avoid the second person pronoun "you" and the possessive pronoun "your"; it reads a bit awkwardly/is too colloquial. On another note, it might be helpful to add a little but more content to the treatment section to elaborate on what is said. For example, "Eating slowly and chewing thoroughly" won't necessarily help someone who is truly unable to swallow. What can be done for this person? Even if the answer is "nothing," you should say this. Neuroeditor (talk) 18:29, 26 November 2013 (UTC)


From August H (talk) 20:49, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Heya! Nice work on this page. You did a good job of introducing the different types of aphagia, and of explaining what causes it, how its diagnosed, and how it's treated. Below are my recommendations.

General Content:
Increasing Clarity: Many bullet points in your causes section use technical language, which is hard to understand for the general reader (e.g. "the thymus gland is thought to be necessary for the deletion of auto-reactive T cells, and seems to have an important role in the pathogenesis of myasthenia gravis.") In many cases, the terminology is linked internally, but I don't think this does enough to clarify the meaning of the terminology, especially when there's so much of it so densely packed together. The point of each of the descriptions in the causes section is, after all, to provide clear information regarding the potential causes of aphagia. So I recommend reworking those descriptions that are hard to understand so that they can be comprehended by someone without neuroscience experience, as is the case with the rest of your page.

More Detail: For a number of bullet points in the causes section, there is very little information about the cause (e.g. "Multiple sclerosis - may lead to esophageal dysmotility"). I think it would be best to make sure that each cause addressed receives a brief but complete introduction, revealing both what the cause is and how it's related to aphagia. The same goes for other parts of the page. For example, instead of just stating that surgery is a treatment, explain what kind of surgery is used and how/why it works.

Organization: I think it makes more sense to put the diagnosis section before the treatment section, since a diagnosis tends to come before treatment. You also might consider putting a brief introduction at the beginning of each of those two sections, as you did at the beginning of the causes section, for the sake of consistency.

More Sources: I searched aphagia on google scholar, and compared the results with your citations. I noticed that there were a lot of journal articles available that you did not use, but could provide very interesting additional information. For example, you could use the conclusions of Lateral hypothalamic aphagia: motor failure or motivational deficit? (Rodgers et. al. 1964) in your section on behavioral aphagia to explain that aphagia is not a motor deficit, but a motivational deficit. These conclusions would help to explain why rats act the way you described during the lesion tests that you cited.


Grammar/Wording/Formatting Details:
Commas/Periods/Bullet Points: In the third sentence, there should be a comma after "dysphagia." Also, you are missing periods at the end of the "globus pharynges" and "multiple sclerosis" bullet points. And the sentence in the causes section which begins with "minor, and non-specific…" does not have its own bullet point. I'd suggest giving it its own bullet point, and/or moving it to a bullet point where it fits in.

Spelling: In the first paragraph, "effected" should be "affected." In the Globus Pharyngis bullet point, "refereed" should be "referred."

Capitalization: Regarding the bullet points in the causes section, sometimes the first word after the dash is capitalized, and sometimes it is not. For the sake of consistency, I recommend un-capitalizing the capitalized words. Also, in the esophageal cancer bullet point, "adenocarcinoma" should not be capitalized, nor should the first "squamous."

Rewording: I recommend replacing "result from" in the first sentence of the classification section with something else. I also recommend rewording the introduction to the "causes" section; it comes across as a bit awkward. I think the second sentence might sound better, for example, if you replaced it with something like, "The most common causes of aphagia are:" Furthermore, in the final bullet point for the causes section the parenthetical "except due to the damage of the lateral hypothalamus" is very awkward in the context of the sentence. I suggest rephrasing it.

Sentence Fragments: The last phrase of the last sentence of the Behavioral Aphagia section ("see causes") is a fragment. The second sentence of the esophageal cancer bullet point is a fragment too. One way you could fix this second fragment is to turn the period of the first sentence into a colon.

Internal Links: The meaning of "lesion," which you use in the first sentence of the classification section, may not be clear to most people. I recommend making it an internal link (and briefly explaining its meaning). In the esophageal cancer bullet point, you might consider turning the first squamous, rather than the second, into an internal link. Also, Wikipedia has a "Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy" page, so you should be able to do an internal link to that page, as opposed to the "muscular dystrophy" page, which is what you're currently linking to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by August H (talk • contribs) 20:43, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Comment 1

By explicating the derivation of this word, you allowed for a concise definition of this topic. You could possibly delve into the role the hippocampus plays in this disorder and how that is related to the rat experiment. You could also expand on the surgical options available to those who have aphagia. That would reveal where this problem is found and how it can be solved. Your organization is stellar and you give a developed description of this interesting disorder. Cmeagher (talk) 16:15, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Comment 2

Hi, this article has a lot of useful information. One of the suggestions that I have would be to slightly change the formatting of your page to make it more fluid by representing your information in paragraphs rather than bullet points. Also, I would change some of the wording in your article. Rather than saying “you” I would use third person in order to make the article more professional. Alexandraf51895 (talk) 16:49, 26 November 2013 (UTC)