Wernicke syndrome is an ambiguous term. It may refer to:
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Wernicke aphasia: the eponymous term for receptive or sensory aphasia.
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Wernicke encephalopathy
Wernicke encephalopathy (WE), also Wernicke's encephalopathy, or wet brain is the presence of neurological symptoms caused by biochemical lesions of the central nervous system after exhaustion of B-vitamin reserves, in particular thiamine (vita ...
: an acute neurological syndrome of ophthalmoparesis, ataxia, and encephalopathy brought on by thiamine deficiency.
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Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome
Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome (WKS) is the combined presence of Wernicke encephalopathy (WE) and Korsakoff syndrome. Due to the close relationship between these two disorders, people with either are usually diagnosed with WKS as a single syndrome ...
, also called Korsakoff psychosis: a subacute dementia syndrome, often following Wernicke encephalopathy, characterized clinically by confabulation and clinicopathologically correlated with degeneration of the mammillary bodies.
See also
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Carl Wernicke
Carl (or Karl) Wernicke (; ; 15 May 1848 – 15 June 1905) was a German physician, anatomist, psychiatrist and neuropathologist. He is known for his influential research into the pathological effects of specific forms of encephalopathy and also t ...
(1848–1905), the neurologist who described all of these syndromes.
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Wernicke's area
Wernicke's area (; ), also called Wernicke's speech area, is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex that are linked to speech, the other being Broca's area. It is involved in the comprehension of written and spoken language, in contrast to B ...
, named after Carl Wernicke, a brain region associated with the understanding of written and spoken language.
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