the.com/ganglion
a knot of nerves, or a knot of fluid—and your knuckles can't always tell which
means A ganglion is either a cluster of nerve cell bodies bundled together outside the brain and spinal cord, or—in a quite different sense—a fluid-filled cyst that swells up near a joint or tendon, often on the wrist.
from From Greek 'ganglion,' a word the old physicians used for a knot or swelling under the skin—particularly the kind that bulged near a tendon. Galen, the great Greek-Roman doctor, applied it to such lumps, and centuries later anatomists borrowed the same word for nerve clusters that looked, to the eye, like little knots along the body's wiring. So one word came to wear two coats: the surgeon's cyst and the anatomist's nerve-knot, both honoring that original sense of a swelling tied up tight.
- old fix
- doctors once smashed wrist cysts with a heavy book
- name origin
- Greek for knot or swelling under skin
- insect brains
- bugs run mostly on segmented ganglia, no central boss
- sometimes vanish
- ganglion cysts often disappear on their own
- squid genius
- octopus arms think via their own nerve ganglia
baker's cyst — ganglion cyst behind the knee, affects up to 5% of population
wrist ganglion cyst — most common ganglion, occurs in 60-70% of cases on dorsal wrist
superior cervical ganglion — nerve cluster in neck controlling pupil dilation and facial blood flow