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Urine leakage and bladder emptying problems can be caused by damage to the central nervous system. Your nervous system is located in your brain and spinal cord.
Communication between brain and bladder
1. Cerebral Micturition Centre
2. Pontine Micturition Centre
3. Spinal Cord
4. Sacral Reflex Centre
5. Pelvic nerve
6. Pudendal nerve
7. Urethra
8. Sphincter
9. Pelvic floor
10. Bladder
11. Hypogastric nerve
Your spinal cord is about as thick as a finger and is very delicate. It lies in a fluid-filled canal in your vertebral column, in other words the spine itself. You have the same kind of nerve cells in your spinal cord as in your brain. These cells send signals along long neural paths to your muscles and receive signals from your tactile orgns, for example your skin.
If your spinal cord or brain is damaged, these signals cannot get through to you brain or nerve centre. This disrupts their interplay.
If the link between your bladder and the nervous system that controls your bladder is broken, you experience what is known as a neurogenic bladder dysfunction.
The extent of this bladder dysfunction depends on where in the nervous system the damage has occurred. It is also affected by whether this damage is complete or incomplete, that is to say if all the neural paths have been broken or if some still function.
An injury can also afflict the so called sacral nerve roots or the peripheral nerves. This often results in a dysfunction in the bladder's filling and emptying phase. A person with a damaged spinal cord will experience problems both with bladder emptying and urine leakage.
Depending on where the damage is located and how extensive it is, the following bladder problems may be experienced:
- cerebral uninhibited bladder
- upper motor neuron damage or reflex bladder
- lower motor neuron damage or autonomous bladder
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