Neurological symptoms can be subtle and sometimes specific. In general, you may feel unsure of your balance or less coordinated in your movements. Walking down a slight incline on your driveway might take an effort that it never did before. You might trip and fall more than once, although this never happened to you before.
Some Lyme effects are very specific. For example, the Lyme bacteria may affect one or more of your cranial nerves. These are the 12 pairs of nerves that come from your brain to your head and neck area. If the bacteria invade the facial nerve (the seventh cranial nerve), you can develop muscle weakness or paralysis on one or both sides of your face. This palsy is sometimes mistakenly called Bell’s palsy. Lyme disease is one of the few illnesses that cause palsies on both sides of the face. Or you may have numbness and tingling on your face.
Other affected cranial nerves can cause loss of taste and smell. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study of 248,074 reported Lyme disease cases nationwide from 1992 to 2006 found that 12 percent of Lyme patients had cranial nerve symptoms (9).
As the Lyme bacteria spread through the nervous system, they can inflame the tissues where the brain and spinal cord meet (the meninges).
Some of the common symptoms of Lyme meningitis are neck pain or stiffness, headache, and light sensitivity. Encephalopathy, which alters your mental state, is less common. These neurological symptoms occur in about 10 percent of adult individuals with untreated Lyme disease (18).