Rare Condition: The Walking Dead

There are indeed certain things that beat the imagination. There are people who go through terrible sufferings and sometimes wish they were dead. That’s explainable. But a situation where one thinks and strongly believes that he is dead beats the imagination.

Imagine waking up to discover you were dead. A man identified as Graham suffering from a rare condition that caused him to think he was dead has spoken about the experience to NewScientist magazine.

The rare condition known as Cotard’s Syndrome, Cotard Delusion or Walking Corpse Syndrome is a mental disorder in which people hold a delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, are putrefying, or have lost their blood or internal organs. In rare instances, it can include delusions of immortality.

Some Reported Cases

 In 1788, Charles Bonnet reported one of the earliest recorded cases of Cotard’s Delusion. An elderly woman was preparing a meal when she felt a draft and then became paralyzed on one side of her body. When feeling, movement, and the ability to speak came back to her, she told her daughters to dress her in a shroud and place her in a coffin. For days she continued to demand that her daughters, friends, and maid treat her like she was dead. They finally gave in, putting her in a shroud and laying her out so they could “mourn” her. Even at the “wake,” the lady continued to fuss with her shroud and complain about its color.

Some 100 years later, French neurologist Jules Cotard saw a patient with an unusual complaint. Mademoiselle X, as Cotard called her in his notes, claimed to have “no brain, no nerves, no chest, no stomach and no intestines.” Despite this predicament, she also believed that she “was eternal and would live forever.” Since she was immortal, and didn’t have any innards anyway, she didn’t see a need to eat, and soon died of starvation. Cotard’s description of the woman’s condition spread widely and was very influential, and the disorder was eventually named after him.

In Graham’s case mentioned above, he felt like his “brain didn't exist anymore.” He insisted that the tablets administered by the doctors weren't going to do any good because he didn't have a brain. “I'd fried it in the bath”, he said. The feeling prompted him on occasion to visit the local graveyard. "I just felt I might as well stay there. It was the closest I could get to death. The police would come and get me, though, and take me back home”, he said

Symptoms

The central symptom in Cotard's syndrome is the delusion of negation. Those who suffer from this illness often deny that they exist or that a certain portion of their body exists. Cotard's syndrome has been found to have three distinct stages. In the first stage referred to as Germination, patients exhibit psychotic depression and hypochondriacal symptoms. The second stage called Blooming is characterized by the full blown development of the syndrome and the delusions of negation. The third and Chronic stage is characterized by severe delusions and chronic depression.

People with the Cotard Delusion often become withdrawn from others and they tend to neglect their own hygiene and well-being. The delusion makes it impossible for patients to make sense of reality, which results in an extremely distorted view of the world.

Neurologist took a peek into the brain of Graham mentioned above, monitored metabolism across his brain and found some explanation. It was discovered that metabolic activity across large areas of the frontal and parietal brain regions was so low that it resembled that of someone in a vegetative state.

Treatment

There are several reports of successful pharmacological treatment. Monotherapeutic and combination strategies are both reported. Antidepressants, antipsychotics and mood stabilizers are used. Many report positive effect with electroconvulsive therapy, mostly in combination with pharmacotherapy

Picture of the day: the immortal jelly fish

The Immortal Jelly Fish or Turritopsis nutricula is the oldest living animal one of the strangest in the animal kingdom. You may think that the name is just for fun or that the animal can boast of living for perhaps a few hundred years. You’d be surprised to know that the name is literal and the immortal jelly fish can theoretically live forever.

Most jellyfish species have a relatively fixed life span, which varies by species from hours to many months. But not the immortal jelly fish. This organism has the ability, at any stage in its life, to completely transform back into a polyp, its earliest stage of life through a process called transdifferentiation. The immortal jellyfish doesn't die; it merely regenerates its cells in a younger stage, then ages naturally again.

That doesn't mean all Turritopsis nutricula can go on living forever; the species is a small invertebrate in the ocean, and can be a victim to any of the horrible things that can befall such creatures, from being eaten or succumbing to disease. But it does not erase the fact that it is biologically capable of immortality.

Few People Wash Their Hands Correctly

This image contains just eleven words with a serious message.

Many individuals take hand washing for granted especially when the behavior in which they engage requires or warrants it.

A recent study from Michigan State University sneakily observed 3,749 people in public restrooms and the results are scary!

Many people – as much as 95percent of those observed- did not wash their hands long enough to kill germs.

It was also observed that 15percent of men and 7percent of women did not wash their hands at all and amongst those that attempted to wash, half of the men and 22 percent of women neglected to use soap!

What is the correct way to wash the hands?

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you need to wash your hands with soap for at least 20seconds to kill germs. The people in this study only washed their hands for an average of 6 seconds.

Where do you belong? With the 95percent majority or the minute 5percent that wash correctly?

Failing to wash or insufficiently washing of hands contributes to the spread of food-borne illness and it is known that washing the hands with soap can reduce diarrheal disease risk. Yet, why many skip this important part of hygiene is not known.

Imagine the number of hands you shake. Combine that with the fact that many of the people you meet don’t wash their hands after using the restroom. Who knows the amount of poop that must have been exchanged!

This study found lots of other interesting tidbits about hand-washing habits that include;

          People were more likely to wash their hands in the morning

          People were less like to wash their hands if the sink was dirty

          People were more likely to wash their hands if there was sign to remind them

Discovery of a New Human Body Part

A previously unknown human body part hidden in the eye has been discovered by Harminder Dua a professor of ophthalmologist and visual sciences, at the University of Nottingham. The new body part is named after the discoverer and is called Dua’s Layer.

Dua's layer is just 15 microns thick and sits at the back of the cornea, which previously had only five known layers. Dua and his colleagues discovered the new body part by injecting air into the corneas of eyes that had been donated for research and using an electron microscope to scan each separated layer.

As regards its function, it is believed that the Dua’s layer helps keep fluid from building up in the cornea. A tear in Dua's layer is the cause of corneal hydrops, a disorder that leads to fluid buildup in the cornea.

According to Popular Science, knowledge of the new layer "could dramatically improve outcomes for patients undergoing corneal grafts and transplants." Because when you're gently knifing into the eyeball with a scalpel, it's probably a good idea to know exactly what you're cutting into.

Dua himself noted it is a major discovery that will mean ophthalmology textbooks will literally need to be re-written

Details of the discovery appeared in the journal Ophthalmology

Health Care Workers Be On The Lookout For MERS

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

The World Health Organisation has advised health care workers to be on the alert for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The disease emerged in 2012 in Saudi Arabia and is caused by a Coronavirus related to the one that causes SARS.

So far, 55 cases had been confirmed, 31 of which were fatal. Most of the cases were in four Middle Eastern countries, 40 occurring in Saudi Arabia. The WHO urged all countries in the Middle East to urgently intensify their surveillance efforts for infection by the virus.

International concerns about these infections  are high, because it is possible for this virus to move around the world. There have been several examples where the virus has moved from one country to another through travelers.

Large gaps in our knowledge about this virus remain and the route of infection remains unknown, though the first case of person-to-person transmission occurred in France in April.

“All countries in the world need to ensure that their healthcare workers are aware of the virus and the disease it can cause, and that when unexplained cases of pneumonia are identified, MERS should be considered,” said the World Health Organisation following a summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Currently, the diagnosis of MERS relies heavily on clinical awareness combined with confirmatory testing for the presence of the causative agent by the polymerase chain reaction.

The ‘Evil’ of Sleep Paralysis

You wake up in the morning to discover that you cannot move a muscle; you find your body completely paralyzed. You tried to speak but no words seem to come out of your mouth, the words that eventually part your lips seem so faint to be heard by anyone. It feels so unreal yet real at the same time. In the mix of all that terror you notice an evil presence in your room and a sense of weight upon your chest causing you to suffocate and threatening you with death. You try to react and defend yourself but you can’t due to the paralysis. After a while, you regain movement in the muscles and discover there’s nobody in the room with you but the shock of the event leaves you quite terrified and distressed.

This weird phenomenon is known as sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is a temporary inability to move or speak that happens when you are waking up or, less commonly, falling asleep. Although you are awake, your body is briefly paralyzed. In some cases, hallucinations are present, and the sufferer feels that someone or something is in the room with them, some experience the feeling that someone or something is sitting on their chest and they feel impending death and suffocation.

The paralysis can last from a few seconds to several minutes. After this, you will be able to move and speak as normal. An unsettling feeling may come over you and you may become anxious. The condition does not however pose a risk to general overall health. It has been linked to disorders such as narcolepsy, migraines, anxiety disorders, and obstructive sleep apnea; however, it can occur in isolation. Many people only experience sleep paralysis once or twice in their life. If it happens several times in a month or more regularly, it is known as isolated sleep paralysis.

What Happens During Sleep Paralysis?

To better understand what happens during sleep paralysis, a little knowledge of what usually happens when you are asleep is important. Sleep occurs in cycles and each cycle is split into two phases – rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and the non-REM sleep.

The brain is usually very active during REM sleep and most dreams occur at this stage. Also, during REM sleep, the body is paralyzed apart from the movement of the eyes and the diaphragm (the muscle that controls breathing) the paralysis is thought to occur to prevent you acting out the actions in your dreams.

Sleep paralysis occurs when the normal muscular paralysis of REM sleep temporarily continues after you have woken up.

Causes

Several circumstances have been identified that are associated with an increased risk of sleep paralysis. These include insomnia and sleep deprivation, sleeping in unfamiliar or spooky place or in an environment that is too hot or cold, an erratic sleep schedule, sleeping in the supine position(on the back), stress, overuse of stimulants, physical fatigue as well as certain medications. It is also believed that there may be a genetic component in the development of sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is also known to be more common in teenagers and young adults.

Is It Really Evil Spirits?

All over the world, sleep paralysis always had a supernatural explanation which seemed to be evil in almost all cultures. People have always thought of sleep paralysis as stemming from an evil source. It has been given different names and various explanations.

In New Guinea, for example, people refer to this phenomenon as Suk Nimyo, believed to originate from sacred trees that use human essence to sustain its life. The trees are said to feed on human essence during the night so as not to disturb the human’s daily life, but sometimes people wake unnaturally during the feeding, resulting in the paralysis.

In Korean culture, sleep paralysis is called gawi nulim, which translates to “being pressed down by a ghost”.

In Nigeria, sleep paralysis is often associated with witchcraft and demon attack. It is referred within African communities as “the Devil on your back”.

Treatment

Sleep paralysis is more common in people who are sleep deprived, so getting enough sleep may help reduce the number of episodes of sleep paralysis. Most adults need 6-8 hours of sleep each night. Keeping a regular sleep schedule where you go to bed at roughly the same time each night and get up at the same time each morning, can also help. The safest treatment for sleep paralysis is for people to adopt healthier sleeping habits. However, in serious cases more clinical treatments should be sought.

Terror after an episode

Waking up to realize that you cannot move or speak can be a terrifying experience especially when it is accompanied with hallucinations and feelings of breathlessness. A new research found that people were most distressed after an episode when hallucinations felt threatening and when they held supernatural beliefs regarding sleep paralysis.

The research also suggests that understanding why it happens helps people feel less distressed after an episode.Believing that sleep paralysis is brought on by the supernatural, on the other hand, makes people feel more unnerved.

Even though not everyone will accept or experience relief from naturalistic interpretation, thinking away the fear and accepting a naturalistic or scientific explanation can help to reduce the terror after an episode.

A Chance to Put Your Name and a Message in Mars

NASA has invited the general public to submit their names and a personal message online for a DVD to be carried aboard a spacecraft to mars. The DVD will be aboard the NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft which is supposed to study Martian upper atmosphere and is set to launch in November.

The DVD will carry every name submitted. The public is also encouraged to submit a message in the form of a three-line poem or haiku. However, only three haikus will be selected. The top three most popular messages will be sent to mars and will be prominently displayed on the MAVEN website. The dead line for all submissions is July 1. An online public to vote the top three messages to place on the DVD will begin July 15.

The going to Mars campaign offers people worldwide a way to make a personal connection to space, space exploration, and science in general, and share our excitement.

Participants who submit their names to the Going to Mars campaign will be able to print a certificate of appreciation to document their involvement with the MAVEN mission.

MAVEN is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The spacecraft hopes to investigate how the loss of Mars’ atmosphere to space determined the history of water on the surface.

To participate in the Going to Mars campaign, visit

http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/goingtomars

Is The Earth Beautiful? Take a Look and See for Yourself: Images of the Earth from NASA Satellites

How do you define beauty? Which of your senses do you employ to determine whether an object is beautiful or not? Beauty they say is in the eye of the beholder. From that statement, we can imply that our eyes are needed to tell if a thing is beautiful or not.  

Many of us claim that the earth is beautiful but how many of us have in the true sense of the word 'seen' the earth? We may not all have the opportunity to travel into space and look gaze upon the earth to answer that question, but there is now opportunity to view the earth in pictures, thanks to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NASA has released a 158-page free eBook called “Earth as Art” in which the agency presents images of our planet taken by various NASA satellites since 1960. It covers satellite pictures from around the world.

The book features images from the different continents. Take note however that the satellites can measure outside the visible range of light, so these images show more than what is visible to the naked eye.

Take a look at planet earth and see for yourself how beautiful she is. Download  “Earth as Art” free eBook version (pdf) 

 

 

Can You Eat 60 Day Old Bread?

It is said to be the best thing after sliced bread. It’s bread that can last for 60 days. An American company called Microzap says it has developed a technique that will keep bread mould free for two months. Under normal circumstances, bread will go mouldy around 10 days, but the Texas-based company, uses a special microwave that kills the mold spores in your bread in 10 seconds. Now that bread that goes bad in 10 days will last for about 60 mold-free days.

The bread is zapped in a sophisticated microwave array which kills the spores that cause the problem. The equipment was originally developed to kill organisms like multi-resistant staph bacteria and salmonella. But its developers realized it also kills bread mold in about a 10-second zap. It works much like a home microwave, but the waves are produced in various frequencies, which allows for uniform heating.
The company claims it could significantly reduce the amount of wasted bread and the technique can also be used with a wide range of foods including fresh turkey and many fruits and vegetables.
One of the biggest threats to bread is mould. As loaves are usually wrapped in plastic, any water in the bread that evaporates from within is trapped and makes the surface moist. This provides excellent growing conditions for Rhizopus stolonifer, the fungus that leads to mould.
The technology could also impact bread in other ways. Bread manufacturers add lots of preservatives to try and fight mould, but then add extra chemicals to mask the taste of the preservatives. If bakers were able to use the microwave technology, they would be able to avoid these additives.
The company's device has attracted plenty of interest from bread manufacturers - but it is worried that it could push up costs. And there is also a concern that consumers might not take to bread that lasts for so long.

Extended Sleep Increases Alertness and Reduces Pain Sensitivity

Lots of research has been carried out concerning sleep and more is still being done. The various results we’ve had always point to the fact that adequate sleep is essential for us to live a healthy life. We know of the importance of sleep when it comes to learning and memory: sleep helps the brain commit new information to memory. People who’d slept after learning a task did better on tests later. Sleep deprivation may cause weight gain by affecting the way our bodies process and store carbohydrates. We know that the troubles of not having adequate sleep can affect our safety, mood and increase our susceptibility to diseases.

A new study however, has brought a new dimension to the sleep and healthiness issue by observing for the first time the relationship between amount of night-time sleep to daytime alertness and pain sensitivity. The study suggests that extending nightly sleep in mildly sleepy, healthy adults increases daytime alertness and reduces pain sensitivity. The research suggests how important it is for people with chronic pain conditions and even those going for a surgical operation to have adequate sleep.

The study, appearing in the December issue of the journal SLEEP, involved 18 healthy, pain-free, sleepy volunteers. They were randomly assigned to four nights of either maintaining their habitual sleep time or extending their sleep time by spending 10 hours in bed per night. Objective daytime sleepiness was measured using the multiple sleep latency test (MSLT), and pain sensitivity was assessed using a radiant heat stimulus.

Results show that the extended sleep group slept 1.8 hours more per night than the habitual sleep group. This nightly increase in sleep time during the four experimental nights was correlated with increased daytime alertness, which was associated with less pain sensitivity.
In the extended sleep group, the length of time before participants removed their finger from a radiant heat source increased by 25 percent, reflecting a reduction in pain sensitivity. The authors report that the magnitude of this increase in finger withdrawal latency is greater than the effect found in a previous study of 60 mg of codeine.

The results, combined with data from previous research, suggest that increased pain sensitivity in sleepy individuals is the result of their underlying sleepiness.