what does it feel like to die in an explosion
'I have exploding caput syndrome'
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Thinkstock
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Information technology's foreign, unpleasant and surprisingly common. Helen Thomson talks to a man whose caput regularly 'explodes', and discovers how the condition might explain some unexpected experiences, perhaps even alien abductions.
"At that place's this sudden crescendo of noise, then a profound and jarring explosion of audio, electrical fizzing and a vivid flash in my vision, like someone has lit a spotlight in forepart of my face."
That'due south how Niels Nielsen describes what it's like to live with "exploding head syndrome" – an unpleasant and sometimes terrifying awareness. Others describe information technology equally similar a bomb going off next to their head as they fall asleep. Sometimes it occurs just once in a lifetime, for others it happens multiple times a night.
The doc Silas Weir Mitchell kickoff described the disorder in 1876, when he described ii men who suffered from what he called "sensory discharges" – the men themselves described it equally hearing "loud bells" or a "gunshot" that would wake them from slumber. Just despite its provocative and intriguing name, there has been relatively little inquiry into the disorder. At that place'due south now a theory, nonetheless, that the condition and related slumber disturbances may help explain apparently unrelated cultural phenomena, specifically the origins of alien abductions, government conspiracy theories, and supernatural demons.
So what do we know about this nocturnal feel? Well, it may non be as rare as you might think. In a written report published last month, 211 students were asked whether they had ever experienced the status – 18% said yes. However, this sample is probably not reflective of its true prevalence since students are prone to lack of sleep – a gene known to increase the risk of experiencing the phenomenon.
Merely how common is exploding head syndrome? (Credit: Thinkstock)
"If you have whatever sort of sleep disruption like insomnia or jetlag, then you lot might be more likely to experience the condition," says Brian Sharpless, banana professor of psychology at Washington Country University, who led the study. "Stress and emotional tension are also associated with an increased occurrence."
Sudden shut down
Theories virtually the crusade of an exploding caput are speculative, says Sharpless. Several ideas accept been proposed, including ear disorders and partial epileptic seizures. Just the most compelling theory comes from a handful of studies in which people with the condition have had their brain activity monitored overnight. These small studies advise that there may be a burst of neural activity in the encephalon that coincides with the reported explosion.
Normally, when we go to sleep our body shuts down and becomes paralysed so that nosotros don't act out our dreams. During this transition from wake to sleep, the brain usually turns off chip by bit, says Sharpless.
Notwithstanding, in exploding head syndrome, there is a hiccup in the 'reticular formation' – the part of the brain responsible for overseeing this full general shut-down – which results in a delay in switching off some areas.
This delay is associated with a suppression of alpha brainwaves that are normally responsible for drowsiness, and a sudden burst of neural activeness in the areas of the encephalon responsible for processing sound. "Nosotros recall the neurons are all firing at once," he says, which results in the sensation of an explosion in your caput.
Suppression of the brain's alpha waves may partly assist explicate the condition (Credit: SPL)
"This theory makes sense to me," says Nielsen. "It has always felt electrical in its nature. The sensation of an explosion is accompanied with a very loud sound in both my ears, equally if you lot've crossed 2 wires in a excursion and zapped them together."
Sharpless says some people also feel an aureola of electric sensations that moves from the lower torso to the head, immediately before the explosion strikes. "It feels like an electric shock," says Nielsen. "You can feel the current passing through you."
While at that place is no cure-all treatment, antidepressants reduce occurrence, equally do relaxation and stress-busting techniques. "Y'all tin help a lot only by reassuring a person that they're non crazy or experiencing symptoms of a tumour or some other brain disorder," says Sharpless.
Could reports of alien abductions be downwardly to a quirk of the sleepy brain? (Credit: Thinkstock)
But what has this got to do with conflicting abductions and supernatural beings? Exploding head syndrome is oftentimes linked with sleep paralysis – people who experience 1 often experience the other. Sleep paralysis is some other chilling sleep disorder in which you feel like you are awake but yous can't move your torso. Sharpless thinks that the ii could explicate several apparently supernatural events.
Both sleep paralysis and exploding head syndrome appear to share an underlying problem in the transition between wakefulness and slumber. In sleep paralysis, parts of your brain are in REM sleep – the fourth dimension in which we dream the most – while other parts of your consciousness have woken up. "And so you lot become the trunk paralysis and the dream content of REM sleep, but you lot're conscious," says Sharpless. "It's like having a dream while you lot're awake. The scary thing is that you hear things and experience things every bit real as they are during the solar day, only what's going on is completely hallucinatory."
Consider the case of Haruko Matsuda (not her real name), a young Japanese woman, who ofttimes experiences sleep paralysis. She described a typical night to Sharpless: "I felt something push on my chest so I opened my eyes. I heard someone yelling… and it sounded similar it was coming from right beside my ear," she said. "I thought it was a ghost or something. Information technology was yelling 'I'm gonna kill yous!'. I couldn't move, and I was and so scared…"
In 1781, Henry Fuseli depicted the thought of a demon sitting on a woman's chest, in The Nightmare (Credit: Henri Fuseli/Wikipedia)
In the Middle Ages, Matsuda'due south symptoms could have been attributed to male or female demons – incubi and succubi – who would sit on people's chests and seduce them into having sexual intercourse. More recently, people evidently frozen and dazzled during the nighttime take blamed the experience on alien abduction.
Take a look at these supernatural or alien stories, says Sharpless, and sometimes y'all can meet hints of both slumber paralysis and exploding head syndrome. "People tin sense these foreign explosions in their head, and they may recollect they've had something implanted in their brain. Or they experience this surge of electricity and they think they've been shot by some kind of new free energy weapon. They can't move, simply hear and encounter foreign things and remember they've been abducted."
Nielsen, who is now a psychiatrist, says he has had episodes of exploding head syndrome every few months since he was 10 years one-time, and has experienced sleep paralysis twice – but his scientific mind helped prevent whatsoever anxiety over them. "I've always had a trend to think nearly things scientifically, and then even as a teenager I explained it to myself every bit 'oh something electric is happening in my brain', without making besides much out of it," he says. "They don't bother me at all, but if someone already has a tendency to wonder almost paranormal things, I tin can definitely meet how they could gravitate towards a supernatural explanation."
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Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150409-i-have-exploding-head-syndrome
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