![]() ![]() What we found was it actually isn’t rare. ![]() So in order to test that out I interviewed, along with my grad students, over two hundred people using a clinical interview I developed. ![]() The clinical lore said that it was essentially a rare disorder that only occurred in people over the age of fifty. There’s been so little research on it we really don’t know if it’s increasing or decreasing. Sharpless: I was able to find some descriptions of it going back as early as 1876. So, it’s certainly an attention grabber.īenson: So yes, the name is unusual, but Sharpless says exploding head syndrome is more widespread than most people think. If you go back to Silas where Mitchell’s original descriptions in 1876, he called them sensory discharges. In the 1920s it was called a snapping of the brain. If you go through the literature it’s been called various things and they’ve all been fairly dramatic. Sharpless is assistant professor of psychology at Washington State University and author of the book “Sleep Paralysis.”īrian Sharpless: It’s certainly a dramatic name and it was coined by an English psychiatrist by the name of J.M.S. Brian Sharpless says the name is what everyone remembers. Kind of feel like it should have a better name but it hasn’t come around to that yet.īenson: But Dr. It is a little disconcerting when you have it, when your head explodes in the middle of the night. It kind of makes it sound silly or like a weird sci-fi movie or something. Michka: It kind of almost trivializes it, the name. The name of the syndrome is obviously colorful, but Michka isn’t so sure that’s a good thing. You swear you heard it, and get up to investigate, but eventually realize… it was all in your head. Just when you’re falling asleep, you hear a loud crash or banging noise that startles you awake. Nothing fell, nothing had happened, I had no idea what it was.īenson: And that is exploding head syndrome. Couldn’t find anything so I thought I’ll wait till the morning see what happened and the kids seemed okay so I just went back to bed and in the morning there was nothing. Michka: I bolted up in bed and grabbed the flashlight that I have and I started sneaking around the upstairs trying to find what had fallen because it was a loud crash. I mean, I don’t know what it was because it was a loud crash.īenson: That’s Walter Michka, a health blogger who has experienced exploding head syndrome. In my mind I’m picturing shelves falling, books falling, falling onto children. And I was totally positive that something had fallen in the kids’ bedroom. Walter Michka: Sound asleep, middle of the night, all of a sudden there’s this huge crashing sound that I hear. It’s not as scary as its name suggests, but exploding head syndrome is a real disorder… And it can be problematic. But when someone says they experience something called “exploding head syndrome,” you might imagine a scene from a Stephen King novel. Nancy Benson: The range of maladies people may suffer is incredibly wide, from minor inconveniences to life-threatening. ![]()
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