Do you suffer from Exploding Head Syndrome?
Plus King Tut's weirdly shaped head, why kids might suffer from COVID-19 less than adults, sea-level rise in Mumbai and Kolkata, lab-grown brains, predicting protein shapes, and how to plants trees
Do you suffer from Exploding Head Syndrome?
I’m not referring satirically to a condition in which you mind is blown metaphorically by the awesomeness of new information (such as the stuff I am about to share), but an actual medical condition.
What is Exploding Head Syndrome?
As far as we know no actual physical damage to the brain occurs in Exploding Head Syndrome. The condition was first described in scientific literature by the American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell in 1876. The name came much later, in an article in the Lancet in 1988. It was categorized as an actual sleep disorder in 2005. Here’s a recent review that describes the condition:
Exploding head syndrome (EHS) is a benign parasomnia characterized by the perception of a loud sound while asleep, which leads to abrupt awakening. These events occur during the wake-sleep/sleep-wake transition period and generally last less than a second. Events are often accompanied by flashes of light and patient distress, but there is no significant associated pain. The sounds have most commonly been described as explosions, gunshots, or thunder but can be almost any loud noise. The events occur with variable frequency, and there may be prolonged remission between episodes.
The phenomenon is often frightening to those who are unaware of its benign nature. Patients may initially fear a more ominous cause is responsible for the sounds, such as a stroke, brain tumor, or brain hemorrhage. These concerns are the reasons many seek medical evaluations. It is an underdiagnosed and under-reported syndrome because patients may feel embarrassed about their symptoms, and healthcare providers may not be familiar with the diagnosis.
If you have experienced a loud, explosive sound in a state of relaxation just as you were about to sleep, then you may have Exploding Head Syndrome.
It’s not very clear how many people suffer from Exploding Head Syndrome, but estimates range up to 10% of adults. Earlier reports also seemed to indicate that more women suffer from it than men, and that it is more likely as you get older, but this is being challenged by researchers.
There’s no “cure” for it, but experts seem to think that it is harmless (unless it interferes with a good night’s sleep or causes panic attacks).
Proteins to the Rescue
DeepMind's AI team has cracked a major biological problem unsolved for half a century— trying to deduce the structure of a protein from just its amino acid sequence. This is being heralded as the most major contribution of AI to science so far,.
My column this week at Hindustan Times explains in simple terms what it means and why you should care. You can read it here (and you can click skip to read past the first two paragraphs).
Sea-level Rise is Scary
The effects of the climate crisis are already visible, but things are about to get worse. And as I mentioned in my column last week, climate change is not like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here’s a visualization of what Mumbai might look like at sometime in the future based on current climate models at Surging Seas.
Note that the upper boundary of the Paris target is around 2 degree which we will likely blow past unless we seriously reduce carbon emissions.
(Map via Google Earth, based on data at Surging Seas)
Mumbai at 2 degree temperature change.
Mumbai at 4 degree temperature change.
These are very scary photographs and maps.
Much of West Bengal and Bangladesh will also be also vulnerable to annual floods. Climate Central has created this annual flood level map for 2050 for Kolkata and South Bengal.
(Red= below water level).
The bottomline is sea-level rise is scary and we have to do something about it before all the ice in Greenland and western Antarctica melts.
Tree planting done right is one solution
Fortunately, there are some some solutions to capturing carbon that might help. Planting trees won’t offset all our emissions, but will definitely be one of the needed strategies.
But there’s a right way and a wrong way to plant trees. Trees must be suited to the environment and taken care of properly.
Here are a couple of very good articles about how tree planting can do more harm than good if not done right at MongaBay by Shreya Dasgupta, and at Yale’s Environment 360 blog by Adam Welz.
And here’s an article on how trees capture carbon and how they release it.
Here are some ideas on how we can improve tree-planting outcomes.
Key guidelines to successfully increase tree cover include: (a) first addressing the underlying drivers of deforestation; (b) integrating decision-making across scales from local to global; (c) tailoring tree planting strategies to clearly stated project goals and planning, adaptively managing and evaluating success over a long timeframe; (d) focusing on the forest ecosystem as a whole, and not just the trees; (e) coordinating different land uses and (f) stakeholders involving all stages of the planning process.
And a tree-island approach might work better than massive plantations with respect to forest restoration according to these authors.
Happy Tree Planting!
What else I’ve read:
Kid's noses have cells that are good at detecting viruses and this may (in part) explain why they're good at clearing SARS-CoV-2 compared to adults.
Brains grown in a lab (organoids) can organize and form primitive eyes that can detect light after about 60 days.
With increasing temperatures, there may be greater yields of crop plants in higher latitudes (like Canada, Russia) but as I have been going on and on about in columns and tweets, yields may be lost to fungal diseases. This study made the cover of Nature Climate Change this month.
Now for a couple of books:
The Power of Mathematical Thinking should be required reading for everyone, even if you didn’t enjoy maths in school. Highly recommended.
Here’s one that doesn’t have anything to do with science (for a change). I really enjoyed reading Simon Kuper’s timely book on the rise and fall of FC Barcelona. Despite what it says on the title of the American version, there’s very little about Messi here. The book has more to do with Cruyff and Guardiola and the rise of the club than anything else.
King Tut’s Flat Head
“Artificial cranial deformation, or head binding, is a practice carried out by cultures all over the world, and throughout time.”
This video explains why King Tut had a flat head.