Category: Neurology
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Rapid eye movement (REM) parasomnia: A historical review
Jiero VirayAberdeen, Scotland Sleep is a physiological necessity for human life. Humans cycle through two phases of sleep known as rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM).1 Each stage is associated with varying degrees of muscle tone, brain wave activity, and eye movements. A summary characterizing REM versus NREM sleep is shown in…
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The Steve Blass syndrome: A case of the yips
Kevin LoughlinBoston, Massachusetts, United States He was at the pinnacle of his profession: a baseball champion and hero who had pitched two complete game victories in the 1971 World Series, giving up only seven hits and two runs in eighteen innings while winning the deciding seventh game. In his profile of Steve Blass in The…
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Robin Williams: Death from Lewy body dementia
Mary Ellen KellyDublin, Ireland When the death of Robin Williams was announced on August 12, 2014, the world shed a tear. The passing of the acclaimed and adored actor came as a shock to many, the announcement by the Marin County sheriff’s office having specified that the cause of death was suicide and that Mr.…
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Charles Bonnet Syndrome: The landscape of my mind
Ceres Alhelí Otero PenicheMexico City, Mexico Today I awoke feeling hopeless, disconnected from my body and from my thoughts. All I could sense was the void that my loss of vision represented. I kept thinking how beautiful it would be to see clearly as I opened my eyes. Then suddenly the room began to distort.…
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Brain surgery, now and then
Stephen McWilliamsDublin, Ireland In Michael Crichton’s novel The Terminal Man (1972), Harry Benson undergoes brain surgery at the hands of Dr. Roger McPherson, head of the prestigious Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, Los Angeles.1 By implanting electrodes deep in Benson’s brain, McPherson plans to cure him of the violent seizures that require him to be guarded by…
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Leonard Rowntree’s biography of James Parkinson
Vivian McAlisterLondon, Ontario, Canada By the time of his death in 1824, seven years after writing a monograph on the “shaking palsy,” James Parkinson was nearly forgotten.1 Even today, few people know anything about him, despite the fact that his medical eponym is well known. Over 100 years ago, this knowledge gap troubled Leonard Rowntree,…
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Alix Joffroy in Brouillet’s A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière
Lilian GleaveCork, Ireland While some students of Jean-Martin Charcot like Sigmund Freud and Joseph Babinski achieved enduring fame, the legacy of others is just as foundational. In André Brouillet’s 1887 painting A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière,1 a man stands by the window, his head supported by his hand, lit from behind. Some medical historians…
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William Harvey’s neurology
JMS PearceHull, England This distinguished physician, the greatest physiologist the world has seen, and the brightest ornament of our College.—William Munk1 William Harvey (1578–1657) was born in Folkestone, Kent, and attended King’s School Canterbury before proceeding to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He graduated MD from Padua (1602) and FRCP (1607) and was elected physician…
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Book review: Our Brains, Our Selves
Arpan K. Banerjee Solihull, England The world of popular science publishing is replete with neurologists who have been fascinated by the workings of the brain gleaned from the study of neurological disorders in their patients. Famous recent writers of this genre include Oliver Sacks, whose books have provided the public with insights into aspects of…
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The neuroscientific legacy of the Vogt family
Grace O’ConnorRichard BrownHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Introduction Oskar and Cécile Vogt were pioneering neuroscientists who established a brain research center in Berlin, Germany, in the early twentieth century. Their work advanced the field of neuroscience through studies on brain architecture and function, including the mapping of architectonic fields and the study of brain disease pathologies.1…