Notes for Bessel Van Der Kolk Discussing Trauma (author of The Body Keeps the Score)

How the body keeps the score on trauma | Bessel van derKolk for Big Think+
Bessel Van Der Kolk MD, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, has studied trauma for about 50 years.  The approach of mainstream psychotherapy is that “there is something wrong with you, and I need to fix you”.  Trauma requires a very different approach.  Trauma can look like- people flying off the handle, people shutting down, drug or alcohol addiction, explosive anger, passivity and “spacing out”, seeming to be “stuck in the past” and unable to be meaningfully involved in the present.  Difficulty regulating/modulating responses to the environment. 

1941 book by Dr Abram Kardiner, a psychoanalyst, noted of soldiers in world war that they have a “physioneurosis.  Their bodies continue to re-experience that very terrible, frightening situation, and that event keeps coming back in terms of images, behaviors, and physical sensations.”  Definition of PTSD “These people have been exposed to an extraordinary event that’s outside of normal human experience.”  WRONG- trauma is NOT unusual.  “The nature of trauma is that an experience enters into your ears, into your skin, into your eyes, and it goes down into a very primitive part of your brain that automatically interprets what’s going on.”  The amygdala?   It tried to figure out if you’re safe or in danger, and when there’s nothing you can do to stop the inevitable from happening, you go into fight/flight or collapse (freeze).  In the long term you react to mild stressors as if your life is in danger.  Basically your brain hasn’t figured out yet that the danger is over.  Most people have no idea that their reactions to things, that are overblown from trauma, have anything to do with the past and not just what’s present. 

“The tradition in mental health is to dismiss the reality of people’s lives.”  Things such as poverty, racism, unemployment, affect people’s behavior and those behaviors don’t respond well to drugs or other medical treatment.  (The idea that they should is eugenics- you are happy and well-adjusted when you are in your “proper place”.)  “I need to take care of the wounds that I’m carrying inside of me”.  Self-compassion is important for trauma. 

Trauma is not what happened to you, it’s how you respond.  One of the most important factors, especially when you are a child, is if someone is there for you to help you.  If they can make you feel understood and bring safety and comfort. 

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk | The Body Keeps the Score:Restoring an Inner Sense of Safety
Survivors can become stuck in fight/flight/freeze, and the resulting stress hormones can severely affect the immune system and organs.  “When you go into trauma, you lose your frontal lobe.  You become dumbfounded.”  The impact of trauma is on your limbic system- it’s in charge of the housekeeping of your body.  Trauma is an experience of horror.  You cannot tell your trauma story, your whole body keeps getting overwhelmed.  You feel trauma in your body (but what about dissociation?).  It affects every part of your biology- your sleep, your eating.  You try to numb yourself.  When you shut down, you can’t learn and take in new experiences.  People use substances to try to control their bodies.  After the trauma is over, will people be able to function?  It’s very hard to treat trauma. 

How to move through trauma and recover- establish a community of people, who have your back.  Who are there for you no matter what.  We are social animals and we need people around us who believe in us when we are in distress.  Create community.  Tell your story if you can.  Trauma can make you feel helpless and collapse.  Healing includes building a sense of agency, that you CAN do things.  You need to learn to regulate yourself.  In his study, yoga did better than any traditional psychiatric medications in treating trauma.  Dancing and music.  Boxing requires you be in tune with the people around you.  When you’re traumatized you get scared of yourself.  You need to learn to access yourself.  You’re afraid of your internal reactions and memories.  You need to meet yourself and learn to tolerate yourself.  Also neurofeedback and psychedelics. 

Trauma Has NO Quick-Fix | Dr Bessel van der Kolk on theBody Keeps the Score.
“Trauma overwhelms your capacity to filter, focus, and concentrate.”  Different treatments work for different people.  Stay curious.  How can you help someone lead a more satisfying life?  How to re-establish a sense of safety?  Neglect- people need to be known and seen- that’s where safety starts.  If you’ve been neglected and abused, you may not know yourself.  One of the prerequisites to healing is learning to manage your own state. 

What trauma does to your brain and body | Bessel van derKolk
Stress is different than trauma, when it’s over it’s over, but trauma isn’t. 

The Mind Hides the Score | Dr Bessel van der Kolk onTrauma and the Mind.
Our attachment system is a major determinant of how we respond to traumatic events.  What’s more important than what happened to you is who was there for you?  Kids with secure attachments react very differently to severe burns than kids whose parents are absent or traumatized.  The attachment system trumps the trauma system.  If you are in fight/flight, you are less able to care for your offspring, and they become less resilient.  Predatory abusive priests knew how to choose a target and seduce them by telling them they’re safe with them.  Physical immobilization is amajor factor in an event becoming traumatic.  It matters if you were able to do something, can you activate your stress hormones?  Trauma is not an “event” -it makes you live in a completely different world.  Your body doesn’t differentiate between a physical trauma (an injury, a toxin) and an emotional trauma.  Your body can feel helpless in the face of a disease or toxic exposure.  The first thing is to make it safe to feel what you feel.  Touch is the greatest comfort that people can have. 

Therapist Shares 8 Signs of Trauma | The Body Keeps theScore
Bessel Van Der Kolk is a medical doctor who talks about the brain and talks about trauma.
1) Dissociation, numbing.  Parasympathetic functions have shut down.  Can be physical, is usually emotional.  Often describes as feeling “out of body”. 
2) Body always in an aroused state.  In constant state of perceived danger.  Means high adrenaline and cortisol levels.  The mind/brain doesn’t know that the danger is over.  People then turn to manual or external ways to calm down including drugs, alcohol, masturbation, starvation, or cutting (self-harm). 
3) Self-loathing.  People often blame themselves for their traumas. 
4) Rigidly stuck in the past.  Involves thalamus and pre-frontal cortex.  Thalamus is sensory interpretation and processing.  Pre-frontal cortex is time-keeper, processes events chronologically. 
5) Speechless terror.  Becoming mute in certain situations. 
6) Loss of self.  This also means a difficulty identifying what it is “other”.  This can result in confusing whether the danger is someone else or inside yourself. 
7) Physical immobility.  A perpetrator may actually tell you not to move, or there can be other reasons why you might learn that it is safer to stay still than to move and then freeze up when triggered. 
8)  Difficulty learning new information.  This can look like learning something and making progress, only to find yourself back where you started having to learn it again.  Sometimes people’s growth and learning can be stopped at the age when they experienced trauma, and this can make them seem immature.  

Therapist Shares How to Heal from Trauma | The Body Keepsthe Score
Acupuncture and yoga can help address the trauma in the body without having to talk about it.  Building community, “communal techniques”- trauma can be isolating and make us feel cut off from others, so activities such as synchronized dancing and singing together can help, and joining a community such as a church can help you feel like you have a place where you belong and that you’re a part of something bigger.  “Re-engaging with the outside world.”  These things help to bring your body and brain back on line “in a way that is cohesive to living a fully functional life.” 

Imagination is important for recovering from trauma and finding a way out of the stuckness in the past, including flashbacks, nightmares, and struggling to make sense of what is happening in the present.  People can stay in what’s familiar, even if it’s unpleasant, because it’s predictable.  Doing improv can build the imagination and help build connection with others.  Art can be therapeutic and help us process our trauma and take control of the narrative, and maybe to see it in a new way, and separate from the experience in the past.  Theater is similar, but also involves learning that you can have the same moment over and over and also have it be different every time.   “Your job is not to be “shrinks”, your job is to be mind-openers.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk in the training.  A good therapist wull help you see your worth and build your self-esteem. 

More direct trauma therapies can include role-playing and “psychodrama” in which you act out what the ideal reaction would have been when you told someone what happened to you, as a way to re-work your narrative about the trauma.  EMDR = Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.  EMDR helps to reduce or eliminate the physiological symptoms such as sweating, racing heartbeat, that can happen when talking about your trauma.  EMDR is more appropriate for “one time” or single event trauma, when you need to think about it without symptoms, but not as appropriate for complex trauma. 

Other ideas from her practice include writing a letter to someone who traumatized you or failed to protect you, telling them what happened from your point of view, how it made you feel, and how it has impacted you to the present.  You can destroy or keep the letter, but if you want to send it to the person, she suggests including what that person could do now to help you have closure or repair the relationship- do you want an apology?  An explanation?  Acknowledgement?  For youself, you can write the event as you wished it had happened, or including the ways you wished you could have responded and protected yourself.  Slowly start re-exposing yourself to things that remind you of someone you lost or who betrayed you, such as places, things, music, etc.  This is so that people can start “reclaiming aspects of their life that they have been denying themselves since the traumatic event.”  People often find that the actual experience isn’t nearly as bad as they expected it to be. 

Being traumatized in the way that qualifies for a PTSD diagnosis, usually means that are life is “stopped in its tracks” and not progressing, and we are not functioning or able to work towards our goals.  Not everyone is “traumatized”. 

Physical Symptoms and the Biology of Stres and Trauma

The Biology of Trauma® With Dr. Aimie podcast

Windows to the Soul: How Trauma Negatively Impacts Your Eyes
Our bodies have a clench and withdraw response if we can't fight or flight, such as when we are children.  This entails tensing up, clenching fists, curling inward, raising knees to chest, essentially curling up in the fetal position.  Physically, this posture is an attempt to protect the vital organs from anticipated harm and  is associated with feeling helpless.  Muscle tension is one of the most common symptoms of stress and anxiety, caused by muscle contractions from going into the fight/flight response.  This includes the blood vessels and viscera constricting as well and when this muscle tension goes on for a long time, as in chronic stress, and can result in headaches, pain behind the eyes, TMJ, limited range of movement, joint discomfort, chronic pain, and difficulty concentrating.  It can lead to migraines when the tension releases and blood flow into the brain suddenly increases.  

"Energy flow in the body is managed by contractions of the diaphragms (there are many diaphragms in the body).  For children with Complex Trauma, the high arousal of stress is managed through powerful, chronic contractions in all the diaphragms of the body, most promisingly in the respiratory diaphragm (affects breathing) but also in the diaphragms at the base of the skull and in the eyes (Tentorium cerebella), feet and joints.  This changes the depth of their breathing and affects their breathing, but it also creates pain in their face, head, and eyes."  All eight of the bodies diaphragms constrict when they sense stress or danger.  

"Fetuses and infants are primarily visceral systems and central nervous systems without a developed musculature.  The only protective responses to them are to shut down and freeze (clench and withdrawal) the central nervous system and the visceral system" - Larry Heller

Trauma also affects the eyes by making them hypersensitive and affecting pupil dilation.  Trauma in young children activates a part of the brain stem called the Reticular Activating System (RAS) whose job it is to filter out the sensory input that the individual doesn't need to be consciously aware of all the time, such as textures of clothing or hum of lights.  In children who have experienced trauma, the RAS will allow through more or even all of the sensory input into the brain which can overwhelm the brain and lead to sensory processing problems and sensitivities.  

At 11:09 there is a slide that outlines the four kinds of eye movements.  When a person perceives danger and their sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight system) is activated, it causes certain changes in the eyes and how they focus that leads to tunnel vision.  This is so that the person can focus on the threat, which is the only important thing in the moment.  The pupils in the eye normally got larger or smaller depending on light, but when a person looks at things with certain emotional charge, such as fear or surprise, their eyes widen even more.  This response is especially strong in children who have experienced trauma.  For people with PTSD, their pupils have been found to stay the same when shown novel images and to dilate more than normal in response to scary images.  This can cause older people to have difficulty driving at night because their pupils don't constrict when they see bright lights, including headlights or streetlights.  

The parasympathetic nervous system, also called the rest and digest or rest and repair system, has the opposite effect.  It allows your pupils to contract in bright light, it improves up-close vision, and it increases tear production, which keeps the eyes more comfortable and less irritated.  

In infants, the eyes play a key role in their ability to do the basic things they need to do to survive- they need to communicate, to connect with safe caregivers, and to regulate.  "Scientists have discovered that signals pass back and forth between a mother and child as fast as 1/300th of a second."  The eyes contain a massive amount of information about the state of our nervous system, and looking into a caregiver's eyes gives a baby the information it needs to read the emotional state of the caregiver, which is what regulates the nervous system of the baby.  The baby is looking to see if the caregiver is attuned to them, accepting of them, present, open, loving, nurturing, regulating, and safe to connect to.  In general we use what we see in people's eyes to read their emotional state.  

In a family with generational or complex trauma, the baby may not see those things in the eyes of their parents.  Instead the parents may be distracted, fearful, distant, uncaring or cold, not accepting of the baby, basically dysregulated not safe to connect to.  This creates fear, panic, and rejection in the baby.  At first the baby will try to get the parent's attention to connect by crying, reaching out, or other means.  If that doesn't work the baby will either shut down and dissociate or become dysregulated and cry.  This can lead to emotions of anger and fear building up in the child that will affect them later.  

In complex trauma this is happening over and over every day, which causes the child to go into the clench and withdraw response.  This can affect the eyes in a number of way.- It can make it hard for the child to make and maintain eye contact- the child might be afraid to look into eyes and see rejection, disgust, anger, disinterest, or the child may be afraid that other people will see the dysregulation in their eyes, they may have internalized shame, and they may want to hide their inner world.  Another effect is that the child's eyes may take on a "glassy stare" as if they are looking past people, not paying attention, not focusing on who is in front of them.  They might even look catatonic.  They may make intense eye contact that is unnerving because they aren't trying to connect, they're studying the person they're looking at to see if that person is safe or about to change moods or harm them.  This is a kind of hyper vigilance.  This video also claims that people who were in the clench and withdrawal response often as children may have a more sallow complexion around their eyes.  Some people, in high stress, may even develop eye tics.

So, what can people who experience the negative effects on their eyes from trauma do about it?  One thing is to pay attention to muscle tension in your body, pay attention to pain that indicates clenching, and take steps to relax and release the tension.  You can have someone you trust look into your eyes and tell you what emotions they see there.  Practice eye contact with someone you trust to become more comfortable with it.  intentionally unfocusing your eyes can help you "turn on" your parasympathetic nervous system and help you relax.  Somatic therapies that include things like music therapy, pet therapy, yoga and breathing exercises, walking in nature, all can help by putting you into the parasympathetic system. 

 

Stress (Cortisol and Adrenaline)

The inside of the adrenal glands is neurological tissue, which is where adrenaline is made.  The outer part is glandular tissue and is where cortisol is made.  Cortisol is a hormone and adrenaline is a neurotransmitter.  The adrenals release these chemicals in order to help the body to function in situations of short-term stress, but can remain active for a long time.  They are part of the sympathetic nervous system, which is also known as the "fight or flight" system.  The opposing branch of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic response, which is a state of relaxation.  The adrenal glands are not part of the parasympathetic system so that system is unable to "turn them off".  Fear, worry, and anxiety are part of the sympathetic response.  

The Effects of Stress

Stress causes problems with sleeping, often resulting in waking during the night (often around 2 AM) and can mean that a person sleeps best in the morning rather than at night.  Cardiovascular effects include changes in blood pressure and heart rate, and inflammation of the arteries.  Cortisol is an anti-inflammatory hormone. The synthetic version is called prednisone.  Long term cortisol exposure leads to loss of sensitivity by the cortisol receptors on cells, similar to how insulin resistance happens in diabetes.  With cortisol resistance, more cortisol may actually increase inflammatory symptoms in a seemingly paradoxical way.  Diseases that can develop in this situation include arthritis, auto-immune diseases, and joint inflammation.

The Effects of Cortisol on the Immune System

Cortisol affects the white blood cells of the immune system because part of what it does is to "turn off" the immune system.  Cortisol inactivates Natural Killer T-cells, which kills viruses and cancer cells.  It also suppresses the ability of the immune system to fight pathogens in general.  There are even certain bacteria that activate your hypothalamus to activate cortisol so that your body can't defend itself as well.  

Cortisol and Memory

In the short term, cortisol helps in the formation of emotional memories because these memories may help you to survive in the future, but in the long term the hippocampus is damaged, leading to memory loss and brain fog.  This can also result in becoming per-occupied with a few specific problems, which can lead to keeping you awake at night because you can't turn off the worries.  You can get stuck in a problem-solving mindset but it doesn't result in actual helpful solutions.  

Mineral Loss

Long-term exposure to cortisol leads to the loss of potassium, which is a mineral that supports calmness and relaxation.  Loss of potassium leads to more stress and this can create a cycle.  Sugar also depletes potassium.  Thiamine (vitamin B1) is an important anti-stress vitamin that causes relaxation and comfort. Thiamine also increases levels of GABA, which is a neurotransmitter of relaxation and calmness.  It also causes a loss of hydrogen ions, which are acidic, which puts your body into a more alkaline state.  People under a lot of chronic stress become too alkaline, not too acidic.  This leads to tight muscles, twitches, tetany. muscle cramps, can't absorb electrolytes well, and breathing problems can result.  As the acid levels decrease this can cause low levels of stomach acid and poor digestion.  

Catabolic Effect

Catabolism is the process in which muscles are broken down in order to turn the amino acids, the components that muscle proteins are made of, into glucose to fuel the "fight or flight".  Connective tissues including collagen and elastin are also broken down in this process (this is why stress can make a person wrinkly).  Cortisol also demineralizes bone, causing osteopenia and osteoporosis.  

Effect on Kidney Function

Chronically high cortisol levels cause the kidneys to filter less (meaning hold on to less and instead allow more to be lost in the urine), including minerals such as potassium.  Sodium is filtered and saved and this is why kidney problems can lead to water retention.  Addison's Disease is a rare and more serious form of adrenal disease in which potassium is filtered but sodium is lost in the urine.  Cushing Syndrome is related.  

Cortisol and Blood Sugar

Cortisol is also called a "glucocorticoid" because it helps to regulate glucose levels.  It can help make glucose out of non-carbohydrate sources including fats, proteins, and even ketones. It also plays a role in storing and releasing glucose.  Cortisol can activate insulin leading to a "flat tire" around the gut, and this also leads to all the issues associated with high insulin.  

Cortisol and Digestion

The process of digestion is under the control of the parasympathetic system, and becomes compromised when cortisol levels remain elevated.  The digestive system becomes sluggish resulting in bloating, indigestion, poor absorption of nutrients, and even ulcers.  The fact that cortisol also increases insulin levels this can also affect digestion and cause excess belly fat.  

Excess cortisol can lead to low levels of vitamin D which is ironic as vitamin D does many of the same things that cortisol does, but without the negative side effects.  It is an anti-inflammatory and can influence the immune system to lower inflammation rates, in particular it tamps down the cytokine storm.  

How to Lower Stress and Reduce Cortisol

It can lower mental stress to find activities that increase physical stress such as jobs around the house, yard work, etc.  These activities result in a kind of physical tiredness that can improve sleep.  Exercise and other types of physical activity can also be helpful.  Worry and stress are associated with inaction, feeling almost paralyzed, and keeping busy with activities helps keep you moving and keeps your mind from getting stuck on certain topics.  Taking vitamin B1 is very helpful at cutting stress down.  It can have an almost immediate effect if taken when you feel very stressed.  Making sure that you get enough potassium and magnesium is important and both are easily gotten from the diet, especially vegetables.  Reducing carbohydrate intake helps because carbs keep the body stuck in a "fight or flight" response.  Taking vitamin D lowers stress and improves mood.  Implementing a ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting helps to address a lot of the physical symptoms and mood symptoms from high cortisol.  Including adaptogens in your daily routine, as a supplement or tea or other ways, supports healthy adrenal function.  

Learning to breathe so that the inbreath and the outbreath are the same duration helps balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic arms of the autonomic nervous system.  If you practice this when you lay down to go to bed it will help you sleep.  Below is the link to a video made by Dr Berg showing a technique to reduce stress at the end of the day, using a thing that puts pressure on the base of the skull.

Dr.Berg's Webinar On Stress Relieving: Easily Get Rid of Stress & Sleep Like a Baby

This is an adaptogen supplement recommended by Dr Berg

Growth Hormone

Growth hormone is sort-of opposite of cortisol, it protects proteins.  It’s anti-aging whereas cortisol is pro aging.  GH is triggered by sleep,  intense but intermittent exercise, eating enough protein, and intermittent fasting. 

How Do Ayahuasca and Other Psychadelics Affect the Brain?

How Ayahuasca (DMT) Affects the Inner Workings of the Brain Explained

 Ayahuasca hyper activates the Neo-cortex, the brain region where we perceive, reason, and make decisions.  It also activates the amygdala which stores our early emotional memories, in particular the very significant ones such as a death in the family.  It also activates the Insula which forms a bridge between our emotional urges and our ability to make decisions.  The Insula is where "feeling states" are created.  Our brains try to understand new experiences in terms of previous ones that are stored, especially those that are very strong or traumatic.  This creates imprints in the brain which are essentially pathways of repeated responses.  The more often the input is met and the pathway is activated, the stronger the pathway becomes.  They are built up like scar tissue.  Ayahuasca hyper activates the entire part of the brain that stores and processes emotional memories, and it may uncover memories that had been forgotten.  When hyper activated the brain is able to consciously over ride these entrenched pathways and create new responses to stimulii.  This often results in people who have used Ayahuasca gaining new perspectives on past experiences and being freed from earlier entrenched responses that where not serving them.

Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness 

 "A large body of evidence, including longitudinal analyses of personality change, suggests that core personality traits are predominantly stable after age 30. To our knowledge, no study has demonstrated changes in personality in healthy adults after an experimentally manipulated discrete event. Intriguingly, double-blind controlled studies have shown that the classic hallucinogen psilocybin occasions personally and spiritually significant mystical experiences that predict long-term changes in behaviors, attitudes and values. In the present report we assessed the effect of psilocybin on changes in the five broad domains of personality – Neuroticism, Extroversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Consistent with participant claims of hallucinogen-occasioned increases in aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and creativity, we found significant increases in Openness following a high-dose psilocybin session. In participants who had mystical experiences during their psilocybin session, Openness remained significantly higher than baseline more than 1 year after the session. The findings suggest a specific role for psilocybin and mystical-type experiences in adult personality change."

EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)

This treatment modality is based on the idea that "negative" emotions occur because of blockages in the body's energy meridian lines (the same meridians used in acupuncture, etc).  The "negative energy" is released by tapping on specific points along those meridians.  The basic method involves 10 points that occur along the main 14 meridians in the body (some points are on more than one meridian).  The basic technique is to tap on these points in a specific order (basically going in the order of top to bottom in the body when upright).  These points include the top of the head, the eyebrows close to the nose, the outer corners of the eyes, under the eyes by the nose, the point just below the nose, the point on the chin, the point just above the sternum, points under both arms below the armpits, points on the inside of the wrists partway to the elbow, and the "karate chop" points on the outer edges of the hands.  It can be hard to identify exactly where these points are so it is suggested to tap with several fingers or even a closed fist on the spot to ensure that the right point is activated.

How to Do EFT Tapping Therapy - EFT Basic Recipe Tutorial

Clinical EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) Improves Multiple Physiological Markers of Health
This is a scientific study showing significant gains in many individual health markers (such as cortisol levels, heart rate variability, and SIgA for immune function) following treatment with EFT.

The Neurological System- Relevant Symptoms, Conditions, and Disorders

The Following are symptoms and disorders of the neurological system that can occur with people who have the constellation of conditions and diagnoses that I and my family do.  The point of the list is not for us to diagnose ourselves, but rather to be aware of the possible connection between symptoms that we are having and our neurological system to help guide efforts to diagnose and treat the symptoms.  Some of these are considered controversial (in the sense that some doctors and other experts aren't convinced that they exist) so keep that in mind if discussing them with a doctor, but I included them because I have found knowledge of "controversial" things to be very helpful in getting appropriate care.

About the Brain and Neurological System:
There is still so much that is not known or well understood about the human brain and nervous system, how it works, and what can go wrong.  This leaves many people with significant neurological problems without much guidance or treatment.

NOVA "Secrets of the Mind"  (phantom limb pain, blindsight, etc)

Daniel Tammet TED talk "Different Ways of Knowing"

Anatomy Zone brain videos

What Does the Brain's Frontal Cortex Do? (Professor Robert Sapolsky Explains)

Specific Symptoms, Disorders, and Conditions:
Absence Seizure (aka Petite Mal Seizure | Epilepsy)

Anterior Cutaneous Nerve Entrapment Syndrome

This is when chronic abdominal pain is caused by a nerve that innervates the abdominal wall being pinched or compressed and causing a strong, localized pain.  Movement can make the pain worse, and lying on the back improves the pain.  ACNES occurs most often on young and middle aged women.  It is a benign situation that is normally treated with a trigger point injection of a pain med such as lidocaine along with a steroid.  If the pain persists the nerve that is causing the pain can be severed.

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

 

Allodynia is pain that a person feels in response to a stimulus that wouldn't normally be painful, such as a very light touch.

Alzheimer’s Disease We Might Be Totally Wrong About Alzheimer’s

Anosognosia

Aphantasia

Auditory processing disorder "Auditory processing disorder (APD) is a hearing issue that makes it hard for you to understand what people are saying.  People with APD have difficulty understanding speech even though they don’t have hearing issues. Many APD symptoms are similar to hearing loss symptoms."

Benign Fasciculation Syndrome Causes and Treatment

Carbon Monoxide Brain Injury

Cerebral Folate Deficiency 

 

Cervicogenic Dizziness

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)

What happens when you have a concussion?

Dilated pupils

Dysautonomia ("Faces of Dysautonomia" awareness video)
Common symptoms of Dysautonomia from MedicalNewsToday include:
Difficulty standing, dizziness, vertigo, fainting; fast, slow or irregular heartbeat; chest pain, low blood pressure, problems with digestion, nausea, visual disturbances, weakness, fatigue, breathing problems, anxiety, mood swings, tremors, disordered sleep, frequent urination, difficulty regulating body temperature, problems with memory and concentration, poor appetite, and sensory sensitivities (often to sound and light).

What is Executive Function and Why Do We Need it? 

Exploding Head Syndrome

Guillain-Barre Syndrome is an auto-immune disorder in which the body's immune system attacks the myelin-producing cells of the Peripheral Nervous Syndrome (PNS).  Common symptoms are numbness, weakness, and even paralysis.  If the weakness/paralysis spreads to the muscled required for breathing, the disease can be fatal.  It is treated with IV/IG which is an infusion of blood containing antibodies from donors. 

Hallucination What hallucination reveals about our minds | Oliver Sacks

Hepatic Encephalopathy

Hyperlexia

Impostor Syndrome

 

Intracranial Hypertension 

 

Lhermitte's sign "(also known as Lhermitte's phenomenon or the barber chair phenomenon) is the term used that describes a transient sensation of an electric shock that extends down the spine and extremities upon flexion and/or movement of the neck.  The sign is suggestive of a lesion or compression of the lower brain stem or the upper cervical spinal cord. It is a paroxysmal sensation or neuropathic pain that can develop as a result of direct or indirect demyelinating lesions in the brain and/or spinal cord and is triggered by the flexion or movement of the neck. More specifically, the neck motion activates ascending spinothalamic tracts at the cervical level that has been sensitized by the underlying process that caused the cervical spine lesion."

Myoclonus

Nystagmus epilepticus

Narcolepsy

OCD- Pure O: Thinking the Unthinkable (Extreme OCD Documentary) 

PANDAS

Papilledema "Papilledema refers to the swelling of both optic discs in your eyes due to increased intracranial pressure (intracranial hypertension)."  If the cause is intracranial hypertension, both optic discs are usually affected.  If only one is affected it is most likely the result of something else.  Papilledema can be an emergency if it is caused by dangerously high intracranial pressure. 

Prosopagnosia

Peripheral neuropathy

 

Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures

 

Types of Seizures
Seizures are usually classified as generalized or focal. 

Selective Mutism My Child Won't Talk
BBC show about 3 girls with selective mutism, includes information about therapies that helped them.

What is Spasticity?

Synesthesia

PAIN DISORDERS
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)     
Central Sensitization Syndrome (and chronic pain)

Intractable Pain Disease 

Curing a mysterious nerve condition by inflicting unbearable pain | 60 Minutes Australia