18
votes
NIH studies find severe symptoms of “Havana Syndrome,” but no evidence of MRI-detectable brain injury or biological abnormalities
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- Published
- Mar 18 2024
- Word count
- 1135 words
Maybe we are finding out that we know much less about brain injuries than we thought.
The army reservist mass shooter from Maine had brain injuries that were not what doctors usually expect to see from brain injuries. Normally you would expect to see something like this if you did an autopsy on a person with brain injuries from head trauma. The doctors examining the brain of the Maine mass shooter saw a seemingly normal brain, but with frayed nerve endings from the repeated grenade blasts.
Maybe whatever is causing Havana Syndrome is injuring the brain in a way that doesn't show up on MRIs. I think that autopsies of people with Havana Syndrome once they pass will be needed to understand what is going on unless they find out exactly what caused it.
So-called Havana Syndrome comes up periodically, and the best explanation I've heard so far is that this is a case of sociogenic illness.
My bet is that it's a psychosomatic stress disorder.
There is an episode of Reveal on Havana Syndrome which they constantly re-run which contains an agent's description of his experience with it. He talks about needing to pretend it's not happening, how he's sitting in his chair alone in his house doing his best to pretend that the excrutiating pain he is in isn't efffecting him. He says he's doing it because Cuban agents would try to do things to screw with him in hopes of exposing him. It sounds an aweful lot like what a paranoid schizophrenic would say, and that kind of thought is not healthy even if you aren't schizophrenic.
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