Fugue in D

CNN reported on a man who turned up in Denver who had no idea who he was or what he was doing there. He went on TV pleading for clues to his identity. This is a classic case of dissociative fugue, or what I like to call “soap opera amnesia”. It’s not due to a brain injury, as retrograde or anterograde amnesias are. This is purely psychological, and extremely rare. Apparently our friend “Al” is really Jeff from Olympia, Washington. How he ended up in Denver is anyone’s guess. He also hasn’t recovered his memory of himself yet. The news outlets probably won’t report on his recovery, but it would be interesting to see how long it takes for him to get his memory back and also to find out what triggered this episode.

EDIT 2/20/07: A student of mine sent me this link, updating us on Jeff’s condition. Still no sign of the lost memories, but he’s building new ones with his wife.

Correlation Does Not Equal Causation

Time reports on a study out of Cornell University that claims TV watching causes autism. They used correlational, not experimental methods, which renders their conclusion of causation complete speculation. It’s studies like this that makes the general public skeptical of science, even though I would not be inclined to label this as “science” so much as “sensationalism”. At least the news outlets reporting the study have done a decent job of showing the unreliability of the purported link. I’m just mad that this study was even done. What a complete waste of time and resources. It just goes to show you that if you are determined enough, you can twist your statistics to support just about anything.

As Seen on TV…

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been busy with teaching, qualifying exams, and other fun stuff. However, I have noticed a couple of things on TV lately. Namely, some episodes of shows that have featured various disorders.

“Grey’s Anatomy” last week had a “split-brain” patient–someone who was suffering from such severe epileptic seizures that he had his corpus callosum severed to contain them. The resulting difficulties in associating names and faces was explored. Also on the same episode was a little girl who suffered from a pain disorder–she couldn’t feel it. This is extremely rare, but it can happen. The consequences, as were shown in the storyline, can be quite severe. Sometimes feeling pain is a GOOD thing.

“Desperate Housewives” featured a storyline in which a character wakes from a coma and experiences retrograde amnesia. I’ll be interested in their accuracy in portraying this–usually TV shows are notorious for overdramatizing amnesia and blurring the facts of the phenomenon. So, keep up and we’ll see.

Back to work! Promise to update more often in the future.