Talk:Exploding head syndrome/Archive 1

I felt a slap
I've experienced something similar, however it was not an explosion, but what felt like the after effects of a slap across the face. I was watching the late news and dozed off on my back and was awoken a few minutes later, feeling like I was slapped. There was no pain at all, but I could feel a kind of vibrating in my cheek and I sat straight up, adrelanline surging. It's happened once since, but since then, I take care never to sleep on my back and it hasn't happened since. I will say that once when I was twelve or so, I fell asleep, possibly on my back, maybe my stomach, on a bunkbed. While sleeping, I somehow wiggled further and further towards the front of the bed until I fell off and awoke on my back, feeling shock and not being able to move for a few seconds, and some dulled pain. Take that as you will. --PhoenixAvatar2 04:38, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Everleader's experience
Hello. I have expierenced this before. The first time I expierienced it I was at ends. I felt something like a cock in my mouth, then an adrenaline rush. I was breathing fast and my heart rate was sky rocketing. My eyes poped open immediatly after and I thought something was wrong. The first thing I did was count then though then moved and talked. I felt like I had to do a "Systems Check". Later I had them once every night for about a week and 1/2 I was getting worried so I told my friends "Tape" and "Duct". Apparently Tape had the same thing going on and she described to me the same thing. I was amazed. We both desribed right at "middle sleep" there would be kinda a body surge and a loud pop like popping your lips kinda but inside our heads. I even got to the point beofre I told them I felt one kinda comming on... so i waited to expierence but thinking bout it it was the worst one I bolted uop and threw myself against the wall by my bed and was about to pass out from breathing. I felt hysterical. It was today the ided of March that we had a free day in science and I got off talking about it and my teacher looked surprised and told me it was called exploding head syndrome. Naturally i thought she was joking, but guess not. Please relay any information on this phenomenon you may have because I am very curious. thank you for you time ~ Everleader


 * Everleadr's experience more closely parallels my own than the one below or the description in the article. "something like an adrenaline rush" - yes, I felt my body/brain wanted me to alert and get up instantly. "middle sleep" - well for me it was always just after I was asleep - one to ten minutes after being asleep maybe. "a loud pop like popping your lips kinda but inside our heads" - this is EXACTLY it. It happened maybe a dozen times over a couple of months. It didn't worry me - much. 4.250.198.41 09:53, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I thought I was going to die
Without question EHS (exploding head syndrome) was the most startling event I have ever experienced in all of my 55 years. When I first had an event, I leaped from bed, didn't know where I was, heartrate through the roof, short of breath, complete confusion as to what happened. In short, I thought I was going to die right then and there. I was terrified and was not going to even think about trying to go back to sleep. I went to my doctor and tried to explain what had happened and of course he had no idea of what this could have been (a stroke, a siezure) and was unable to give me a diagnosis. He perscribed Ambien to enable me to get some much needed sleep and has worked beyond my expectations. I now can sometimes foretell an up coming event by my sensitivity to any kind of noise that occurs while I am starting to fall asleep. By sensitivity I mean if a sound or noise startles me when normally it wouldn't. I take an Ambien and all is well!! For those of you that have had this condition more than once, you will be able to feel an event coming prior to it's arrival. My solice to all of you and I'm here to help if I can. Brickyard

wow
I'm surprized I have ever heard of this,

I belive I have experienced something like this, I've heard an incredibly loud noise that didn't seem to exsist in the first place. I remember it happening a few times, sometimes somthing like a very loud 'gunshot' or 'boom'. I also hear the noise of something like (when in copland movie, when stallon has a gun shot right next to his ear, the sound effect they use of hearing damage) the "hearing damage noise" when I haven't even heard any noises above or even close to any damaging level (in db's)...It's kinda random, but I think it may have something to do with thinking about war and other random thoughts (in bed before falling asleep)

It definitely made me jump.

I'm only 18, and a male.

Mine are also accompanied by sounds of surging electrical current
I have been awakened more times than I can count by the explosion inside my skull. I remember them occuring as far back as seven or eight years of age. I was always frustrated because I could never remember anything about the damn dreams that I assumed I was having. I have even injured myself during those violent leaps out of the bed.

Now, in addition, I often hear the sound of surging electrical current inside the ole skull as well. This only occurs on my way down and prior to rem sleep. I often wrestle with myself trying to discern whether or not I felt those surges as well as heard them. They are very short but crystal clear and always an increasing decibel level, never decreasing.

Wow, I get this (rarely) too!
I'm stunned to see this is a known condition (and, for me, thankfully rare). Since childood I've had the occasional (once every few years) sudden, and quite frightening, shock of this sudden blast of noise. In my dreams it sometimes is accompanied by a visual of a helicopter (although it doesn't sound like one, maybe it's a childhood thing) and it's so loud in my dream that I wake up immediately in mild terror --only to realize that it's quiet in my room and that it was, as surprisingly, a dream. I then calm down after a few moments (again, as others its adreniline) and then go back to sleep fine. These are actually the closest thing I get now to nightmares. Because my mind is in a different state when asleep, this experience feels truly terrifying in a way I've (thankfully) never experienced in real life. Bobak 00:59, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Oops !
FYI, I fixed a typo that said that EHS _does_ make your head explode when, in fact, it doesn't. :) Xenon 21:19, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions?
I may have experienced something similar. Occasionally, I would feel (in my right ear) something like holding a leaf blower up to the side of my head. I'd cover my ear with my hand, but it won't help much. Is this something close, or a different anomaly? p.s. I'm a 14 year-old caucasian male. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.189.81.2 (talk • contribs)


 * My suggestion would be to check with a doctor. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a medical forum. See our medical disclaimer: Medical disclaimer. In fact, Wikipedia isn't any kind of forum; talk pages like this one are supposed to be focused solely on how to go about improving the article they're associated with, not on the subject of the article in general. Bryan 07:47, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Is this a joke?
No it isn't. See the external links

Real Phenomenon
"... exploding head syndrome is a real phenomenon and not caused by psychological disturbances." -- I don't understand; does this mean EHS has physical causes as opposed to psychological (or even psychosematic) causes? This is not backed up by the text. Do we have a citation? --Jquarry 23:02, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I have had this
I have had this happen several times. Just before drifting off to sleep it sounds like a shotgun going off and light flashing inside my head and one awakes scared to death with heart racing. It has only happened a couple of times. The first time it happened I thought someone had fired a gun off by my head, but my wife was sleeping peacefully and didn't hear a thing. It scared me thinking maybe I had had a blood vessel or something burst in my head. Glad to know it is nothing serious! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bronqito (talk • contribs) 11 November 2006


 * Be sure to read Medical disclaimer - if you had some sort of medical concern you should really check with a doctor about it and not put it off because of something you read here, there's no guarantees about the accuracy of any of it. And also bear in mind that these talk pages aren't intended to be general chat forums like this, they should be used to discuss the editing of the associated article rather than the topic as a whole. Bryan 00:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It was cool finding this because at first I didn't know what was going on. Same with the sleep paralysis. --ISeeDeadPixels 00:25, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Do I have exploding head syndrome?
Ever since I was little, whenever its completely quiet, sometimes I hear this loud tone in my head. It's not nessicarily before going to sleep, but its really loud. I never even noticed this was strange until someone told me about this syndrome... please help :) Thank you


 * Wikipedia doesn't give medical advice, please see Medical disclaimer. If you have a medical question you should probably ask a doctor. Bryan 00:39, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't we Bold and all caps that it does not cause your head to LITERALLY EXPLODE? 17:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)~


 * I'm not sure, it might be like the "ocean" sound of a seashell, except in your ear chambers. I don't know about loud, but after hearing no other sounds for so long it can subjectively seem amazingly loud. If it's pulsing, that's the sound of circulation in ear vessels. Sagittarian Milky Way 08:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Classic migraine with aura
This "exploding head syndrome" seems very similar to what I had during most of my childhood. That is, I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night hearing tremendously loud noises and continued to hear them for some minutes until they faded away. I know what it was in my case, it was "just" classic migraine with aura. Since it sometimes came with other symptoms that I have during my aura attacks. (I have been diagnosed to have migraine with aura by neurologists.)

Considering how aura attacks work I am not surprised it can cause such strong audio effects. But I always found it a bit strange that I never get such loud noises during aura attacks in the day, only in the night. (I only get minor tinnitus like continuous "beeps" during some aura attacks in the day.)

For anyone interested in hearing the noise I heard just listen to the first 15 seconds of Mike Oldfield's song Five Miles Out. It is the pulsating synthesiser sound you hear together with the drums just before the singing starts. Although I like that song it made my stomach turn every time I heard the beginning of the song for like the first 100 times or so I heard it.

--David Göthberg 21:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Is this considered a rare condition?
As long as I remember, I've had tinnitus all my life, and when lying in bed, it would ALWAYS intensify until it finally exploded and my eyes burst open in fear and startle...ment... every night it happened; it never failed and still doesn't. I doubt it's as rare as the EHS disambiguation page says. Dagron12345 04:48, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The Mayo Clinic link calls it "uncommon" and one of the research papers linked calls it "rare", but considering how many people come on here and say they have it (including me) I'm pretty skeptical too. Recury 17:15, 2 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's probably due to self-diagnosis through research on Wikipedia, or being drawn to the page after diagnosis by a doctor. I'm sure any medical page will have a high viewership by people who are described by the page. 68.181.241.86 (talk) 10:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

First described
It appears that it was first described in 1920 rather than 1988 as mentioned. Then as "snapping of the brain" in R. Armstrong-Jones, Snapping of the brain, Lancet ii (1920), p. 720 Perhaps someone who can access the Lancet (i can't) could have a look and change it if needs be. Nk.sheridan    Talk  21:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

A yet earlier (nonmedical) description is to be found in Henry Festing Jones's Samuel Butler: Author of Erewhon (1919). Jones records that in 1866 the novelist began experiencing


 * loud noises in his head when on the point of going to sleep, as though a violent discharge were being made suddenly outside. The first few times the noise came, he got out of bed and went into his sitting-room to investigate, thinking that the crash had taken place there.*

Though not stated, the source is probably Butler's notebooks, five volumes of extracts from which have appeared: The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Butleriana (1932), Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1934), Samuel Butler's Notebooks (1951) and The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1984), the last being the first volume of a planned definitive edition, publication of which seems to have been abandoned. I have the first four of these volumes, and to the best of my recollection there is nothing in any of them about his affliction. I have never seen the fifth.

* Vol. 1, p. 130.

alderbourne (talk) 13:27, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Saying I had never seen the fifth of those volumes prompted me to order a copy. It arrived this morning and I have now searched it thoroughly – more or less – for a reference to Butler's affliction, but without success.

alderbourne (talk) 22:38, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Exploding Head Syndrome and Out-of-the-Body Experiences
Having had occasional episodes of exploding head syndrome myself during the past 20-odd years, I have often been struck by the similarity of the symptoms to the mysterious clicks, vibrations, flashes of light, sounds of electrical discharges and roaring winds and so on that sometimes precede an out-of-the-body experience.

Before dismissing me as a crank, you might care to read some books on the subject. If you follow the instructions in Oliver Fox's Astral Projection (1939) and Robert A. Monroe's Journeys Out of the Body (1971) you might even begin having such experiences yourself.

Whatever your opinion of tales of the mind or consciousness functioning outside of the physical body, you cannot deny that many an intelligent, rational man has had the experience of finding himself in a disembodied state. It has happened to me a number of times. And on one such occasion I obtained evidence that I hadn't just stepped from a state of sleep paralysis (which is how all my out-of-the-body experiences have begun) into a lucid dream (which the phenomenon resembles): I saw two marks on one of the doors of my wardrobe and felt a small bump on the underside of another, none of which had I noticed before so far as I knew and which on subsequent investigation turned out to be really there. It was impossible to see them from my bed, where my body was, and I was definitely not physically wandering about my room, for, though I had been unable to see my body, I had not at first been visible in my mirror, despite standing immediately in front of it, and later, while in the garden, I "woke up" to find myself in bed. I wrote a detailed account of my adventure that day – 3 January 1985 – thus in my case rendering invalid one of the sceptics' favourite arguments, namely that an alleged paranormal experience remembered from years ago is more likely to be the product of a faulty memory than the accurate recollection of a real occurrence – an argument I personally have always found insulting. The only mundane explanation I am willing to entertain for my one veridical experience is that of cryptomnesia; in all the years I had slept in that room I must at sometime, if only subliminally, have noticed those marks and that bump.

I have often wondered how to devise the perfect experiment, something that would prove, to my own satisfaction at least, that all this is more than just dreaming, that I really do have a soul, which can leave my body, which may even be immortal. At this moment, in our lounge, on top of a tall bookcase – a good deal taller than I – is a sheet of paper on which is a drawing or message or something of the kind, the work of a member of my family. It has been there for about a year, awaiting my next out-of-the-body experience. I did something of the kind once before, but the results were inconclusive.

For the record I am not an alcoholic, have never taken a mind-altering drug and believe myself to be as sane as the next man.

alderbourne (talk) 01:04, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Amphetamine "suggestion"
I've removed the following un-sourced statement: "Amphetamines can also help alleviate the condition. However, the latter is strongly discouraged.". I've done so because there's no source of this information, and because the information could be potentially harmful I believe it should only be included if it is properly sourced. Wokstation (talk) 00:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe there may be some information about this in Oliver Sack's book "Musicophilia" Amurphy96822 (talk) 21:52, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Influencing the Syndrome?
I typically have many months free of any of this, and then typically days in a row where it happens almost every night. When I am in a very stressed life situation, it may even happen during the day. My impression is that it becomes more likely, the more I over-worked on the computer. Also, and this is an odd thing, it seems to be much stronger when I've had sex that day. And I think it never happened so far when I did a lot of (non-sexual) physical exercises that day. Also I wonder, are there no studies about influences and avoiding the problem? For me, in about 90% of the cases it happens, when I laid still on the left side. When it happened once, it then may happen a second time, slightly less though, when I've turned to lie on my back or on the right side (especially regarding how my head rests on the pillow). BUT whenever I thought, "ah, c'mon, won't happen again, I stay on the left side", it came back two, three, four or more times within only few minutes and every time stronger than before. Are there no research findings in this direction? I mean, it could give hints as to the mechanism... 91.14.203.177 (talk) 11:22, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Neck position
I always experience this if I start going to sleep flat on my back with my face straight up; feels as though it starts as a low-volume mid-pitch buzzing/ringing at the base of my neck or mid-neck, rises in volume exponentially over 2 to 6 seconds and moves up to the rear base of my skull - all the way through below and behind my ears - then crescendos as loud as I can hear without being painful, plus a flash of light all through my head. Never managed to open my eyes, or to move my head fast enough to stop it crescendoing, which is unpleasant but not scary. I've been going to sleep on my front with my head facing one side or the other since I was a small child (3 or 4 years old), but this has only been happening since my late teens; I ride a road-race style motorbike and used to headbang, so minor neck damage may well be contributing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.186.240.40 (talk) 01:27, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Example in Art
The "Neck position" section from another writer matches my experiences (I also have occasional migraines and sleep paralysis), which convinces me that I have experienced Exploding Head Syndrome. It sounds like "Speak to Me", the opening crescendo from The Dark Side of the Moon. The "rattling engine" from the song is more like a flutter or baffle noise, though. Given the album's theme of mental illness, I assume it was included to mimic the symptom of auditory hallucination. I think the lyrics from the later track "Brain Damage" ("And if your head explodes" and "thunder in your ear") lends credence to the idea. Any way to include any of this wild conjecture in the article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.34.255.59 (talk) 22:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
 * First we would need to identify reliable sources, per WP policy.&mdash;RJH (talk) 18:15, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Severe Psychological Trauma
Two episodes-both I was fully awake and standing when unexpectedly, I heard statements which so stunned and devastated me emotionally that I perceived an immediate, distinct "snap" sensation (as if someone snapped their fingers hard deep inside my head), accompanied by a split-second flash of light centered behind my eyes. The snap/flash was followed with a vague and fleeting disruption of vision, or possible dizzyness similar to the sensation one notices immediately prior to fainting. The first time I was 15, and the second I was 31 years old. For the record, have also had 2 episodes of REM Sleep Behavior Disorder which caused significant injury and trauma so severe I began strapping myself to the bed to prevent further danger. The REMSBD episodes both occured at 35yrs. during high stress due to career change/new job. Also of note: my father's brother died of ALS at 62, while my father, his mother and her mother before her all developed dementia of such severity they recognized no one and were bed-ridden at their deaths. I submit this information, despite the admonition on discussion, because perhaps it may help others as the info from other's helped me. S. L. Hamilton female/48/caucasian 09/17/2011 108.76.177.142 (talk) 12:08, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

First-hand
I can testify that this has happened to me. It came when I went, probably too quickly, off of a course of SSRIs. In addition to many of the other documented symptoms (such as "Brain Zaps," a term I had never known existed but precisely described the sensation), I experienced a few hallucinations, auditory and visual, and a great deal of sleep paralysis. But the worst part of waking up during sleep paralysis, beyond the terror of feeling captive, sometimes preceded by dreams of being thrown up and bound against a wall by a shadow, or crushed on the ground by some immeasurable object, was the sensation I got only a handful of times that I can only imagine as exploding head syndrome. On these few occasions, I would wake in my bed, still unable to move, and trying as hard as I possibly could to turn my head to the side (the only way I found to escape sleep paralysis), but the ringing in my ears would be the cacophony of a thousand orchestras, playing every note as loud as they could, crashing symbols and discordant wailing strings and the shrill screaming of woodwinds, all at the very same time, and louder than can be imagined by someone who has only heard with their ears. I found stability in a relatively modest course of mood stabilizers and anti-depressants, but the things I heard in those brief depths of madness will never leave me.

I realize my statement can never be validated or peer-reviewed, but I offer my most honest and sincere endorsement that this is a real condition, and one I would never wish on anybody. I still shudder-- literally shudder, as in I get chills, in the office, on the subway, out for dinner with a friend-- every time I remember it. Christ almighty, to think it's a comfort that others have heard it too. 209.6.52.213 (talk) 04:16, 6 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The lack of peer-reviewed scholarly/verifiable sources is disappointing. Perhaps the condition is not common enough or there if fear of ridicule? I don't know if SSRIs are a catalyst for this, but I have also had similar experiences to your own. I was on SSRIs for two years about two years back. I too experienced the infamous "brain zaps" and would also like to add that the lack of peer-reviewed sources on these specific discontinuation effects is equally disappointing. There are even skeptics for the brain zaps, I'm guessing they've never used SSRIs. They went away, but I get them when fatigued from time-to-time.


 * I'm just happy that this 'exploding head syndrome' is common enough to warrant an article on Wikipedia and I'm not going crazy or dying (I hope not at least). I thought I was having a seizure during my sleep, no idea what was happening, and very afraid to talk about it to anybody after waking up. I do have a history of sleep paralysis dating back years before I was ever on SSRIs. Each time I have experienced this, it has been immediately preceded by sleep paralysis. Screeching sounds and hallucinations are well-documented for sleep paralysis. It is frightening, but at least it is normal. Well, maybe normal is not the appropriate word. I'm not so sure about the feeling of electricity inside of your head, but at least there is no pain.


 * Recently, somebody suggested that I 'meditate' to help depression, so not knowing how to do that I read about concentrating on a phosphene with eyes closed. I have no idea if I fell asleep, or something else, but my eyes began to move rapidly and I was paralyzed just like sleep paralysis. I was hallucinating, and that exploding head thing happened. It was pretty scary. Apparently some have said that they are able to do that as a way to trigger an out of body experience if you relax. I tried it again, had sleep paralysis and exploding head syndrome, relaxed, and the 'electricity' in my head diminished. I did not have an OOBE though but the hallucinations remained until I 'snapped out' of it a second later. It is also possible that I had fallen asleep. I know this is not a forum and I am not a peer-reviewed source. There is unfortunately a lack of any information on this frightening and very real sensation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.192.18.172 (talk) 19:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * There are a number of peer-reviewed works available on Google Scholar. Per JM Pearce (1989), it may also have been named cephalgia fugax. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:49, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Clarification needed (maybe)
"Electroencephalograms recorded during actual attacks show unusual activity only in some sufferers, and have ruled out epileptic seizures as a cause.[3] But an attack must happen during an episode. If results are normal during the test, only then can epilepsy be completely ruled out." (This version)

"Attack" and "episode" are similar in meaning, so it would be nice if we could clarify which one refers to seizures and which to exploding head syndrome itself. Electricmuffin11 (talk) 00:20, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

So...
So that means if I get this syndrome, my head will explode or something similar? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.93.21.94 (talk) 12:59, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Experiences & Conclusions
Symtoms: Short intrusions while falling asleep: feeling that electricity runs through and occupies the brain, feeling that my heart stops or my body is 'shut off'/'disconnected', vision that someone smashes a big shield towards my head or someone suddenly moves closely towards me and cries extremely loudly, ... I also had a related episode, while walking seeing 'mouches volants' (Floaters) or the experience of getting hit to the head (Zaps) with a moment interruption of conciousness.

Possible explaination: * 1) Maltreadment of the neck nerves or vertebral column, caused by stress, overstraining office / computer / cellular work. When the body relaxes a non-painful or distressing trauma could be triggered to the according nerves, like a 'reset'. Physical therapy, exercises, concious sitting can help. Symptoms according to section of spine: neck - head, breast - chest/heart, ... | * 2) falling-asleep-process decouples body sensivity before concious awareness of it. Stress relaxing / chilldown phase before going to sleep, less caffeine can help. (Caffeine rises the awake-level over the appropriate necessity. Avoid anything that effects the circadian rhythm.) Sometimes the dreaming-conciousness wraps the physical experiences into some sort of visions or acoustic interpretations. The mentionned relation to out-of-body (maybe lucid dreaming) experiences seems obvious.

related: SSRI discontinuation syndrome (incl 'Brain Zaps') seem related to trigeminus symptoms, Trigeminal neuralgia, Floater, Phantom limb, Vertebral column

ps: Sorry for my English. Nothing empiric, but reflective attention to my body. -- 89.144.192.168 (talk) 23:17, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Etymology
I feel like this article could benefit from an etymology section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.166.109.49 (talk) 14:07, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Comments
This article is very informative and useful when examining the symptoms of exploding head syndrome. There is not a lot of research done on this syndrome, but if anyone could find the possible sleep stages (1,2,3,4) for when this phenomena could occur would be helpful. It is also important to expand on the numbers and statistics of males who have this condition compared to females and the variants in age probability. Overall great article for a syndrome that does not have significant data explaining its mechanism and cause.

Jokeck7 (talk) 01:38, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

No clue what I'm going since never edited wiki pedia but the line "...a gun going off.." ,guns do not make a loud bang thats a myth from Hollywood ,if someone can please remove that line it would be helpful. I just hate for people to be miss informed 73.52.67.101 (talk) 12:09, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Related phenomena
The citation for out of body experience appears to be Self-Published (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome#cite_note-6, which links to: http://www.astralinfo.org/survey-results/). Does anyone else see this or believe it should be left. It obviously leads to a commercial website, but also holds what might be original work. IamM1rv (talk) 15:28, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

ICD-10
There is no clear ICD-10 classification for this Dx, so G47.59 is the appropriate identifier for someone who wants to update the wikidata box. Dr.khatmando (talk) 13:09, 17 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Added PriceDL (talk) 13:38, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Welsh and British
At the end of the article it mentions one person as Welsh and another as British. This is odd considering Welsh people are British. Perhaps someone should try to find out where Pearce is from and change the remark about his personality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.0.236.8 (talk) 11:54, 4 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That is how they are described in the source provided. Jytdog (talk) 12:48, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

I found this: www.omicsonline.org/author-profile/Pearce_JMS/ He worked in Hull, so best guess would be that he was English (and therefore British too)? Not that it matters. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.47.112.176 (talk) 09:20, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Symptoms induced by "Directed Energy Weapons"?!?!
The last paragraph of "Symptoms" states that some people think that EHS is an effect of "directed energy weapons". The reference is Unusual and rare psychological disorders : a handbook for clinical practice and research, and when you follow the link, all you can see is the book's Table of Contents. One of the chapters is about EHS...but this is a serious medical book and I doubt the author would mention conspiracy theories.

I'm confident that the referenced source doesn't contain any information about energy weapons is because I found the real source.

This is how the Wikipedia article reads: "Some individuals believe that EHS episodes are not natural events, but are the effects of directed energy weapons which create an auditory effect.[11] Thus, EHS has been worked into conspiracy theories, but there is no scientific evidence that EHS has non-natural origins."

This is a copy/paste from Medium, some kind of online-subscription-magazine: "Some individuals mistakenly believe that EHS episodes are not natural events, but are the effects of directed energy weapons which create an auditory effect. Thus, EHS has been worked into conspiracy theories, but there is no scientific evidence that EHS has non-natural origins."

See? The only difference is "mistakenly"! I smell ulterior motives. Anyway, what do you guys think, can we get rid of this absurd sentence?

ThroatBruise (talk) 03:39, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Text introduced in this edit 23 May 2017. The word 'mistakenly was removed 29 August 2017 by the ant people.
 * Without access to the text it is hard to be certain, but please do not reject out of hand coverage of people's own unfounded explanations. Searching for that text I can find it within Google books and when searching for "directed energy weapons" I can see glimpses of text sections at least mentioning "direct energy weapons".  In fact I can see a mention in the index on page 353:
 * Directed energy weapons, exploding
 * head syndrome and, 40 - 41
 * And page 40 is indeed where some of those mentions are. So the article published at medium.com (a popular venue for many many types of articles) was quoting without mentioning the source (horrors!!).
 * The world is a strange place, even more so when we delve into the strangest corners, and not made less strange when subject of academic interest. Description of madness is madness repeated? Shenme (talk) 06:22, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Auditory Hallucination
This classification is incorrect and misleading. The sound is real and I can prove this to myself by flexing a muscle in my ear and hearing the same sound while I am awake. How would I go about correcting the article without a legit citation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.183.145.149 (talk) 03:24, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
 * That's the thing about Wikipedia-- you can't. In order to add that kind of information to an article, it needs to be described and published elsewhere first.  Once THAT has happened, then by all means, add it in!  But there is a policy called no original research which makes pretty clear that Wikipedia is not a place to describe personal findings of truth, no matter how "true", because without being clinically described and reviewed by medical peers, there is no way to determine if your experience is part of some kind of pattern or whether you happen to be some kind of anomaly.  A loose noose (talk) 10:24, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Unicode standard update
The Unicode Consortium has created a character for this syndrome in [standard version 10.0](http://unicode.org/versions/Unicode10.0.0/). The character codepoint is 1f92f and appears as 🤯. What do you think? Is this information relevant enough to be included on the main article? עבד יהוה talk 23:45, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Flashing Image
Hard to read the article with the flashing image on a fairly fast repeat. Is it possible to stop the image or pause between loops so it's not flashing as often? Thankfully I don't get migraines and I can remove page code on the fly, not all visitors to the site have these luxuries. The Crisses (talk) 10:11, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed - I went ahead and removed it.--AlexandraIDV 22:36, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

"Citation needed"
Why is there a citation needed thing on the part that says the head doesn't typically explode? 49.147.190.8 (talk) 04:02, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
 * It's clearly a joke, but please don't ever change it. 50.72.9.214 (talk) 06:27, 10 April 2021 (UTC)