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September 13, 2023 | by Catrina Hacker, PennNeuroKnow and IAES Collaboration
A message from IAES Blog Staff:
When it comes to evidence-based answers about all thing’s neurology and neuro myth busting, who you going to call? Well, here at IAES it will be the PNK team of course! We hope you enjoy and learn from this myth busting blog as much as we have!!
The staff at IAES is proud to present to all of you another wonderful article/blog from the amazing team at PennNeuroKnow. Since 2019 IAES has been extremely lucky to be in partnership with the PennNeuroKnow(PNK) team to help us all better understand complex medical issues related to AE and neurology in general. The talented PNK team continues to keep us up-to-date and help clarify the complexities we face each day along our AE journey, and we are eternally grateful! You can find out much more about this stellar group at: https://pennneuroknow.com/
—-
Introduction
Many people find neuroscience fascinating because learning about our brains teaches us about ourselves. Unfortunately, popular interest in brain research has led to several pervasive myths that misrepresent how our brains work. Combatting these neuromyths is difficult because the truth is often much more complicated than the myth and buried in intimidating scientific literature. However, correcting misconceptions about how our brains work can have important benefits for our everyday lives. In this post I’ll break down what some of these neuromyths claim, where they came from, whether there’s any truth behind them, and why we should care about correcting them.
Myth #1: Humans only use 10% of our brains.
This is arguably the most common neuromyth1, inspiring movies like Limitless (2011) and Lucy (2014) in which characters gain superhuman abilities by tapping into the large unused portions of their brains. It’s appealing to think that we all have potential superpowers sitting in our brains waiting to be unleashed, but there’s nothing to support this claim. The reality is that neuroscientists observe activity throughout the entire brain.
While nobody is certain where it came from, some believe that this myth originates from work done by neuroscientist Wilder Penfield in the 1930s1. Penfield was a neurosurgeon who studied the effects of stimulating the brains of patients undergoing neurosurgery to learn what each part of the brain was responsible for. He found that stimulating a large portion of the brain didn’t cause any noticeable effect2, meaning he could not learn what its function might be. However, new and less invasive methods of recording brain activity show that these “silent” parts of the brain are actually active. In fact, a network of brain regions called the default mode network is even active when we are at rest3.
The bottom line: We use 100% of our brains.
Why it matters: The number of drugs and treatments that claim to enhance brain function, collectively called neuroenhancers, is on the rise. While we can always learn and grow, understanding that there is no “hidden” brain waiting to be unlocked can protect you from wasting your money.
Myth #2: Right-brained people are creative while left-brained people are analytical.
The idea that you can be either right-brained or left-brained has captured the attention of people on social media and even teachers in classrooms. It’s tempting to think that people can be categorized so easily and that differences can be attributed to our brains, but the truth isn’t that simple. While people can tend to be more creative than analytical or vice versa, those differences cannot be explained by dominance of one half of the brain over the other4.
This myth has been tricky to combat because there is some important truth behind it. There are some differences between the two halves of your brain, but creativity versus logical reasoning isn’t one of them. Your brain has two hemispheres, left and right, that communicate via a bundle of neural connections called the corpus callosum. While almost everything we do involves communication between the two halves of our brain, sometimes one half of the brain contributes a little more than the other. For example, the left hemisphere typically takes the lead in language processing5, the right hemisphere seems to play an especially important role in visual attention6, and the left and right hemispheres might do slightly different things to aid in face processing7. Things like creativity and emotional processing rely on both hemispheres and complicated networks of brain activations8,9.
The bottom line: Being right-brained or left-brained can’t explain why some people are more creative than others, but there are some differences in what your left and right hemispheres do when it comes to things like language, attention, and face recognition.
Why it matters: Categorizing people as one thing or another (left-brained or right-brained) is restrictive and ultimately harmful. Many “logical” tasks require creativity and “creative” tasks require logic. If teachers, mentors, and bosses make these assumptions about members of their teams or classrooms they risk mischaracterizing people or preventing them from working up to their true potential.
Myth #3: Listening to Mozart makes babies smarter.
This neuromyth, sometimes called the “Mozart effect”, started in 1991 when Alfred Tomatis shared his thoughts about how listening to Mozart could help children with speech and auditory disorders10. When a group of researchers showed in 1993 that listening to 10 minutes of Mozart’s K. 448 improved college students’ ability to visualize and manipulate mental images11, the media took this result and ran with it. The effects in the original study only lasted 10 to 15 minutes and only impacted mental manipulation of images, but the media wrote about general boosts to intelligence and implied that they lasted much longer. Despite the original study being done with college students, the myth was somehow generalized to include babies. Several studies published since 1993 have provided alternate explanations for the original result or have failed to replicate it while studying the same or different skills12.
Although listening to Mozart can’t make you smarter, there is some truth behind this myth. Stimulating an infant’s brain helps with their development, but activities like direct interactions with a parent, reading a book, or talking and singing with an infant are much more effective13,14. When it comes to music, passively listening might not impact development, but learning to play an instrument positively impacts a child’s cognitive abilities and their performance in school15.
The bottom line: Listening to Mozart doesn’t make babies smarter, but stimulation from things like singing to your child is an important part of their development, and children who learn to play an instrument tend to perform better in school.
Why it matters: Belief in the Mozart effect and similar claims led many people to show their children the popular Baby Einstein videos in the early 2000s. However, in 2007 a study showed that not only did viewing these baby DVDs not improve children’s intelligence, children who watched the videos tended to have a worse vocabulary than other children16.
Myth #4: Everybody has a distinct style in which they learn best.
Many people have memories like mine of being asked if they are a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner as a child. You may even have filled out a survey to learn what your learning style is. Even today, many teachers collect this information and personalize their teaching to each student’s supposed learning style. While this seems logical, there is no evidence that each person has a specific learning style in which they learn best17,18, and some research suggests that teaching to learning styles is more harmful than helpful19. While it’s true that people vary in ability on different kinds of tasks and that teachers should work with students as individuals to help them succeed, when “visual learners” are tasked with learning through auditory tasks, they do just as well19.
The bottom line: Everybody has different preferences, but matching teaching to a preferred learning style does not improve learning.
Why it matters: It is a waste of time and resources to focus on tailoring education to preferred learning styles when it has no impact on learning. In fact, teaching based on learning styles might actually harm students by limiting them to certain modalities and subjects that match their learning style and discouraging them from exploring20.
Myth #5: Your handwriting reveals aspects of your personality.
The use of handwriting to learn about someone’s personality is called graphology. Graphology became popular in the late 1800s, with German scientist William Preyer commenting that handwriting is “brain writing”21,22. Despite its dubious scientific validity, graphology was used to make decisions about a person’s value to society, such as in determining whether a person was trustworthy or a criminal. Fortunately, modern experiments have conclusively shown that handwriting cannot predict a person’s personality. In controlled settings, graphologists are no better at using a person’s handwriting to make judgments about them than if they were guessing23. However, many people still believe that aspects of a person’s personality can be learned from their handwriting, and some computer scientists are still trying to build computer models that can predict things like criminality and work ethic from handwriting24, repeating the mistakes of the past.
Despite the dubious link between handwriting and personality, there are some reliable links between handwriting and brain health. Our brains control the muscles that move as we write, and some neurological disorders can cause changes in the brain that impact handwriting21. For example, one early symptom of Parkinson’s Disease can be small, cramped handwriting25. For this and related disorders, handwriting can act as a window into brain health and an early warning sign that can lead to faster care and better outcomes.
The bottom line: A person’s handwriting cannot reliably predict their personality, but changes to handwriting can be early signs of neurological disorders like Parkinson’s Disease.
Why it matters: Despite there being no connection between a person’s handwriting and their personality, in 2017 then President Donald Trump tweeted about being able to tell from his handwriting that former United States Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, “is secretive”22. Some scientists are still trying to build tools that can determine a person’s personality based on their handwriting to help with hiring decisions24. Without widespread acceptance that handwriting cannot predict personality, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past and using handwriting to unfairly discriminate against certain people.
Myth #6: A common sign of dyslexia is seeing letters backwards.
Dyslexia, characterized by difficulty reading, affects an estimated 20% of the population and is the most common neuro-cognitive disorder26. It is a popular misconception that a common sign of dyslexia is seeing words and letters backwards. People with dyslexia don’t see words and letters backwards, but they do have difficulty naming letters and words (think saying “was” while reading “saw”)27. When it comes to writing, there is some evidence that dyslexic children may be more likely than others to write letters and words backwards, a phenomenon called reversals. However, reversals are common in all children learning to read and write28, and not all children with dyslexia make reversals29.
There are many other reliable indicators that a person may have dyslexia. The signs of dyslexia change throughout a lifetime and range from preschool children who struggle to identify the letters in their names to high school students who struggle to read unfamiliar words30. Visit this fact page from the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity for a full list of signs of dyslexia for all age groups.
The bottom line: Dyslexic children don’t see letters backwards, although they may read and write letters backwards. However, not all dyslexic readers write letters backwards and not all children who write letters backwards are dyslexic.
Why it matters: If parents and educators expect dyslexic children to describe seeing letters backwards or adults think they must see letters backwards to have dyslexia, then many people could go undiagnosed and not get the support they need to succeed.
Myth #7: Human memory works like a camera, perfectly recording what you experience.
As a child, one of my favorite book series starred Cam Jansen, a fifth grader who solves mysteries utilizing her flawless photographic memory. Any time she wanted to remember something she would say “click” and it would be perfectly captured in her memory. As an adult, I’ve watched plenty of TV shows and movies featuring similar characters who can use their perfect memory to save the day. Unfortunately, this kind of memory doesn’t exist outside books and other media.
For the rest of us here on earth, our brains forget and fill in details of our memories, even when we feel certain we remember things perfectly. A great example of this is the visual Mandela effect, wherein people consistently report strong false memories of things like whether Curious George has a tail or the Monopoly man wears a monocle (neither is true, but people consistently believe that they are)31. In general, it’s a good thing that our brains work in this imperfect way. We don’t want to get bogged down with irrelevant details of memories, so our brains act as a filter, prioritizing memory for the things that matter most and filling in the details and moments that are less important.
If our memory is so imperfect, where does the idea of photographic memory come from? This myth might have started after psychologist Ralph Haber noticed that a small percentage of children seemed to be able to hold pictures in their mind’s eye for seconds or minutes after they were removed from sight32. He called this kind of memory eidetic memory (often used interchangeably with “photographic memory” in popular media). However, these studies only looked at memory for short periods of time, and later research demonstrated that this “memory” is far from perfect33.
The bottom line: Some people can remember things better or longer than others, but nobody’s memory works like a camera.
Why it matters: Our criminal justice system still relies heavily on eyewitness reports. If police officers, lawyers, and jurors don’t realize that memory is flawed, they risk inflating the value of this kind of testimony and incarcerating innocent people34.
Myth #8: People with bigger brains are smarter.
We’ve all heard or used the term “big-brained” to describe someone who does something smart, but the size of their brain has nothing to do with their intellect. If size was all that mattered, then elephants, whose brains are 3x heavier than ours, would be 3x smarter than us35. Even if we’re just looking at human brains, Albert Einstein’s brain was no bigger than average, and despite years of studying his brain, neuroscientists haven’t found any clear differences in its structure compared to other human brains36.
The myth that smarter people have bigger brains has a particularly harmful history. In the 1800s, scientists measured the skulls of people of different races and genders as an estimate of brain size to provide “scientific” evidence that Caucasian men were superior to women and other races. There are many reasons this approach was flawed, not least of which is that correcting for body size can account for many of the reported differences37. In 1898, a woman named Alice Lee challenged this idea by storming into the all-male meeting of the Anatomical Society at Trinity College Dublin, measuring the skulls of several prominent men in the audience, and demonstrating that many of these supposedly intelligent men had rather small skulls38.
Read my previous post, “The Problem of Brain Size”, for a more detailed look at this myth.
The bottom line: Brain size has nothing to do with intelligence.
Why it matters: Flawed measurements of brain size have historically been used as scientific “proof” that women and racial minorities are not as intelligent as Caucasian men. Dispelling this myth is critical to reverse the harm done by the claims made in these studies and to prevent making the same mistakes in the future.
Myth #9: Playing brain games makes you smarter.
We’ve all seen ads for games that claim to train your brain to make you smarter, or measure your IQ. However, these claims are misleading and overinflated. One study conclusively proved this by having over 11,000 people play online brain games for six weeks. At the end of the six weeks, people had gotten a little better at the specific games that they played, but they were no better at any other tests39. In other words, playing one memory game could make people better at that game, but it didn’t improve their memory overall.
In 2016, the brain game company Lumosity paid a $2 million settlement to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) who filed false advertising charges against them40. The FTC asserted that Lumosity’s claims that playing their games could improve performance on everyday tasks, delay age-related cognitive decline, and reduce the effects of brain injuries like stroke were unfounded. Since the settlement, Lumosity has been forced to alter their claims so that they do not mislead consumers.
The bottom line: Playing brain games makes you better at those particular games, but not any smarter overall.
Why it matters: Before investing time and money into products that claim to improve brain function by playing fun brain training games, it’s important to understand that these effects are often small and improve performance on specific tasks, but don’t generalize.
Myth #10: Different regions of your tongue are specialized for different kinds of tastes.
There are five basic tastes: bitter, salty, sour, sweet, and umami41. The myth goes that there are different parts of your tongue that are specialized to sense different tastes, so sweet and salty tastes are sensed on the tip of your tongue, while bitter tastes are sensed toward the back. I remember learning this myth for the first time at a girl scout meeting where we tasted different foods by placing them on different parts of our tongue. Since then, I heard it repeated many times in school and even in some of my neuroscience classes as an undergrad. In fact, many textbooks that are still being used today include this false claim. However, the truth is that although some parts of the tongue might be more sensitive to one taste or another, all five basic tastes are sensed across the entire tongue42.
The tongue map myth started with a 1901 paper in which German scientist David Hänig measured how much taste sensitivities changed across the tongue. He noticed that some parts of the tongue were more sensitive to a particular taste than others, and he drew some graphs to show how those sensitivities changed across the tongue. In 1940, another scientist adapted these graphs for a book about the different senses. In his adaptation, he simplified things by showing a single taste that was most sensitive on each part of the tongue rather than the relative sensitivities of each taste. This gave the false impression that each region of the tongue could sense just one taste, and this oversimplified figure has been copied thousands of times into science textbooks to teach the neuroscience of taste.
The bottom line: Sensitivity to each taste varies somewhat across the tongue, but each part of the tongue senses all the basic tastes.
Why it matters: The negative consequences of this myth might not be as harmful as the others, but it’s always worth correcting our understanding of ourselves and our bodies.
Now that you’ve learned the truth behind 10 popular neuromyths, it’s worth asking how so many neuromyths have leaked into popular press and what we can do to prevent them in the future. Preventing the spread of disinformation about the brain starts at all levels. Scientists should be careful not to overgeneralize or oversimplify their findings and to always consider alternative explanations and how their work might be misinterpreted. Journalists and science communicators should carefully report the results of scientific studies and not overstate what a given experiment shows. Non-scientists should think critically about what they read, and fact check things they read from unknown sources on social media. And most importantly, now that you know the truth behind the myth, the best thing you can do is to teach it to others who still believe in these popular neuromyths.
References
1. Jarrett, C. All You Need To Know About the 10 Percent Brain Myth, in 60 Seconds. Wired.
2. Ferrier Lecture – Some observations on the cerebral cortex of man. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B – Biol. Sci. 134, 329–347 (1947).
3. Raichle, M. E. The Brain’s Default Mode Network. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 38, 433–447 (2015).
4. Nielsen, J. A., Zielinski, B. A., Ferguson, M. A., Lainhart, J. E. & Anderson, J. S. An Evaluation of the Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain Hypothesis with Resting State Functional Connectivity Magnetic Resonance Imaging. PLoS ONE 8, e71275 (2013).
5. Bradshaw, A. R., Thompson, P. A., Wilson, A. C., Bishop, D. V. M. & Woodhead, Z. V. J. Measuring language lateralisation with different language tasks: a systematic review. PeerJ 5, e3929 (2017).
6. Chica, A. B. et al. Attention networks and their interactions after right-hemisphere damage. Cortex 48, 654–663 (2012).
7. Meng, M., Cherian, T., Singal, G. & Sinha, P. Lateralization of face processing in the human brain. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 279, 2052–2061 (2012).
8. Amir, O. & Biederman, I. The Neural Correlates of Humor Creativity. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 10, (2016).
9. Fossati, P. Neural correlates of emotion processing: From emotional to social brain. Eur. Neuropsychopharmacol. 22, S487–S491 (2012).
10. Tomatis, Alfred. Pourqoi Mozart? (Diffusion, Hachette, 1991).
11. Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L. & Ky, K. N. Music and spatial task performance. Nature 365, (1993).
12. Cong, A. FROM MOZART TO MYTHS: Dispelling the ‘Mozart Effect’. Young Sci. J. 49–53 (2014).
13. California Childcare Health Program, UCSF School of Nursing. Building Baby’s Intelligence: Why Infant Stimulation Is So Important. (2002).
14. Walker, S. P. et al. Cognitive, psychosocial, and behaviour gains at age 31 years from the Jamaica early childhood stimulation trial. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 63, 626–635 (2022).
15. Román-Caballero, R., Vadillo, M. A., Trainor, L. J. & Lupiáñez, J. Please don’t stop the music: A meta-analysis of the cognitive and academic benefits of instrumental musical training in childhood and adolescence. Educ. Res. Rev. 35, 100436 (2022).
16. Zimmerman, F. J., Christakis, D. A. & Meltzoff, A. N. Associations between Media Viewing and Language Development in Children Under Age 2 Years. J. Pediatr. 151, 364–368 (2007).
17. Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D. & Bjork, R. Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychol. Sci. Public Interest 9, 105–119 (2008).
18. Cuevas, J. Is learning styles-based instruction effective? A comprehensive analysis of recent research on learning styles. Theory Res. Educ. 13, 308–333 (2015).
19. Riener, C. & Willingham, D. The Myth of Learning Styles. Change Mag. High. Learn. 42, 32–35 (2010).
20. Newton, P. M. & Salvi, A. How Common Is Belief in the Learning Styles Neuromyth, and Does It Matter? A Pragmatic Systematic Review. Front. Educ. 5, 602451 (2020).
21. The Telltale Hand. Dana Foundation https://www.dana.org/article/the-telltale-hand/.
22. Trubek, A. Sorry, Graphology Isn’t a Real Science. JSTOR Daily https://daily.jstor.org/graphology-isnt-real-science/ (2017).
23. Dazzi, C. & Pedrabissi, L. Graphology and Personality: An Empirical Study on Validity of Handwriting Analysis. Psychol. Rep. 105, 1255–1268 (2009).
24. Bandhu, K. C., Litoriya, R., Khatri, M., Kaul, M. & Soni, P. Integrating graphology and machine learning for accurate prediction of personality: a novel approach. Multimed. Tools Appl. (2023) doi:10.1007/s11042-023-15567-8.
25. Small Handwriting | Parkinson’s Foundation. https://www.parkinson.org/understanding-parkinsons/non-movement-symptoms/small-handwriting.
26. Dyslexia FAQ. Yale Dyslexia https://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexia/dyslexia-faq/.
27. Shaywitz, S. E. & Shaywitz, B. A. Dyslexia (Specific Reading Disability).
28. Cornell, J. M. Spontaneous mirror-writing in children. Can. J. Psychol. Rev. Can. Psychol. 39, 174–179 (1985).
29. Brooks, A. D., Berninger, V. W. & Abbott, R. D. Letter Naming and Letter Writing Reversals in Children With Dyslexia: Momentary Inefficiency in the Phonological and Orthographic Loops of Working Memory. Dev. Neuropsychol. 36, 847–868 (2011).
30. Signs of Dyslexia. Yale Dyslexia https://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexia/signs-of-dyslexia/.
31. Prasad, D. & Bainbridge, W. A. The Visual Mandela Effect as Evidence for Shared and Specific False Memories Across People. Psychol. Sci.
32. Haber, R. N. Twenty years of haunting eidetic imagery: where’s the ghost? Behav. Brain Sci. 2, 583–594 (1979).
33. Gray, C. R. & Gummerman, K. The Enigmatic Eidetic Image: A Critical Examination of Methods, Data, and Theories.
34. Report Urges Caution in Handling and Relying Upon Eyewitness Identifications in Criminal Cases, Recommends Best Practices for Law Enforcement and Courts | National Academies. https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2014/10/report-urges-caution-in-handling-and-relying-upon-eyewitness-identifications-in-criminal-cases-recommends-best-practices-for-law-enforcement-and-courts.
35. Herculano-Houzel, S. et al. The elephant brain in numbers. Front. Neuroanat. 8, (2014).
36. Hines, T. Neuromythology of Einstein’s brain. Brain Cogn. 88, 21–25 (2014).
37. Gould, S. The Mismeasure of Man. (WW Northon & Company, 1996).
38. McNeill, L. The Statistician Who Debunked Sexist Myths About Skull Size and Intelligence. Smithsonian Magazine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/alice-lee-statistician-debunked-sexist-myths-skull-size-intelligence-180971241/.
39. Owen, A. M. et al. Putting brain training to the test. Nature 465, 775–778 (2010).
40. Lumosity to Pay $2 Million to Settle FTC Deceptive Advertising Charges for Its “Brain Training” Program. Federal Trade Commission https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2016/01/lumosity-pay-2-million-settle-ftc-deceptive-advertising-charges-its-brain-training-program (2016).
41. sarah. Accounting for taste. Curious https://www.science.org.au/curious/people-medicine/accounting-taste (2016).
42. Caballar, R. D. Do Different Parts of the Tongue Taste Different Things? https://www.brainfacts.org:443/thinking-sensing-and-behaving/taste/2018/do-different-parts-of-the-tongue-taste-different-things-010319.
Cover photo made by Catrina Hacker in Biorender.com using image by GraphicMama-team from Pixabay.
On June 16 th, 2022, Tabitha Orth, President and Founder of International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society officially became the 7,315 th “point of light”. Recognized for the volunteer work she and IAES has done to spark change and improve the world for those touched by Autoimmune Encephalitis. The award was founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
August 30, 2023 | by Sophie Liebergall, PennNeuroKnow and IAES Collaboration
A message from IAES Blog Staff:
The staff at IAES is proud to present to all of you another wonderful article/blog from the amazing team at PennNeuroKnow. Since 2019 IAES has been extremely lucky to be in partnership with the PennNeuroKnow(PNK) team to help us all better understand complex medical issues related to AE and neurology in general. The talented PNK team continues to keep us up-to-date and help clarify the complexities we face each day along our AE journey, and we are eternally grateful! You can find out much more about this stellar group at: https://pennneuroknow.com/
As AE Warriors, caregivers, friends, family, loved ones and medical personnel we have been unwittingly thrown into a world we may or may not have been at all curious about previously. No matter where we are in our individual AE journeys, neurology and neuroscience are terms we all know well. AE may have sent us on this journey deep into the amazing world of neurology, but we all have found out just how interesting and fascinating our brains can be! In the first of a two-part series, Sophie Liebergall has helped us to better understand 10 big unanswered questions in neuroscience! We hope you enjoy this and look forward to Part II.
——
This past year, astrophysicists used NASA’s James Webb Space telescope to observe a star that is over 33 billion light years away from earth. Back on earth, particle physicists used the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland to confirm the existence of incomprehensibly tiny subatomic particles. But despite these astounding scientific and technologic advances, we still have a lot to learn about what is going on in the organ inside our own skulls! In part one of what will be a two-part series, we discuss a few of the fundamental questions about the brain that have remained mysterious to neuroscientists.
1. Where do our memories go when we put them in long-term storage?
For a brain to perform complex tasks, such as telling the body to execute a series of movements or being able to recognize and evade a predator, it must be able to recall information that was gathered during previous experiences. Neuroscience researchers divide memory storage into two stages: short-term memory and long-term memory.1 When the brain senses something in its environment, it can hold that information for a few seconds to minutes as a short-term memory.2 Over time, scientists have gathered clues that short-term memories (at least those of conscious facts and events) are stored in the hippocampus, an almond-size region nestled on either side below the brain’s surface on either side.3 But sometimes the brain needs to hold onto information for longer periods of time (up to a lifetime) so that is can be recalled later. We’re fairly certain that long-term memories aren’t stored in the hippocampus; but where exactly these long-term memories go remains a mystery. Several recent studies seem to suggest that, unlike short-term memories, long-term memories may be widely distributed in the cerebral cortex (the large surface of the brain that is used for complex thought), with different features of the memory spread across different regions.4,5 You can read more about the process of memory formation and how it can go wrong in some diseases here!
2. Why do we need to sleep?
Evolution has shaped the human body into an elegant and efficient machine, with a versatile digestive system, a continuously beating heart, and a thinking brain. However, one of our basic biologic functions, sleep, seems like something that should have been stamped out by evolution many generations ago. When we sleep, we are essentially unconscious for up to one-third of the day. For our ancestors, this is a time when they were particularly vulnerable to predators and unable to gather food. So why, then, has sleep survived the test of natural selection?
Sleep is absolutely necessary for all animals (from armadillos, who sleep up to twenty hours each day, to giraffes who need just two hours of sleep a day).6 After just a couple days of total sleep deprivation, many people will start to show symptoms of psychosis.7 And if the sleep deprivation continues, it can even be deadly. In a study from the 1980s, which would likely be forbidden under contemporary ethical standards, researchers subjected a group of rats to total sleep deprivation. All of the rats died by the 32nd day of the study.8 The ultrarare genetic disease Fatal familial insomnia gives further insight into the danger of insomnia in humans. Patients with Fatal familial insomnia slowly lose their ability to fall and stay asleep.9 Tragically, these patients always die soon after they completely lose their ability to sleep.
Sleep is important for a variety of our body and brain’s normal functions: solidifying events that occurred during the day as long term memories,10 recalibrating the strength of the connections between brain cells,11,12 balancing the hormones that control our appetites and metabolism,13 and clearing the toxic byproducts of brain cell activity.14 But scientists still do not know what function (or functions) of sleep are the primary reason why it is essential for survival. Read more about the possible hypothesis for why we sleep in this PNK article!
3. Why do we dream?
Even more mysterious than the question of why we sleep is the question of why we dream. Though sleep has been a target of neuroscience research for decades, there are inherent challenges to studying dreaming that prevent us from using some of the traditional tools of neuroscience research. The study of dreams still largely relies on dream reports, when a person wakes up and verbally reports or writes down whether they were dreaming and what their dream was about. Dream reports are often unreliable because of the bias and imperfect memory of the dreamer. This can prevent researchers from making objective scientific conclusions from dream reports. Furthermore, all animals clearly display some form of sleep, but there is no conclusive evidence that other animals have dreams. This makes it challenging or even impossible to study dreaming using laboratory animals, which generally allow us to perform important experiments that would take too long or be too dangerous in humans.
Though we have recently developed more sophisticated tools that allow us to correlate the dream reports of humans with measures of brain activity, many of these studies have only raised more questions. It was once thought that dreaming only occurred during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the phase of sleep during which brain waves look most similar to the waking state. But more recent evidence suggests that dreams occur during both REM and non-REM sleep (though dreams that occur during REM sleep do seem to be more vivid than the dreams that occur during non-REM sleep).15,16
Another strange aspect of dreaming is called the dream-lag effect, which describes a phenomenon in which you’re most likely to dream about real life events that happened 5-7 days ago.17 And we still don’t have a clue as to why some people are prone to sleepwalking: a state in which individuals are clearly deep in a dream, but somehow are aware of their surroundings enough to navigate a space, consume food, or even drive a motor vehicle.18 You can learn more about the neuroscience of dreaming here!
4. How do the general anesthesia drugs used during surgery make you unconscious?
General anesthetics, the class of drugs which cause temporary unconsciousness, have made it possible for doctors to perform lifesaving and life-altering surgeries that would otherwise be impossibly painful for patients. General anesthetics are some of the most safe and reliable medications that are administered by doctors. But we still don’t have an understanding of where general anesthetics act in the brain, or of what their ultimate effects are on brain processes. Even though anesthetic drugs all have the same end effect of making a patient unconscious, anesthetics can come in all different shapes and sizes. Some, like xenon gas, have a structure as simple a single atom, whereas others, like alfaxalone, have a complex structure with many branches and rings.19,20 Some are inhaled as a gas, whereas others are injected into the bloodstream. And, strangely, general anesthetics don’t just sedate animals with complex brains like humans. They also impair the movement and environmental responsiveness of plants and even single-celled organisms!21 You can learn more about the possible mechanisms of general anesthetics and their relationship with sleep in this PNK article.
5. How does each area of the brain know what function it is supposed to perform?
In the mid-19th century, in the early days of modern neuroscience, the French physician Paul Broca learned of a patient with a unique neurologic condition. This patient had lost the ability to generate speech, but had somehow maintained the ability to comprehend speech.22 When this patient died, Broca performed an autopsy, where he discovered that the patient had sustained an injury to a very specific area of their frontal lobe. Broca’s work inspired other physicians of his age to look for injuries to specific areas of their brains in their patients with specific neurologic symptoms. If multiple patients with the same symptoms had an injury in the same region, then it could be assumed that an injury to that region was the cause of the symptom. These studies of localized brain injuries led neurologists to believe that different regions of the brain are responsible for the different functions of the brain. For example, one region of the brain is required for the ability to move a hand, whereas another region of the brain is required to read language.
Modern-day neuroscientists and neurologists take the idea that certain regions of the brain are responsible for certain functions for granted. But there is a great deal of complexity to this picture that we have yet to understand. The exact mapping of the functions of the brain can vary between individuals – sometimes in dramatic ways. For example, most people have the speech control area of their brain somewhere on the left side of their brain. But occasionally, in people who are left-handed, the speech control area is instead found on the right side.23 This variability between individuals suggests that the process of assigning a function to a specific brain region doesn’t follow a simple blueprint. But we still don’t know how the brain knows which functions it needs to perform. And we also don’t know each function is assigned to a particular region of the brain.
Stay tuned for part two with five more big unanswered questions in neuroscience coming this summer!
References
1. Cowan, N. What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory? Prog Brain Res 169, 323–338 (2008).
2. Atkinson, R. C. & Shiffrin, R. M. Human Memory: A Proposed System and its Control Processes11This research was supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Grant No. NGR-05-020-036. The authors are indebted to W. K. Estes and G. H. Bower who provided many valuable suggestions and comments at various stages of the work. Special credit is due J. W. Brelsford who was instrumental in carrying out the research discussed in Section IV and whose overall contributions are too numerous to report in detail. We should also like to thank those co-workers who carried out a number of the experiments discussed in the latter half of the paper; rather than list them here, each will be acknowledged at the appropriate place. in Psychology of Learning and Motivation (eds. Spence, K. W. & Spence, J. T.) vol. 2 89–195 (Academic Press, 1968).
3. Duff, M. C., Covington, N. V., Hilverman, C. & Cohen, N. J. Semantic Memory and the Hippocampus: Revisiting, Reaffirming, and Extending the Reach of Their Critical Relationship. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 13, (2020).
4. Yadav, N. et al. Prefrontal feature representations drive memory recall. Nature 608, 153–160 (2022).
5. Roy, D. S. et al. Brain-wide mapping reveals that engrams for a single memory are distributed across multiple brain regions. Nat Commun 13, 1799 (2022).
6. Campbell, S. S. & Tobler, I. Animal sleep: a review of sleep duration across phylogeny. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 8, 269–300 (1984).
7. Waters, F., Chiu, V., Atkinson, A. & Blom, J. D. Severe Sleep Deprivation Causes Hallucinations and a Gradual Progression Toward Psychosis With Increasing Time Awake. Front Psychiatry 9, 303 (2018).
8. Everson, C. A., Bergmann, B. M. & Rechtschaffen, A. Sleep deprivation in the rat: III. Total sleep deprivation. Sleep 12, 13–21 (1989).
9. Fatal Familial Insomnia – Symptoms, Causes, Treatment | NORD. https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/fatal-familial-insomnia/.
10. Diekelmann, S. & Born, J. The memory function of sleep. Nat Rev Neurosci 11, 114–126 (2010).
11. Frank, M. G. Erasing Synapses in Sleep: Is It Time to Be SHY? Neural Plast 2012, 264378 (2012).
12. Tononi, G. & Cirelli, C. Sleep function and synaptic homeostasis. Sleep Medicine Reviews 10, 49–62 (2006).
13. Sharma, S. & Kavuru, M. Sleep and Metabolism: An Overview. Int J Endocrinol 2010, 270832 (2010).
14. Xie, L. et al. Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain. Science 342, 10.1126/science.1241224 (2013).
15. Foulkes, W. D. Dream reports from different stages of sleep. J Abnorm Soc Psychol 65, 14–25 (1962).
16. Hobson, J. A., Pace-Schott, E. F. & Stickgold, R. Dreaming and the brain: toward a cognitive neuroscience of conscious states. Behav Brain Sci 23, 793–842; discussion 904-1121 (2000).
17. Eichenlaub, J. et al. The nature of delayed dream incorporation (‘dream‐lag effect’): Personally significant events persist, but not major daily activities or concerns. J Sleep Res 28, e12697 (2019).
18. Cochen De Cock, V. Sleepwalking. Curr Treat Options Neurol 18, 6 (2016).
19. PubChem. Alfaxalone. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/104845.
20. PubChem. Xenon. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/23991.
21. Kelz, M. B. & Mashour, G. A. The Biology of General Anesthesia from Paramecium to Primate. Current Biology 29, R1199–R1210 (2019).
22. Dronkers, N. F., Plaisant, O., Iba-Zizen, M. T. & Cabanis, E. A. Paul Broca’s historic cases: high resolution MR imaging of the brains of Leborgne and Lelong. Brain 130, 1432–1441 (2007).
23. Packheiser, J. et al. A large-scale estimate on the relationship between language and motor lateralization. Sci Rep 10, 13027 (2020).
Cover photo made with biorender.com.
On June 16 th, 2022, Tabitha Orth, President and Founder of International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society officially became the 7,315 th “point of light”. Recognized for the volunteer work she and IAES has done to spark change and improve the world for those touched by Autoimmune Encephalitis. The award was founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
August 23, 2023 | by Kara McGaughey, PennNeuroKnow and IAES Collaboration
A message from IAES Blog Staff:
The staff at IAES is proud to present to all of you another wonderful article/blog from the amazing team at PennNeuroKnow. Since 2019 IAES has been extremely lucky to be in partnership with the PennNeuroKnow(PNK) team to help us all better understand complex medical issues related to AE and neurology in general. The talented PNK team continues to keep us up-to-date and help clarify the complexities we face each day along our AE journey, and we are eternally grateful! You can find out much more about this stellar group at: https://pennneuroknow.com/
——-
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a newly-emerged virus that causes Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). SARS-CoV-2 infection results in various systemic and respiratory symptoms such as fever, fatigue, cough, and difficulty breathing. In cases of severe disease, these symptoms can cause heart and lung failure, requiring hospitalization. However, the struggle isn’t always over once infection has subsided. Around 15% of patients have persistent symptoms for months after testing positive.2-3 These symptoms, often including fatigue and brain fog, can be debilitating. In many cases, a patient’s ability to carry out normal, everyday activities is profoundly affected. In a much, much smaller percentage of cases, the SARS-CoV-2 virus can also function as a trigger for some autoimmune diseases, like Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), rheumatoid arthritis, and even autoimmune encephalitis (AE).4-5
AE refers to a group of conditions that occur when the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy brain tissue.5 The cause of AE is often unknown. However, experts say that, in some cases, exposure to certain bacteria or viruses may increase someone’s risk of AE. For example, infection with herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) has been linked to later development of AE, particularly the anti-NMDA AE subtype.7
We are seeing something similar happening now with SARS-CoV-2 viral infections (and re-infections) leading to an uptick in the number of AE diagnoses. Case reports of this so-called “post-COVID AE” have come from all over the world — Iran, Canada, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, China, Sweden, India, Mexico, and the United States — and describe patients across a wide range of ages from 2 to 88.4,8-9 A majority of these post-COVID AE diagnoses are for either limbic or anti-NMDA AE subtypes with patients experiencing headache, cognitive impairment, and seizures.4 Fortunately, a majority of patients respond well to treatment.4
How exactly AE develops from SARS-CoV-2 infections is not yet fully understood. However, scientists do have some theories.
The “cytokine storm” and inflammatory cytokines:
Cytokines are small proteins that are crucial for controlling the immune system’s activity.10 Inflammatory cytokinesact as signals that tell the immune system to turn on, enabling the body to recognize and destroy foreign invaders (like the SARS-CoV-2 virus). Anti-inflammatory cytokines are responsible for dialing immune system activity back down once the threat has been neutralized. During the pandemic, you may have heard about COVID-19 causing the overproduction of inflammatory cytokines, known as a “cytokine storm.” With too many of these cytokines released in the body, immune system activity and inflammation can spiral out of control, leading to, in the worst cases, multi-organ failure.4-6,11
Scientists think that one link between COVID-19 and AE is a particular inflammatory cytokine, IL-6, released during this storm.5,12 Elevated levels of IL-6 are often found in patients with anti-NMDA AE.11,13-14 In fact, they are considered a characteristic feature of this AE subtype.13 Given that many post-COVID AE cases are anti-NMDA, it is possible that high levels of IL-6 as a result of SARS-CoV-2 viral infection could be one reason for the increased risk of developing AE after COVID-19.
Accidental autoimmunity:
While we want an immune system that can recognize and react to foreign invaders (e.g., SARS-CoV-2, tumor cells, etc.), it is just as important that our own cells don’t get caught up in the crossfire. Fortunately, our immune system has evolved to both quickly and accurately distinguish outsiders from the body itself. However, sometimes in the face of viral infections that cause extreme inflammation, this protective, self-recognition feature goes awry and the body begins to produce antibodies that accidentally target its own tissue (“autoantibodies”). This autoantibody-induced self destruction is called autoimmunity.4 It is possible that SARS-CoV-2 viral infections induce AE through an autoimmune process that generates antibodies targeting brain cells.
AE is notoriously rare and frequently misdiagnosed.15 Evidence for a link between SARS-CoV-2 infections and the development of AE means more of the scientific spotlight is being given to AE. This increased awareness could make physicians more likely to explore AE as a possible diagnosis, decreasing the time patients spend in limbo waiting for answers and treatment. Perhaps more importantly, in scientific research, money and resources flow where attention goes. This could mean more funding for AE research and more AE clinical trials. Hopefully, this will lead to a better understanding not only of the relationship between COVID-19 and AE, but AE and autoimmunity more broadly.
A final note: It’s important to remember that getting infected or re-infected with COVID-19 doesn’t mean you will end up with AE. While there have been a fair number of case reports of post-COVID AE, it is still a rare outcome. Moreover, it is very difficult to establish any sort of causal link between SARS-CoV-2 infection and the later development of a disease. In most cases it is impossible to know whether some of these patients would have developed AE even without exposure to COVID-19. Nonetheless, the best path forward is to be aware of ongoing research and continue preventive measures, like wearing a mask in high-risk situations and making sure you stay up to date on COVID-19 vaccinations.
Work cited:
On June 16 th, 2022, Tabitha Orth, President and Founder of International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society officially became the 7,315 th “point of light”. Recognized for the volunteer work she and IAES has done to spark change and improve the world for those touched by Autoimmune Encephalitis. The award was founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
July 12, 2023 | by Lindsay Ejoh, PennNeuroKnow and IAES Collaboration
A message from IAES Blog Staff:
The staff at IAES is proud to present to all of you another wonderful article/blog from the amazing team at PennNeuroKnow. Since 2019 IAES has been extremely lucky to be in partnership with the PennNeuroKnow(PNK) team to help us all better understand complex medical issues related to AE and neurology in general. The talented PNK team continues to keep us up-to-date and help clarify the complexities we face each day along our AE journey, and we are eternally grateful! You can find out much more about this stellar group at: https://pennneuroknow.com/
For all of us with AE, sleep can be an ongoing issue whether it be too little, too much, interrupted sleep cycles and everything in-between! Sleep issues often go hand in hand with an AE diagnosis. PNK author Lindsay Ejoh wrote this piece for the PNK weekly series and graciously gave IAES permission to publish it in our monthly series. We hope you find this as informative as we have!
——-
Sleep experts recommend that most adults get 7-9 hours of good-quality sleep each day1,2 to avoid the myriad of issues that can occur when the brain and body are sleep-deprived. We all know what it is like to be tired. We may feel cranky and sluggish, as well as physically and mentally exhausted. We may also face issues with memory and attention3, emotional regulation, and diminished sex drive4,11. It is hard to feel like yourself when sleep-deprived- so what occurs in the brain during sleep deprivation, and how does it affect our daily lives?
Memory
As a child, I remember learning to trick my mother, a sleep-deprived emergency room nurse that worked the night shift, by asking her for permission to do things while she was coming home from work in the mornings, half-asleep. When I’d approach her in bed to ask for permission to go on a sleepover across town or to eat food we were saving for an occasion, she would always say yes. Eventually, she caught on, and warned me against waiting until she was sleepy to get my way, but the reason it worked at first is because sleep deprivation impacts decision-making5.
It also affects short-term memory, so as a result, my mother would never remember giving her approval. Long-term memory is affected as well, as sleep is very important for consolidation, or storage of memories. This is also why you may not remember everything you studied after cramming for an exam all night.
Reaction time
Being awake is not the same thing as being alert. When we are sleepy, we tend to have slow reaction times, or time to respond to a change in our environment. This can have devastating effects for those who operate cars and other heavy machinery while sleepy and can be dangerous for people who work with under these conditions. Sleep deprivation can make you 70% more likely to get into work-place accidents, which happen at higher rates in people with insomnia6. Additionally, missing just a couple hours of sleep can substantially increase the risk of having a car accident7. It may seem in the moment like you can stay awake while driving, but as explained in a previous NeuroKnow article, going 24 hours without sleep can be just as dangerous as driving drunk.
Changes in the brain
Sleep deprivation impacts many regions of your brain, but two are of notable importance: amygdala and prefrontal cortex.
Amygdala
Scientists can measure brain activity by taking functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans. Using this method, researchers found that sleep deprivation leads to a hyperactive amygdala3. The amygdala is critical for emotional regulation, and its dysfunction may be related mood issues that occur from sleep deprivation. A single sleepless night can trigger a 30% increase in anxiety levels9, due to the loss of ability to regulate emotions or deal with stress, and people with anxiety disorders also have hyperactive amygdalae when faced with unpleasant changes in their environment10. In other words, sleep deprivation causes disruption in emotional centers in the brain, which is linked to increased anxiety.
Prefrontal Cortex
Another brain region with altered activity during sleep deprivation is the prefrontal cortex, which is important for rational thinking and decision-making3. This region has decreased activity during sleep deprivation, and these activity patterns are associated with impaired judgment, a common symptom of sleep deprivation.
Chronic sleep deprivation and sleep apnea
Most of us have experienced sleep-deprivation in our lives, but for some, it is the norm. People who suffer from inadequate sleep for a prolonged period of time (weeks to years) are in a state of chronic sleep deprivation6. Many people wake up in the mornings feeling symptoms of sleep deprivation despite getting a long night of sleep, which may be indicative of a sleep disorder known as sleep apnea. Patients with sleep apnea wake up over a hundred times throughout the night, due to difficulty breathing12. A research lab in Australia found that sleep apnea patients have altered brain activity during wakefulness13. Certain parts of their brains “go offline” briefly, despite being awake, and brain activity resembles that of a sleeping person14. Sleep disorder patients aren’t the only ones that experience this- it can occur from other forms of sleep deprivation. When sleep intrudes into the waking brain, this can lead to errors in tasks like driving. Despite being abnormal for humans, this brain activity phenomenon is not uncommon in the animal kingdom. Some animals like seals and dolphins sleep with half of their brains “awake” while the other halves are “asleep.”
Conclusion
Neuroscientists are working to understand the neurobiological consequences of sleep deprivation, so that we can inform and treat people who must continue to perform daily tasks despite running on little sleep. Though harmful for the brain, sleep deprivation is a normal part of daily life for 30-40% of US adults15, including parents of newborns, procrastinating college students, night-shift workers, military and medical personnel, sleep disorder patients, and many others. We live in a sleep-deprived society, where people are often celebrated for trading rest for productivity. I encourage you to take this as your sign to go to bed early tonight- you are not yourself when you’re sleepy!
References
Cover image by Karollyne Videira Hubert on Unsplash
References
On June 16 th, 2022, Tabitha Orth, President and Founder of International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society officially became the 7,315 th “point of light”. Recognized for the volunteer work she and IAES has done to spark change and improve the world for those touched by Autoimmune Encephalitis. The award was founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
June 14, 2023 | by Catrina Hacker, PennNeuroKnow and IAES Collaboration
A message from IAES Blog Staff:
The staff at IAES is proud to present to all of you another wonderful article/blog from the amazing team at PennNeuroKnow. Since 2019 IAES has been extremely lucky to be in partnership with the PennNeuroKnow(PNK) team to help us all better understand complex medical issues related to AE and neurology in general. The talented PNK team continues to keep us up-to-date and help clarify the complexities we face each day along our AE journey, and we are eternally grateful! You can find out much more about this stellar group at: https://pennneuroknow.com/
——-
There are many subtypes of autoimmune encephalitis (AE) that vary in their causes, the symptoms that patients experience, and what treatments are most effective. One of several factors that distinguish these different subtypes of AE is whether they involve intracellular or extracellular antibodies. In this post we will explore exactly what these terms mean and how they contribute to the differences between types of AE.
When a virus or bacteria enters our body, our immune system mounts an attack to destroy the foreign invader and protect us from harm. If our immune system is like an army ready for battle, then antibodies are like the scouts sent ahead of the battalion, patrolling for signs of a threat. Just like security personnel might scan ID badges to determine who is allowed in a building, each antibody is tasked with looking for a particular feature of something that the body has deemed harmful, called an antigen1. You might have heard antibodies discussed in reference to COVID-19, where infection with COVID-19 or vaccination can cause your body to produce antibodies that recognize features of the COVID-19 virus2. When antibodies are already present in the body, they can recognize the newly-arrived COVID-19 virus and mount an attack more quickly, helping to avoid a more serious infection.
This ability to quickly mount a defense against a threat before getting too sick is what makes antibodies an important part of our body’s immune system army. However, antibodies are only helpful if they recognize and defend against foreign substances that are harmful. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case in AE. Patients with AE have antibodies that bind to proteins found in their own cells, called autoantibodies (the prefix “auto” means self, so autoantibodies are antibodies that bind the body’s own proteins)3. Autoantibodies trigger the body’s immune system to attack itself, leading to the many symptoms of AE.
Each antibody can recognize only a small part of a whole cell, and there are many different parts of a cell that an antibody can recognize. What distinguishes extracellular from intracellular antibodies is whether their antigen (the ID badge they’re looking for) is inside or outside of the cell1,4. Extracellular antibodies recognize antigens that are on the outer surface of the cell (“extra” meaning outside). Conversely, intracellular antibodies recognize antigens that are inside the cell (“intra” meaning inside). The intracellular antibodies inside the cell trigger a different set of immune reactions than the extracellular antibodies outside of the cell.
Subtypes of AE are distinguished by what kind of autoantibody a patient has4, which is why they are typically named after the antigen that the autoantibody recognizes. For example, patients with anti-NMDAR AE have antibodies that recognize NMDA receptors. Types of AE associated with antigens outside the cell involve extracellular antibodies and types of AE associated with antigens inside the cell involve intracellular antibodies.
Many of the most common subtypes of AE involve extracellular antibodies4,5. Most are associated with antibodies that recognize a kind of protein that sits on the surface of the cell called a receptor. Receptors recognize and bind specific molecules and send signals that tell the cell how to respond. The receptors on neurons, a type of brain cell, are especially important because one neuron communicates with another by releasing molecules that can be recognized by the other neuron’s receptors. When antibodies bind the receptors, they activate an immune response and disrupt the ability of those receptors to participate in neural signaling. This leads to the many neurological symptoms of AE. Subtypes with these kinds of antibodies include anti-NMDAR AE6, anti-AMPAR AE7, anti-mGLUR5 antibody encephalitis4,5, GlyR antibody encephalitis4, anti-GABAa AE8, and anti-GABAb AE9. Several other extracellular antibodies associated with AE have antigens that sit on the cell’s surface and help with neuronal signaling but aren’t receptors themselves. Subtypes of AE with these kinds of antibodies include LGI1-antibody encephalitis10, CASPR2-antibody encephalitis11, and DPPX-antibody encephalitis4,5.
Subtypes of AE associated with intracellular antibodies are less common4,5. One example is GAD-antibody encephalitis12. Patients with this form of AE have antibodies that target Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase (GAD), a protein found inside the cell that is needed to synthesize GABA, a special type of molecule that is necessary for some kinds of neural signaling. Other subtypes of AE that target intracellular proteins are anti-Hu encephalitis5, and Ma2-antibody encephalitis13.
One big distinction is that most subtypes of AE associated with intracellular antibodies are also associated with tumors4. These subtypes of AE are called paraneoplastic. Paraneoplastic AE can occur when tumor cells express proteins on their surface that are normally expressed elsewhere. Sometimes this includes proteins that are normally found inside healthy neurons. To recognize and fight the tumor, the body’s immune system creates antibodies that recognize these proteins. These antibodies don’t distinguish the proteins found in the tumor cells from the healthy proteins found in neurons, so when they reach the brain, they also bind the naturally-occurring proteins in neurons and trigger the immune response responsible for the symptoms of AE14.
Patients with subtypes of AE associated with intracellular antibodies also tend to have poorer outcomes and respond worse to immunotherapy than patients with subtypes associated with extracellular antibodies4,15. This is because many of the symptoms of AE associated with extracellular antibodies are thought to result from the antibodies disrupting the normal function of the cell-surface proteins that they target. Conversely, the presence of intracellular autoantibodies typically accompanies an immune response against neurons more broadly that results in neuronal death. This means that successful treatment can often reverse symptoms of AE resulting from extracellular antibodies, as limiting the action of the antibodies allows the neurons to function normally, whereas even after treatment, symptoms do not typically reverse in subtypes of AE associated with intracellular antibodies, as many neurons have already died. For patients with paraneoplastic AE, removing the tumor is also an important step toward relieving symptoms15.
Despite general differences in outcomes for subtypes of AE associated with extracellular and intracellular antibodies, early detection and treatment are key to successful outcomes for all subtypes of AE4. Determining which type of AE a patient has can have an important impact on how doctors choose to treat and manage the disease. This distinction is also important for researchers developing new treatments and possible cures, as approaches that might work for one type of AE may not work for others. Determining which patients will be most receptive to a particular new treatment leads to better outcomes for clinical trials, which means more treatment options for all patients.
References
On June 16 th, 2022, Tabitha Orth, President and Founder of International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society officially became the 7,315 th “point of light”. Recognized for the volunteer work she and IAES has done to spark change and improve the world for those touched by Autoimmune Encephalitis. The award was founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
April 26, 2023 | by Sophie Liebergall, PennNeuroKnow and IAES Collaboration
A message from IAES Blog Staff:
The staff at IAES is proud to present to all of you another wonderful article/blog from the amazing team at PennNeuroKnow. Since 2019 IAES has been extremely lucky to be in partnership with the PennNeuroKnow(PNK) team to help us all better understand complex medical issues related to AE and neurology in general. The talented PNK team continues to keep us up-to-date and help clarify the complexities we face each day along our AE journey, and we are eternally grateful! You can find out much more about this stellar group at: https://pennneuroknow.com/
——-
Though it can be challenging for doctors to correctly identify and diagnose autoimmune encephalitis (AE), once patients do indeed receive a proper diagnosis there are treatment options that can go a long way in alleviating their symptoms sending them down the road to recovery. A recent study reports that 94% of patients with AE have significant improvement in or complete resolution of symptoms in the first few years after their diagnosis.1,2 One important key to success is promptly starting treatment which both reduces the likelihood of long-term symptoms and prevents relapses.
The job of your body’s immune system is to find and eliminate invaders, like bacteria and viruses, that may be harmful. But in the case of AE, the immune system mistakes the brain as an invader and mounts an attack, leading to inflammation in the brain.3 This inflammation is what causes the symptoms of AE, like hallucinations, memory problems, and seizures. Therefore, all current medical treatments for AE are aimed at decreasing inflammation.4 But even if the ultimate goal is always to reduce brain inflammation, there may be slight variations in the choice of therapies depending on the type of AE and the patient’s unique medical history.
Physicians divide the treatments for AE into first-line and second-line therapies. First-line therapies are treatments that doctors generally prescribe first when a patient is diagnosed with AE. Second-line therapies are treatments that doctors reach for when the first-line therapies didn’t work, or if there are lingering symptoms following initial improvement with first-line therapies.
In this article, we’ll walk through some of the common treatments for AE, why doctors may or may not choose them for a given patient, and how these treatments are thought to reduce AE symptoms.
If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with AE, you’re probably familiar with steroids, the medicine that doctors often use first when treating AE. When many people hear the term “steroids,” they think of Barry Bonds or other professional athletes who have used performance-enhancing drugs to get an edge on the competition. But in reality, “steroids” is an umbrella term used to describe a group of chemicals that share a similar shape. Whereas athletes looking to circumvent the rules use steroids called anabolic steroids, doctors treating AE prescribe steroids called glucocorticoids.4
Though doctors can administer glucocorticoids to a patient as a pill or in an IV, we actually make glucocorticoids naturally in our bodies all the time! Our homemade glucocorticoids are essential for a wide range of our bodily functions – from controlling how our body manages sugars and fats, to telling our brain to be alert to our surroundings, to damping down inflamation.5 When prescribing glucocorticoids to patients with AE, doctors try to take advantage of the anti-inflammatory properties of these chemicals.
How exactly do glucocorticoids put the brakes on inflammation? They act quickly and powerfully at the source of inflammation: the cells of your immune system (Figure 1).5 Once they breach the walls of an immune cell, glucocorticoids enter the nucleus, which serves as the control center of a cell. It’s in the nucleus that the cell writes out the instructions for making the proteins that it needs to mount an immune attack. By breaching this nucleus control center, glucocorticoids can override the machinery that the cell uses to write these instructions. This ultimately prevents the immune cells from causing inflammation.
Unfortunately, glucocorticoids don’t just interfere with the instructions that immune cells use for making inflammatory proteins. They also interfere with the instructions that many other kinds of cells in the body rely on for carrying out their own important functions.6 For example, glucocorticoids can affect the instructions that the cells in your bones use to tell themselves to grow and retain their strength. This can lead to the weakening of your bones, which is a common side effect of glucocorticoids.7 Other side effects include problems with your body’s metabolism, like the redistribution of body fat, as well problems with your skin, like impaired wound healing.6 When patients with AE are first diagnosed, they are often very sick, so very high doses of glucocorticoids may be required to stabilize their condition.8 But as AE symptoms improve, doctors try to slowly reduce the amount of glucocorticoids that a patient is prescribed to prevent some of the harmful and uncomfortable side effects of these powerful medications.
Rather than targeting the inner workings of the immune cells, other treatments for AE target the proteins that are made by the immune cells. One type of protein that immune cells make is called an antibody. Antibodiesselectively stick to invaders and flag them for destruction by other cells in the immune system.9 But in the case of AE, the body accidentally makes antibodies against its own proteins in the brain. When the immune system sees these flags, it mistakenly attacks the healthy brain.
Plasma exchange (PLEX) is a therapy that tries to remove these antibodies that erroneously tell the immune system to attack the brain.10 Antibodies are generally transported in the plasma, which is the liquid-y component of blood. During PLEX therapy, tubes are placed in your veins so that your blood can pass through a machine as it is pumped around your body (Figure 2). This machine acts like a coffee filter, separating the liquid part of your blood (the coffee) from the blood cells (the grounds). Because the liquid part of your blood contains the harmful antibodies, the liquid is discarded and replaced with the plasma of a healthy donor. This healthy plasma is then recombined with your own blood cells that were trapped in the coffee filter, and sent back into your body through another tube.
PLEX is generally safe and effective, and it can be especially useful for patients who are particularly vulnerable to the side effects of glucocorticoids.8 However, a major downside of PLEX is that it requires the placement of the tubes that are used to remove and return the blood to the body for the duration of the treatment. These tubes can be a source of infection or bleeding, and can make it logistically challenging for patients to receive PLEX if they aren’t already in the hospital.
Intravenous immune globulin (IVIG) is another AE treatment that tries to interfere with the antibodies that mistakenly target a patient’s healthy brain in AE. Our blood contains thousands of different antibodies, most of which are designed to target the foreign invaders that we have encountered during our lifetimes. IVIG is the result of taking the blood of thousands of different people, extracting the antibodies from that blood, and then combining the antibodies of all of the different donors.11 This creates a very concentrated slushy of thousands and thousands of antibodies that target all sorts of different proteins. When IVIG is administered to a patient, these antibodies then enter their bloodstream and circulate with the rest of the patient’s blood.
Given that AE is caused by a rogue antibody, it may seem crazy that doctors would give patients many more highly concentrated antibodies to treat AE. But, IVIG is very effective with minimal side effects beyond an increased risk of blood clots in some patients.12 So how does it work? Doctors think that IVIG overwhelms the immune system by flooding it with so many antibodies that the AE-causing antibodies just get swept up in the rush. In other words, the immune system may be so distracted by the onslaught of other antibodies that it forgets about the antibody that was driving the AE symptoms.11
If the first-line therapies don’t provide sufficient relief for a patient with AE, the most common second-line therapy is a drug called rituximab.8 Rituximab, which was initially designed to treat cancer, is, itself, an antibody.13 But, interestingly, its job is to “tag” the cells in the body’s own immune system that make other antibodies. This causes the body’s immune system to kill its own antibody-producing cells, ultimately halting the production of antibodies.
This means that rituximab can stop the immune system from making the harmful brain-targeting autoantibodies that cause AE symptoms. But Rituximab doesn’t just suppress the production of the AE-causing antibodies – it suppresses the production of all antibodies, including those necessary for fighting infections. This can leave patients vulnerable to bacterial and viral invaders that they would normally be able to fight off. Additionally, rituximab is known to cause other side effects like fevers, fatigue, and nausea.13Nevertheless, rituximab has been shown to be an effective at restoring functioning for patients with AE who need additional treatment on top of first-line therapies.14
Cyclophosphamide is another cancer drug that has been repurposed as a second-line agent in the treatment of AE.8 Cyclophosphamide works by entering the nucleus of a cell and attaching chemical “decorations” to the cell’s DNA.15 These “decorations” confuse the machinery that a cell uses to duplicate its DNA, which impairs the ability of a cell to replicate itself. Thus, cyclophosphamide can significantly impair the function of cells that rely on frequent replication to do their job, like immune cells.
Cyclophosphamide is very good at killing the immune cells that cause inflammation, which makes it a useful treatment for AE. The side effects of cyclophosphamide, however, can include nausea and hair loss, as well as more dangerous conditions such as bladder injuries and problems with fertility.16 Because of this, cyclophosphamide is generally recommended for patients whose symptoms aren’t eliminated by first-line therapies or rituximab.
The immune-targeting therapies for AE aim at eliminating the source of a patient’s symptoms. But oftentimes it can be beneficial to provide patients with additional therapies that can help alleviate the symptoms themselves. For example, the brain inflammation associated with AE can cause patients to experience seizures.17 Seizures are uncontrolled bursts of electrical activity in the brain. Depending on where a seizure starts and spreads, this electrical activity can result in phenomena ranging from the experience of strange sensations to full-body convulsions.18 Many patients with AE may be prescribed anti-seizures medications, which act to quiet down the electrical activity in the brain and decrease the likelihood of the uncontrolled activity of a seizure.
Medical therapies targeting inflammation dramatically reduce symptoms in the majority of patients diagnosed with AE. Some patients, however, will continue to have symptoms even after treatment, and some may be resistant to treatment altogether. We are still early in our research efforts to try to understand how and why people get AE. And as we deepen our understanding of this complex disorder, hopefully we can work towards developing more treatments specifically targeting the underlying causes of AE that are more effective with fewer side effects.
All figures made with biorender.com.
On June 16 th, 2022, Tabitha Orth, President and Founder of International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society officially became the 7,315 th “point of light”. Recognized for the volunteer work she and IAES has done to spark change and improve the world for those touched by Autoimmune Encephalitis. The award was founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
March 8, 2023 | by Marissa Maroni, PennNeuroKnow and IAES Collaboration
A message from IAES Blog Staff:
The staff at IAES is proud to present to all of you another wonderful article/blog from the amazing team at PennNeuroKnow. Since 2019 IAES has been extremely lucky to be in partnership with the PennNeuroKnow(PNK) team to help us all better understand complex medical issues related to AE and neurology in general. The talented PNK team continues to keep us up-to-date and help clarify the complexities we face each day along our AE journey, and we are eternally grateful! You can find out much more about this stellar group at: https://pennneuroknow.com/
We all suffer from headaches from time to time. For some a headache is a daily medical issue and they can range from mild and slightly bothersome to migraines that put us in bed for a day or more at a time. This wonderful article by Marissa Maroni helps to shed light on the various types of headaches and the biology behind an issue that we all encounter!
We all suffer from headaches from time to time. For some a headache is a daily medical issue and they can range from mild and slightly bothersome to migraines that put us in bed for a day or more at a time. This wonderful article by Marissa Maroni helps to shed light on the various types of headaches and the biology behind an issue that we all encounter!
In the news or on your favorite medical drama you may have been startled to see patients are kept awake during brain surgery. If not, we’ve included an example here! Although it feels wild to witness awake surgeries, they’re possible because the brain itself cannot sense any pain. Despite the lack of pain sensed by the brain, most people do experience head pain at some point in their life, including headaches. The deep, throbbing pain, and sometimes nausea, experienced during a headache can be unbearable. But if brains can’t feel, what causes the pain of a headache and how is this treated?
There are three main types of primary headaches, primary meaning the headache is the issue, rather than a symptom from an underlying condition. The three types of primary headaches are:
Tension-type headaches are the most common primary headache and impact over 25% of people globally1. Tension-type headaches are characterized by mild to moderate head pain that feels like a tightening pressure (imagine hands gripped tightly around your head) that affects both sides of the brain, lasting minutes up to several days2.
Migraines effect approximately 14% of the global population1. Migraines are characterized as moderate to severe throbbing pain usually on one side of the brain with pain lasting from several hours to 3 days3. Migraines are usually accompanied by various symptoms such as nausea and light and sound sensitivity4.
Cluster headaches affect approximately 0.4% of people5. Cluster headaches are characterized by excruciating pain on one side of the brain usually surrounding the eye that lasts for minutes up to 3 hours5.
Each of the three primary types of headaches vary in their origin. Rather than extensively unpacking each, let’s focus in on migraines. Prior to a migraine starting a person can experience sound and light sensitivity, mood changes, thirst, and yawning among other symptoms. Scientists have used brain imaging prior to the start of migraines to try and understand why do they start in the first place and what could be causing pre-migraine symptoms?
It is theorized that the brainstem, the stalk of your brain that controls breathing and heart rate among other functions, is the generator of migraines6. A brain imaging study found activity in a subregion of the brainstem was associated with the time until the next migraine starts7. Further, a set of researchers from Germany imaged the brain of a migraine patient for 30 consecutive days to understand what events occur in the brain leading up to a migraine8. They found that before and during a migraine there is altered communication between the brainstem and the hypothalamus, a part of the brain important in controlling sleep, hunger, thirst, and more. Additionally, they found increasing activity in the hypothalamus in the time leading up to a migraine.
Scientists have identified critical brain regions that have altered brain activity prior to a migraine, but can any of this explain pre-migraine symptoms? Researchers hypothesize that the increased activity in the hypothalamus could explain pre-migraine symptoms such as yawning and thirst. Interestingly, migraine patients with light sensitivity have increased activation of the occipital cortex, a brain region responsible for vision perception, in comparison to migraine patients who did not experience light sensitivity9. Although the answer is not precise, scientists have identified altered brain signaling that may prime a brain for a migraine attack and identified specific brain regions that can explain pre-migraine symptoms.
A main piece to the migraine pain puzzle is a group of nerves that carry pain signals from the face to the brain, referred to as trigeminal ganglion. The trigeminal ganglion connect to the blood vessels surrounding your brain and various parts of the brain including the brainstem, hypothalamus, and thalamus (Figure 1). The thalamus is a place for information to be relayed to your cortex. The activation of trigeminal ganglion lead to a cascade of events that have roles in migraine pain. Let’s explore what events occur and how they contribute to migraine pain.
Figure 1. The trigeminal ganglion, in blue, makes connections to the brainstem, thalamus, and hypothalamus. The thalamus relays information to the cortex.
Sensitization of the brain
During a migraine, it is thought that the trigeminal ganglion become sensitized, meaning they can activate and send pain signals in response to nonpainful stimuli (Figure 2)3. Trigeminal ganglion sensitivity causes throbbing head pain, and pain felt when coughing or bending over during a migraine. Even though you are not doing anything to cause this pain, the trigeminal ganglion is sensitized and sending pain signals anyway! The sensitized trigeminal ganglion lead to the activation and sensitization of the brainstem, and thalamus10. Sensitization of the brainstem and thalamus contribute to allodynia, perception of pain by something not normally painful, like a gentle touch or glasses resting on your nose. Collectively, the sensitization of the trigeminal ganglion, brainstem, and thalamus play a critical role in migraine pain.
Figure 2. Three contributors to migraine pain: sensitization, hyperexcitability, and CGRP release.
Hyperexcitability
Hyperexcitability refers to neurons that are more likely to become active and send signals. General hyperexcitability is seen in individuals with migraines and is hypothesized to contribute to sensitization in the brain as there is more activation in pain signaling regions (Figure 2)3. Brain imaging studies identified that during a migraine the brain is hyper-responsive to sensory information3. This hyper-responsiveness is hypothesized to cause light sensitivity during migraines. Interestingly, when scientists examined shared mutations in the genes of migraine patients, they found that many of the mutated genes were important in neuronal signaling, further suggesting a role for hyperexcitability in migraines11.
Neuropeptide release
The activation of the trigeminal ganglion causes the release of neuropeptides. Neuropeptides are small proteins that cause changes in neuronal signaling (oxytocin is a well-known example of a neuropeptide). An important neuropeptide released after trigeminal ganglion activation is calcitonin-gene related peptide (CGRP). CGRP modulates pains signals, mediates inflammation in the brain, and has cardiovascular, functions among other roles 3,12. There is evidence that CGRP initiates and maintains the sensitization of trigeminal ganglion and is involved in signaling between trigeminal nerves3,13. Further, intravenous administration of CGRP triggers a migraine in migraine patients but not in healthy individuals, suggesting CGRP plays a key role in migraines10. Additionally, CGRP causes blood vessels surrounding the brain to dilate, meaning they expand however, the contribution of blood vessel expansion in migraine pain is disputed14.
Scientists have identified several changes in brain function before and during a migraine that contribute to migraine pain. With all this known, how are migraines treated and how do these treatments work?
A popular and effective treatment for migraines during an active attack are triptans. Triptans act on serotonin receptors. Serotonin is a chemical messenger within our brain responsible for a variety of functions, including mood and digestion. When triptans act on serotonin receptors, they inhibit pain neurotransmission in the trigeminal ganglion, inhibit the release of pain-promoting neuropeptides (like CGRP!), and constrict blood vessels15. Given what we know about headaches, this drug works by halting the cascade of events that occur during a migraine including sensitization, hyperexcitability, and neuropeptide release.
Overall, we’ve uncovered changes in brain signaling that occur before and during a migraine, along with a current treatment. Even though the brain itself cannot feel any pain, it plays a critical role in communicating pain to different parts of your body!
References
Cover photo by Robin Higgins from Pixabay
Figures created with BioRender.com.
On June 16 th, 2022, Tabitha Orth, President and Founder of International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society officially became the 7,315 th “point of light”. Recognized for the volunteer work she and IAES has done to spark change and improve the world for those touched by Autoimmune Encephalitis. The award was founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
February 22, 2023 | by Catrina Hacker, PennNeuroKnow and IAES Collaboration
A message from IAES Blog Staff:
The staff at IAES is proud to present to all of you another wonderful article/blog from the amazing team at PennNeuroKnow. Since 2019 IAES has been extremely lucky to be in partnership with the PennNeuroKnow(PNK) team to help us all better understand complex medical issues related to AE and neurology in general. The talented PNK team continues to keep us up-to-date and help clarify the complexities we face each day along our AE journey, and we are eternally grateful! You can find out much more about this stellar group at: https://pennneuroknow.com/
As we wind up AE Awareness month 2023, I, for one, am grateful. Grateful for another year of stellar webinars and more information. For all the AE Warriors and our caregivers, we have a very optimistic future. As you have heard before, our road to recovery is no sprint, but it is a marathon we can and will complete. We receive questions all the time regarding the speed at which research proceeds and treatments are approved. And this is tough because although we know this is a marathon, we all truly want things to proceed much quicker. Catrina Hacker, a member of the amazing PNK team has done a wonderful job explaining the process. So, as I have heard said to me what seems like a million times, “trust the process” and we hope you enjoy this blog!
~Fellow Warrior and Editor-in-Chief, Jeri Gore
When you or someone you love is diagnosed with a disease like autoimmune encephalitis, the seemingly slow pace at which research progresses can feel frustrating. It’s hard to watch loved ones suffer while wondering why someone hasn’t used their knowledge and resources to find a solution that will make them feel better. In this post I will walk you through why the pace of research on diseases like autoimmune encephalitis can seem slow and what this means for scientific progress toward understanding autoimmune encephalitis.
One of the key reasons that biomedical research seems to progress slowly is that there is so much that we still don’t know. Our quest to understand the human body is much like the quest that European explorers once took to uncover the world beyond Western European countries: sometimes clumsy and a centuries-long process. Christopher Columbus’s crew famously stumbled upon North America on their way to India, and some of the earliest world maps were comically inaccurate by today’s standards (Figure 1 left). But over time the explorers made more observations and built new tools that ultimately led to the incredibly accurate and useful world maps that we have today (Figure 1 right).
Figure 1. Left: A world map generated in 1583. A lot of the general organization of the world has been figured out, but we now know that the proportions and specific shapes of individual continents aren’t correct. Right: A modern world map that shows how much our understanding of the organization of the world has grown in the last 400 years with detailed information about elevation across all 7 continents.
Today, biologists are still in the part of the journey where they’re constantly learning new things and updating their maps. Many biological discoveries still feel like the lucky discovery of the Americas by the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Making things even more difficult, the uncharted territory that biologists want to understand is even more complicated than the stable land masses of continents. Imagine trying to build a map of the world if small chunks of land moved around and interacted with each other in complicated ways. Now imagine that each explorer had to study a slightly different version of the world with small differences that made it unique, but that had the same general layout. That is the size of the challenge that biologists face when studying the human body.
The challenges of mapmaking for biologists go beyond just the fact that components of the maps move and interact. Biologists also have to build maps at different scales and understand how they relate to one another. Consider understanding the brain as an example. Some neuroscientists study how molecules inside individual brain cells work, others study how small groups of cells connect and send signals between each other, others study how large groups of cells send signals across the brain, and still others study how these signals relate to someone’s behavior or symptoms. Even neuroscientists studying things at the same scale often use different tools that make relating their discoveries to someone else’s challenging. As neuroscientists build maps at each of these levels it’s not always obvious how each map relates to the others and connecting the maps can be just as difficult as building them.
Understanding how a healthy human body works is hard enough but extending that understanding to figure out how to treat and cure diseases is even more complicated. When it comes to diseases, many different things can go wrong but produce the same symptoms. And oftentimes when one thing goes wrong, it causes a cascade of other things to go wrong as well. This makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly what went wrong first to try to target that for treatment.
Autoimmune encephalitis is a good example of this kind of complexity. There are many different subtypes of autoimmune encephalitis that result from an immune response to several different kinds of proteins found in the brain. Despite being caused by reactions to different proteins, several subtypes have overlapping symptoms. On the other hand, each subtype is typically associated with several distinct symptoms that are all part of the same diagnosis. On top of that, each individual patient is different even before they get sick, so they will have a slightly different experience of their disease.
One thing this diversity can make difficult is deciding which patients to group together and which to consider separately. Should researchers group patients by their symptoms (e.g., fatigue, motor deficits, headaches) or by biological markers (e.g., testing for things in the blood or cerebrospinal fluid)? * Scientists’ answer to that question is constantly evolving as they learn more about patients with different kinds of autoimmune encephalitis. Until they know enough to separate subgroups of patients, it can be difficult to see through the diversity of symptoms and biological markers toward a clear understanding of exactly what’s going on.
All of these things only become more difficult the rarer a disease is. The more patients with a certain disease that can be studied, the more data points scientists have to work with. This can give them a better sense of the big picture, despite variability between individual patients. This is why the subtypes of autoimmune encephalitis that are most common, like Anti-NMDAR encephalitis, tend to be better understood than rarer subtypes. When there are more diagnosed patients, the disease is easier to study.
*For a deeper dive into this issue, Penn NeuroKnow writer, Margaret Gardner, wrote about how the same problem impacts our ability to study psychiatric disorders in this PNK article.
There are also practical components of how research is conducted that contribute to its slow and steady pace. Research needs to be funded and that is typically done through federal grants from organizations like the National Institute of Health (NIH). Grant funding is competitive, and researchers can spend months working on a proposal before submitting a grant. Once submitted, the grant undergoes rigorous review by other scientists. These reviewers are looking to fund science that they think will be successful, so this means that the best proposals aim to take small and manageable steps in our understanding based on past research. After review, many grants are rejected. So, scientists often have to shake off the disappointment, consider the reviewer feedback, and write an updated proposal. And, as it turns out, getting funding is only half the battle. Once a grant is funded and the project can begin, it takes time to train students and lab workers in the skills needed to conduct the research. Sometimes scientists even have to invent new technology to collect or analyze their data because they’re trying to do something that’s never been done before.
Once scientists have their first set of results, these results often lead to new questions that need to be answered. So, scientists must do many follow-up experiments to understand what’s going on before they can feel confident adding their new discovery to the map of the human body. Once they think they know what’s going on, they then need to replicate their results several times to be sure that what they’re studying is generally true and not specific to whatever patient, animal, or dish of cells they ran their first experiment on. After that scientists will spend months putting their results together into a paper which is then reviewed by other scientists who might ask for more experiments or analyses to make their results more convincing. Finally, the paper is published, and that project can be considered complete. A lot of biomedical research is done by first studying cells in a dish, then studying animal models, and then testing treatments in humans. Each step of this process requires scientists to go through the same process of getting funding, verifying their results, and eventually publishing their work.
While all of these steps contribute to the seemingly slow pace of science, they’re also beneficial to scientific progress. Doing many follow-up experiments, replicating results, and incorporating feedback from other scientists means that once a paper is published scientists can be pretty sure that everything in the paper is accurate. This is important because if scientists couldn’t believe most things that are published then they wouldn’t know what foundation to build on when they design new experiments. Such rigorous requirements for publishing research also help to keep patients safe. Ultimately, the goal is that everything we learn from these papers can be used to develop a treatment or a cure for a disease, which means using that knowledge to help human patients. Once scientists know enough to think about possible treatments, scientists and doctors work together to test these treatments in human patients through a process called clinical trials. Doctors and scientists need to be certain of as much as they can so that those treatments are safe.
While there’s plenty left to learn about autoimmune encephalitis and thinking about that can feel daunting, it’s important to celebrate that we’ve learned a lot already. Successful treatments that work for many people have already been developed, and treatments are only getting better. An increasing understanding of what autoimmune encephalitis is and how to treat it has also led to the creation of research centers, like the Center of Autoimmune Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, that make researching the disease and connecting patients and doctors easier. Centralized organizations like the International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society also help raise awareness about these issues and facilitate connections between patients, doctors, and researchers that continue to push our understanding forward.
Altogether, there are a lot of reasons to feel optimistic about the future and to trust in the system of slow and steady scientific research that has already delivered trustworthy, safe treatment options.
Image Credits
Cover photo: Photo by Ousa Chea on Unsplash.
Figure 1: Left: Girolamo Porro,, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons; Right: © OpenStreetMap-Mitwirkende, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
On June 16 th, 2022, Tabitha Orth, President and Founder of International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society officially became the 7,315 th “point of light”. Recognized for the volunteer work she and IAES has done to spark change and improve the world for those touched by Autoimmune Encephalitis. The award was founded by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
December 24, 2022 | Tabitha Andrews Orth
My letter to Santa.
ATTENTION: YULETIDE BUREAU
WISH DEPARTMENT
Dear Santa,
As you know, I have given great thought to my Christmas wish this year. I hope I have made your ‘NICE LIST”, as my wish is in the form of a favor.
Since I am awake, due to insomnia from the IV Solumedrol infusion I received yesterday afternoon, I thought it was a good time to write you. I guess I didn’t need to tell you that, since you see me when I am sleeping, and you know when I am awake. LOL:)
Sometimes the lessons we need to learn to grow our soul and faith come in the most unexpected forms. I have realized the truth of this and am doing my best to rely on my faith, to celebrate the love and support I receive and do my best to face my adversity.
Santa, I have to be totally naked in my honesty here. As Head Elf, embodied with the Spirit of -now here’s my word finding problem rearing its head… It means to love without qualifying or judging. I can’t remember how to say it Santa, but you get me. How could anyone ever imagine they would get a disease where your immune system attacks your brain?!
I mean if my brain isn’t working right, nothing works right. That’s a hard thing Santa. We are talking TOUGH challenge here.
Santa, you know this. You have been watching. I don’t have to explain because you have lived it with me. Yeah, I’m totally on the “NICE LIST”.
Sorry, attention span problems, back to my favor.
But… I have practiced daily random acts of kindness for many years…attention span problems again and paranoia I might not make the cut for that ‘Nice List’.
Santa, this disease has created personality changes that are not the heart of me. It has taken ME away before with episodes of psychosis twice now. I am inside. In my heart, buried deep, I am ME. People were not able to see ME when my brain disease flared in this way, but YOU could!
Sorry, I will try to stay on topic. Attention Span problems, but YOU know this.
Okay, I forgot what I was going to say… LOL. Wait, I’ll reread this and write my main point on a sticky note so I can remember my wish. Why am I telling you that? YOU see me. YOU realize everything.
Ok. Wait just one minute for me Santa. Yes. I am back. Got it. My Christmas Wish. (That is what I wrote on the sticky note. Oops, sorry, forgot. Don’t need to tell you that.)
I am having a problem with worry for my future. I have now faced FEAR. I have stared it down. I have survived. I get scared sometimes. YOU know I do. My faith and spiritual beliefs sustain me; through them, I draw my courage and do my best to surrender my fear.
This brings me to that favor I mentioned. My Christmas Wish.
Gosh, Santa, I need your help.
By the way, Jim says guys like peanut butter cookies and oatmeal raisin the best, so we will be leaving those out in their usual place by the Cocoa. Feel free to use the copper pot I leave out for you to warm up your Cocoa in case you find yourself running late. Oh, the carrots for the Reindeer are grown by local farmers- I am adding some lovely fresh pears this year…
But, you know that too… Sorry…..
What was I going to say? Oh, right! My Christmas Wish:)
You’ll find an envelope by your nighttime snack. I’ve enclosed all my fears and worries inside. Could you kindly take them from me? That is my Christmas Wish.
And when you take your leave, by the way, I LOVE that time suspension magic you do- very cool!
When your laughter rings out within and around our home, can you add a bit of Christmas Spirit Magic to infuse your laughter, Joy, and that kind of love I can’t remember the name of …within our home, our hearts and my brain where my fears and worries once were? By adding your love and laughter to mine Santa, well, that’s a powerful infusion. Exactly what is needed to receive the appreciation of each day.
My family and I laugh a lot Santa. YOU know. My laughter helps my husband, Jim and our son, Matthew. Their laughter helps me. And so, it goes….
P.S.
Should you find other letters written by people with Autoimmune Encephalitis, whether they be drawings by children, a single word, or simply the breath of fear blown inside an envelope and sealed, my wish is that you take these too and leave your laughter.
Oh, make yourself at home as long as you would like Santa. The weather across the Northern Hemisphere is projected to be quite cold. There are extra blankets in the hall closet. Help yourself. When you are working your way across the Southern Hemisphere and get to Sarah’s house in New Zealand since it is Summer there and you won’t need them any longer, you can leave the blankets with her and she’ll get them back to me on her next visit;)
Pleasant trip and God speed.
Best Wishes,
Tabitha
(Originally written December 17, 2014)
IAES invites you to spread awareness of Autoimmune Encephalitis by sharing this delightful musical spoof utilizing the classic holiday music from ‘Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Learn who identified the most common type of autoimmune encephalitis of them all and where that magical moment occurred.
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES) is a Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey.
Driven by the knowledge that “Education is Power”, International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society manages an educational support group for patients diagnosed with Autoimmune Encephalitis and their loved ones, empowering them to be strong self-advocates and advocates that will lead them to best outcomes and recovery. We are the premier organization leading in these vital roles.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in an accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
For those interested in face masks, clothing, mugs, and other merchandise, check out our AE Warrior Store! This online shop was born out of the desire for the AE patient to express their personal pride in fighting such a traumatic disease and the natural desire to spread awareness. Join our AE family and help us continue our mission to support patients, families and caregivers while they walk this difficult journey.
December 24, 2021 | Tabitha Andrews Orth
My letter to Santa.
ATTENTION: YULETIDE BUREAU
WISH DEPARTMENT
Dear Santa,
As you know, I have given great thought to my Christmas wish this year. I hope I have made your ‘NICE LIST”, as my wish is in the form of a favor.
Since I am awake, due to insomnia from the IV Solumedrol infusion I received yesterday afternoon, I thought it was a good time to write you. I guess I didn’t need to tell you that, since you see me when I am sleeping, and you know when I am awake. LOL:)
Sometimes the lessons we need to learn to grow our soul and faith come in the most unexpected forms. I have realized the truth of this and am doing my best to rely on my faith, to celebrate the love and support I receive and do my best to face my adversity.
Santa, I have to be totally naked in my honesty here. As Head Elf, embodied with the Spirit of -now here’s my word finding problem rearing its head… It means to love without qualifying or judging. I can’t remember how to say it Santa, but you get me. How could anyone ever imagine they would get a disease where your immune system attacks your brain?!
I mean if my brain isn’t working right, nothing works right. That’s a hard thing Santa. We are talking TOUGH challenge here.
Santa, you know this. You have been watching. I don’t have to explain because you have lived it with me. Yeah, I’m totally on the “NICE LIST”.
Sorry, attention span problems, back to my favor.
But… I have practiced daily random acts of kindness for many years…attention span problems again and paranoia I might not make the cut for that ‘Nice List’.
Santa, this disease has created personality changes that are not the heart of me. It has taken ME away before with episodes of psychosis twice now. I am inside. In my heart, buried deep, I am ME. People were not able to see ME when my brain disease flared in this way, but YOU could!
Sorry, I will try to stay on topic. Attention Span problems, but YOU know this.
Okay, I forgot what I was going to say… LOL. Wait, I’ll reread this and write my main point on a sticky note so I can remember my wish. Why am I telling you that? YOU see me. YOU realize everything.
Ok. Wait just one minute for me Santa. Yes. I am back. Got it. My Christmas Wish. (That is what I wrote on the sticky note. Oops, sorry, forgot. Don’t need to tell you that.)
I am having a problem with worry for my future. I have now faced FEAR. I have stared it down. I have survived. I get scared sometimes. YOU know I do. My faith and spiritual beliefs sustain me; through them, I draw my courage and do my best to surrender my fear.
This brings me to that favor I mentioned. My Christmas Wish.
Gosh, Santa, I need your help.
By the way, Jim says guys like peanut butter cookies and oatmeal raisin the best, so we will be leaving those out in their usual place by the Cocoa. Feel free to use the copper pot I leave out for you to warm up your Cocoa in case you find yourself running late. Oh, the carrots for the Reindeer are grown by local farmers- I am adding some lovely fresh pears this year…
But, you know that too… Sorry…..
What was I going to say? Oh, right! My Christmas Wish:)
You’ll find an envelope by your nighttime snack. I’ve enclosed all my fears and worries inside. Could you kindly take them from me? That is my Christmas Wish.
And when you take your leave, by the way, I LOVE that time suspension magic you do- very cool!
When your laughter rings out within and around our home, can you add a bit of Christmas Spirit Magic to infuse your laughter, Joy, and that kind of love I can’t remember the name of …within our home, our hearts and my brain where my fears and worries once were? By adding your love and laughter to mine Santa, well, that’s a powerful infusion. Exactly what is needed to receive the appreciation of each day.
My family and I laugh a lot Santa. YOU know. My laughter helps my husband, Jim and our son, Matthew. Their laughter helps me. And so, it goes….
P.S.
Should you find other letters written by people with Autoimmune Encephalitis, whether they be drawings by children, a single word, or simply the breath of fear blown inside an envelope and sealed, my wish is that you take these too and leave your laughter.
Oh, make yourself at home as long as you would like Santa. The weather across the Northern Hemisphere is projected to be quite cold. There are extra blankets in the hall closet. Help yourself. When you are working your way across the Southern Hemisphere and get to Sarah’s house in New Zealand since it is Summer there and you won’t need them any longer, you can leave the blankets with her and she’ll get them back to me on her next visit;)
Pleasant trip and God speed.
Best Wishes,
Tabitha
(Originally written December 17, 2014)
IAES invites you to spread awareness of Autoimmune Encephalitis by sharing this delightful musical spoof utilizing the classic holiday music from ‘Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Learn who identified the most common type of autoimmune encephalitis of them all and where that magical moment occurred.
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES) is a Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey.
Driven by the knowledge that “Education is Power”, International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society manages an educational support group for patients diagnosed with Autoimmune Encephalitis and their loved ones, empowering them to be strong self-advocates and advocates that will lead them to best outcomes and recovery. We are the premier organization leading in these vital roles.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in an accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
For those interested in face masks, clothing, mugs, and other merchandise, check out our AE Warrior Store! This online shop was born out of the desire for the AE patient to express their personal pride in fighting such a traumatic disease and the natural desire to spread awareness. Join our AE family and help us continue our mission to support patients, families and caregivers while they walk this difficult journey.
December 24, 2020 | Tabitha Andrews Orth
My letter to Santa.
ATTENTION: YULETIDE BUREAU
WISH DEPARTMENT
Dear Santa,
As you know, I have given great thought to my Christmas wish this year. I hope I have made your ‘NICE LIST”, as my wish is in the form of a favor.
Since I am awake, due to insomnia from the IV Solumedrol infusion I received yesterday afternoon, I thought it was a good time to write you. I guess I didn’t need to tell you that, since you see me when I am sleeping, and you know when I am awake. LOL:)
Sometimes the lessons we need to learn to grow our soul and faith come in the most unexpected forms. I have realized the truth of this and am doing my best to rely on my faith, to celebrate the love and support I receive and do my best to face my adversity.
Santa, I have to be totally naked in my honesty here. As Head Elf, embodied with the Spirit of -now here’s my word finding problem rearing its head… It means to love without qualifying or judging. I can’t remember how to say it Santa, but you get me. How could anyone ever imagine they would get a disease where your immune system attacks your brain?!
I mean if my brain isn’t working right, nothing works right. That’s a hard thing Santa. We are talking TOUGH challenge here.
Santa, you know this. You have been watching. I don’t have to explain because you have lived it with me. Yeah, I’m totally on the “NICE LIST”.
Sorry, attention span problems, back to my favor.
But… I have practiced daily random acts of kindness for many years…attention span problems again and paranoia I might not make the cut for that ‘Nice List’.
Santa, this disease has created personality changes that are not the heart of me. It has taken ME away before with episodes of psychosis twice now. I am inside. In my heart, buried deep, I am ME. People were not able to see ME when my brain disease flared in this way, but YOU could!
Sorry, I will try to stay on topic. Attention Span problems, but YOU know this.
Okay, I forgot what I was going to say… LOL. Wait, I’ll reread this and write my main point on a sticky note so I can remember my wish. Why am I telling you that? YOU see me. YOU realize everything.
Ok. Wait just one minute for me Santa. Yes. I am back. Got it. My Christmas Wish. (That is what I wrote on the sticky note. Oops, sorry, forgot. Don’t need to tell you that.)
I am having a problem with worry for my future. I have now faced FEAR. I have stared it down. I have survived. I get scared sometimes. YOU know I do. My faith and spiritual beliefs sustain me; through them, I draw my courage and do my best to surrender my fear.
This brings me to that favor I mentioned. My Christmas Wish.
Gosh, Santa, I need your help.
By the way, Jim says guys like peanut butter cookies and oatmeal raisin the best, so we will be leaving those out in their usual place by the Cocoa. Feel free to use the copper pot I leave out for you to warm up your Cocoa in case you find yourself running late. Oh, the carrots for the Reindeer are grown by local farmers- I am adding some lovely fresh pears this year…
But, you know that too… Sorry…..
What was I going to say? Oh, right! My Christmas Wish:)
You’ll find an envelope by your nighttime snack. I’ve enclosed all my fears and worries inside. Could you kindly take them from me? That is my Christmas Wish.
And when you take your leave, by the way, I LOVE that time suspension magic you do- very cool!
When your laughter rings out within and around our home, can you add a bit of Christmas Spirit Magic to infuse your laughter, Joy, and that kind of love I can’t remember the name of …within our home, our hearts and my brain where my fears and worries once were? By adding your love and laughter to mine Santa, well, that’s a powerful infusion. Exactly what is needed to receive the appreciation of each day.
My family and I laugh a lot Santa. YOU know. My laughter helps my husband, Jim and our son, Matthew. Their laughter helps me. And so, it goes….
P.S.
Should you find other letters written by people with Autoimmune Encephalitis, whether they be drawings by children, a single word, or simply the breath of fear blown inside an envelope and sealed, my wish is that you take these too and leave your laughter.
Oh, make yourself at home as long as you would like Santa. The weather across the Northern Hemisphere is projected to be quite cold. There are extra blankets in the hall closet. Help yourself. When you are working your way across the Southern Hemisphere and get to Sarah’s house in New Zealand since it is Summer there and you won’t need them any longer, you can leave the blankets with her and she’ll get them back to me on her next visit;)
Pleasant trip and God speed.
Best Wishes,
Tabitha
(Originally written December 17, 2014)
IAES invites you to spread awareness of Autoimmune Encephalitis by sharing this delightful musical spoof utilizing the classic holiday music from ‘Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. Learn who identified the most common type of autoimmune encephalitis of them all and where that magical moment occurred.
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES) is a Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey.
Driven by the knowledge that “Education is Power”, International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society manages an educational support group for patients diagnosed with Autoimmune Encephalitis and their loved ones, empowering them to be strong self-advocates and advocates that will lead them to best outcomes and recovery. We are the premier organization leading in these vital roles.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in an accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
For those interested in face masks, clothing, mugs, and other merchandise, check out our AE Warrior Store! This online shop was born out of the desire for the AE patient to express their personal pride in fighting such a traumatic disease and the natural desire to spread awareness. Join our AE family and help us continue our mission to support patients, families and caregivers while they walk this difficult journey.
June-21-2020 | Leslie Holland
My dad and my brain go back more than a few decades. When I was two, he convinced my eldest sister she could teach me to read, which I insisted upon in order to move on from coloring books. It wasn’t that I was bored with Dad reading Dr. Seuss to us before bed, it was a fascination with the stories that I wanted MORE.
Among my rather large family—including more than a dozen cousins, with whom our young parents raised more like a collective of siblings—I was given the nickname “The Brain.” I took no offense at the name (until adolescence finally kicked in); rather, I relished reading in a corner when the rest were doing anything else.
It paid off, too. I was immediately admitted to the public school’s advanced program, while my four siblings attended the local parochial school. Dad generally drove us to school and I was the final drop-off, during which time he encouraged my academic achievement in multiple ways, whether quizzing me on spelling words or asking me to solve math problems in my head.
Dad was in advertising, heavily involved in political campaigns, which also set the stage for my career in public relations and marketing—including a stint as a registered lobbyist for the Health Insurance Association of America. As a matter of course, the last three people who hired me asked in the interviews whether I was his daughter. My answer weighed heavily in my favor.
Fast-forward to November 2018… During dinner with my boyfriend, I said something so out of course with our conversation, that Tim was stunned. The next day I had no recollection of it and he insisted I see my internist, who knows me well enough that I was sent immediately for an MRI. Limbic encephalitis was rampant and the obvious diagnosis. (I’ve had epilepsy for nearly 30 years, due to an entirely separate and resolved diagnosis, so all seizure activity was well-controlled, making my memory issues the trigger in my case.)
Upon receiving this new diagnosis, I communicated it to my family. My sister, Suzanne (the one who taught me to read), is now a bioethicist in Washington state, and she arranged for me to be seen at Mayo Clinic for a consult with Dr. Sean Pittock, who agreed out of professional courtesy. Immediately upon meeting me during my office visit, he admitted me and began my steroid treatment.
During this time and since, Suzanne, Dad and I have been in daily text communication. Sometimes it’s related to my encephalitis, though often it’s about our beloved University of Louisville Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs, Thoroughbred racing, or the political antics of the moment. Never has Dad wavered in his commitment to my wellness.
Once it became apparent that working at a job I once loved was no longer possible because of my significant memory issues, he has continued to nudge me along intellectually. He’s convinced “The Brain” will overcome and achieve in new ways. There are days I’m not yet there with his belief, but more often than not, I’m still the kid who’s being quizzed in the car on the way to school. Happy Father’s Day, Dad!
June-21-2020 | Mari Wagner Davis
She did not stand alone, but who stood behind her, the most potent moral force of her life was the love of her father. Harper Lee.
Father’s Day is a day we celebrate our fathers. We may take them out to dinner, send a card, or make a special phone call. There have likely been times when we have argued or butted heads with our fathers. Times when they have come to our rescue. Times when they have chewed us out for doing something goofy. I didn’t really realize how important my parents, my father is, in my life until I had seizures and was diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis.
Growing up, my Father’s goal was to make sure we were competent, independent adults. We had to learn to read a map, change our oil, when we were five he helped us open our own bank accounts and made sure we put money in them to save. One thing he couldn’t protect me from or prepare me for was autoimmune encephalitis. But as always, my parents have stood behind me, loving me, supporting me, at times holding me when I cried from the frustration of not being who I was before and celebrating the small goals I have achieved as I have inched along in my recovery.
Events one doesn’t conceive of celebrating such as when I completed day rehab, passed my special driving test so I could resume driving, and when I was able to stay up all day without a nap. (Autoimmune encephalitis makes you celebrate the small things).my Father celebrated with me.
So, when we feel alone, know that whether we still have our Fathers physically with us or not, they stand behind us, cheering us on.
Happy Father’s Day Dad
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in someone receiving an accurate diagnosis who is suffering right now and is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
June-10-2020 | Gary Walters
December 2019
This is the result of the disease Autoimmune Encephalitis (AE), the symptoms of which I was clearly exhibiting without my even realizing. Hallucinations, involuntary movements (which developed to 20-30 movements over four or five minutes), insomnia, loss of inhibition, memory loss and finally seizures, none of which I can remember. Apparently, I had two massive seizures at work (a Secondary School where I teach Physical Education), one of which resulted in the police being called due to my resisting all help. I’m told this was the last of a number of smaller seizures as the disease continued to develop and take hold.
The last seizure resulted in hospitalization for more than two months and being seen by a number of doctors and specialists who put me through a whole host of MRI scans, EEG’s, blood plasma analysis and other tests I don’t recall. I was eventually transferred to another hospital, where a specialist identified AE straight away, where I stayed and was treated for more than three weeks.
Lots of my friends and family traveled to see me, none of which I can remember and feel very guilty about admitting to. I do have a memory of very small flashes of shouting inappropriate comments at some female staff and having to apologize the next day and some very small flashes of walking around on other wards in my underwear looking for my ward. Again, it’s very embarrassing and most of it I can’t fully remember.
I’ve been told of other embarrassing events I performed, which eventually resulted in my being placed in a room by myself and given sedatives to help me “relax.” I was given all sorts of medicines, went through a whole host of tests and discussions with specialists on how to treat and control this very rare disease, and no one knew the right answer. It was a case of controlling the disease from worsening and monitoring my condition very closely.
I am now awaiting a decision from my consultant regarding the next steps. He has to speak with specialists in London as he is also unsure about what to do. I’ve been signed off work until after Christmas, which I also find frustrating as I feel back to 100%, but deep down I know that is the right decision.
I hope this article gives other sufferers of this very rare disease assurance there are other people out there experiencing similar symptoms of this confusing and inexplicable disease for which hopefully leads to further research and ultimately a successful pathway to complete recovery.
May 2020
Since I wrote the above piece back in late December 2019, I’m feeling back to 100%. The doctors, specialists, occupational health therapists are all very surprised how quickly I seem to have fully recovered, and it’s all down to the support and treatment I’ve had.
It’s now early May, I’m still taking a large dose of meds including Lamotrigine, Levetiracetam, Prednisone, Adcal etc, which to be honest it’s now a case of a gulp of water and down the hatch. It’s now about 10 tablets in the morning and eight at night — massively down from 24 and 12.
I went back to work in early January on a carefully monitored and phased return, building back to full-time before the dreaded COVID-19 hit. I’m not going to lie, going back to work has been tough. The school I work at has moved on, which has is expected in the 12-18 months I’ve been in and out (mostly out). Different students. Different staff. Different expectations. It’s been hard for me, but harder and more frustrating for the brilliant people I’m lucky enough to work with.
When I got back into work I tried to pick up where I left off. It didn’t work, because my expectations of myself are so high. I wanted to know why, how, what had happened to this, that, and the other. I tried to rush back too quickly, and it didn’t work. I wasn’t listening or asking for help enough.
I thought I could pick up where I left off, but I couldn’t. My brain needed time to click back into action. Those billions of neurons needed time. Time, I thought I didn’t have. Fortunately, my employers have been incredibly understanding. They’ve supported me so much, something for which I am eternally grateful.
This is where I know I’m so lucky. I’ve read so many stories of people that are struck with different forms of encephalitis and other life-changing illnesses where they haven’t recovered enough to be able to return to work, or their employers haven’t been as understanding. At times, I feel guilty reading their stories.
As I write this I now only see my specialist twice a year and my meds are being reduced every 10 days. I’m back into full-time work in my original role and physically fit again, running at least three times a week, with lots of sport and the gym. I seem to have a “small” gap in my memory of about 12-18 months, but it could have been a lot worse.
So, it is very possible to make a completely successful and long-lasting recovery from AE and other forms of the disease. I read so many stories of people who have suffered from this terrible illness and are still suffering, so I wanted to write this to let people know there are success stories and you can — with the correct treatment and support network around you — return to full health and look forward to living the rest of your life.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in someone receiving an accurate diagnosis who is suffering right now and is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families, and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that the best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
April 15-2020 | Jackie M. Stebbins
I suffered from insomnia for quite a while before I decided to take it seriously, but only because I was afraid it would start affecting my work. All signs pointed towards depression and anxiety. Lawyers become depressed from their workload and stress, that’s a fact. Who was I to believe I was any different, especially because of the hours I was working and the nature of the cases I was handling as a family law and criminal defense attorney. I didn’t want to admit to any mental health issues, but the slow and serious deterioration of my health finally made me admit and accept it. I was prescribed antidepressants to sleep and continued to plow through work. I told myself I’d take time off in the summer, I just had to make it through my busy spring. By the end of April, I was still an insomniac, my jaws were clenched, my hands were shaking, and my ears rang. In early May, I left work for a week’s break. Earlier that day, I had what I now know was a serious anxiety attack at my desk, and I knew I couldn’t stay at work any longer. I believed I needed time for my medication to kick in, which would hopefully allow me to sleep. On the surface, I told myself I would return to work very soon, but a deep down dark thought told me I’d never return to my office as I nearly collapsed out the door that day. Only six days after I left work, I checked myself into the psychiatric ward. My decline was obvious. I wasn’t very communicative, I stared a lot, I couldn’t sleep during the day or night, I no longer believed I was fit to drive with my children, and my body stopped working while I tried to swim or bike. I suffered from paranoia and confusion and hallucinated with prescribed sleeping medication. During my 48-hours in the ward, my mind started to slip and things, like knowing the date and reading a clock, became a challenge. I struggled to read and write. I cried and exhibited serious tremors. Something told me I didn’t belong in the ward, but I was desperate for help to sleep and to feel better.
From the time I left work until my time in the ward, my memory isn’t great. Once I left the ward, I nearly ceased to exist as a person and my memory is bare. My life during that time has been pieced together through records and my family’s recollections. For six days after I left the ward, my husband of 10 years took care of me like a child and wondered if I had dementia or was possessed, because of my cognitive impairment and strange behavior. At a follow-up behavioral appointment, my nurse practitioner immediately believed I had a neurological condition and expedited my referral to a local neurologist. Her astute thinking absolutely saved my life. However, the word “neurological” led my husband and family to think the worst. They believed I had a brain tumor. My neurologist’s diagnosis the next day was also life-saving for me. He believed I had AE but ordered more testing to rule out other conditions. Over the course of three days, I failed a neurological examination with flying colors, had an MRI image of my brain that was of poor quality because I shook so badly and could not lie still, and I underwent a spinal tap. I have only a few memories of the testing the first day and I don’t remember much after. My family cried for days and I was oblivious to everything. I repeatedly asked the same questions about what was going on but was fairly easily reassured and was compliant. My mother repeated over and over, “Thank God she doesn’t understand what’s going on.” Just 20 days prior, I had successfully defended an order to show cause hearing, but could not draw the face of a clock during my neurological exam. During the early morning hours, the day after the spinal tap, I had a grand mal seizure in bed that broke and dislocated my right shoulder. I was taken to CHI-St. Alexius Hospital in Bismarck, where I spent the next five days. My memories from the hospital are almost nonexistent and the ones I have are skewed. My health was incredibly fragile and there was serious discussion of having the Mayo Clinic’s airplane fly to Bismarck to retrieve me. While I was sick and rendered incompetent, my husband, family, and a few close lawyer friends took over my life and made all of the decisions for my cases, my role in my own law firm, my health care, and whether my husband had to sell our home and move us closer to our family. I had no idea any of this was going on. They all went into crisis mode to fight for my health and so that no one missed a step at the law firm. The thankfulness I have for my Superman husband, my beloved family, and my friends can never be fully explained. My health started to stabilize, so I stayed in the Bismarck hospital. Upon my release, I began a week of IV steroids to treat the AE. By the second day of treatment, my mind rallied, and my family saw the signs of me again. I underwent a CT scan that same week, which revealed blood clots in my right lung and leg, and three broken vertebrae in my back. It was also during that week that I was able to understand I was never mentally ill, but that all my health problems were the AE at work.
I went to the Mayo Clinic in June and my diagnosis and treatment were all verified, which was good news; it was the devil we were coming to understand. But the recovery process was slow from there. I struggled with people diverting my attention, noise, anxiety, fear, personal interactions, any public outings, could not drive, felt broken physically and mentally, was limited in movement, and was shaky and unsteady. I was mostly confined to my home for a year. I had to repair my mind, body, and spirit, and the Superwoman efforts required of me to survive and recover were overwhelming. With the love and support of my husband and family, and my determination to recover for the sake of my children, I rose to the challenge.
I never returned to my law firm after the onset of the AE, and I elected to retire from private practice based upon my health conditions. Starting in fifth grade, I only wanted to be a lawyer and have sacrificed more than I can explain to get to where I was in my career when the AE hit. Feeling like I lost the career I loved and the law firm I was so proud of, felt like the end of me and everything I knew. Although I have lost in unexplainable ways, I have gained an incredible new perspective on life. I have a lot of hope for the future. I also believe I can use the same drive and skills I honed to be a respected lawyer to accomplish the same goal I had as a lawyer: to help others. How I can best do that, only time will tell. I am currently working on a book to describe my experience with AE and I hope it is out for readers to enjoy in 2020.
As I’ve gone through this journey, I believe I’ve learned a few things along the way and hope to offer a little advice. 1) Take your work-life balance seriously. Upon deep soul searching, I know I was working too hard and not enjoying enough around me. I will live with that guilt and lots of “what-ifs” for life. 2) Make sure you surround yourself with colleagues and friends you admire and trust because your professional life requires it if you are ever unexpectedly debilitated. 3) Purchase long-term disability insurance. It is a great investment and was a life-saver for me. But most importantly, understand and read your policy before disaster strikes.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in someone receiving an accurate diagnosis who is suffering right now and is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES), home of the AEWarrior®, is the only Family/Patient-centered organization that assists members from getting a diagnosis through to recovery and the many challenges experienced in their journey. Your donations are greatly appreciated and are the direct result of IAES’ ability to develop the first product in the world to address the needs of patients, Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards. Every dollar raised allows us to raise awareness and personally help Patients, Families and Caregivers through their Journey with AE to ensure that best outcomes can be reached. Your contribution to our mission will help save lives and improve the quality of life for those impacted by AE.
April-1-2020 | Barbara Layt Vujaklija, RN
Now that frantic February is finally over its time to look back and take stock of what we achieved. World Encephalitis Day (WED) was started by the Encephalitis Society in October of 2013 and has been held every February 22nd annually since then. The purpose is to raise awareness of encephalitis globally. The International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society (IAES) has participated in WED annually since its formation. This year IAES designated the month of February to be Autoimmune Encephalitis (AE) Awareness month and will continue to exhibit the face of AE every year.
So, what did we do to bring attention to AE in February 2020? IAES President, Tabitha Andrews Orth, put together our 4th annual AE awareness video. This wonderful video features members who were kind enough to send photos of themselves in treatment and before and after shots. The AE Warriors Stepping Forward video was a great success so thanks to all who participated.
Our annual Virtual Arts Show 2020 was a beauty to behold. Filled with talent. Drawings and paintings, poems and short stories. It was an outpouring of emotion from the hearts of AE Warriors from all over the world. If you ever want to know what it feels like to have AE look no further.
We rolled out a selection of AE awareness products that provide the support and encouragement of everyone in the AE community’s desires. AE Warrior Gifts, now available year-round, features the Royal Registry certificates for the AE warrior ™ and Caregiver. These certificates recognize the heroism in battling AE by the patient and caregiver for their heroism under fire. Survival Kits for AE patients, caregivers, doctors, RNs, Kids, and parents were created, and many members gave these out. Candy bar wrappers with fun encouraging statements were developed for fundraising efforts and are available for free as well as a unique AE Medical Identification card IAES developed.
With all these great things going on there was still a magnificent topper to the month. Tabitha and her team rolled out a first of their kind Autoimmune Encephalitis Trivia Playing Cards Deck. These remarkable cards were developed with assistance by Dr. Dalmau and have questions and answers about AE to use for quiz games with families, who want to know more about AE, doubles as a rehabilitation tool or can just be used as playing cards. The original art on the cards was done by a fellow AE warrior, Julia King. Complimentary decks are being sent out to AE doctors on our Doctor’s List. The excited responses IAES is receiving from doctors about AE Trivia playing cards are filled with praise and congratulations in developing the ideal tool for AE patients, families and therapists. AE Trivia playing cards are on sale to the public and all proceeds will go to support AE research. Well done team.
So outreach for the first annual Autoimmune Encephalitis Month was a big success and thanks to all the members, caregivers and volunteers who put in their time and hearts to make it happen.
Of course, the culmination of the month is February 22nd and World Encephalitis Day. Many members sent in updates around this date and pictures to show before and after views that we decided to share some of them in case you missed them the first time around. So here are some great pictures and a few quotes to go with them.
From Renee Sanchez, “Well today’s the day! Almost exactly 5 months from her first seizure, which would be the last day of work and the beginning of this nightmare for our daughter, she is going back to work!”
From Paula Lee Ramirez, “Happy world encephalitis day
From ICU September 2017 to now. Symptoms started in August 12, 2017. I wasn’t admitted and believed I was sick until September 17,2017. Diagnosed on October 3, 2017 with ANTI-NMDA Receptor encephalitis. I have yet to relapse! ❤️
Lucy May Dawson, “Today is World Encephalitis Day. I, like 78% of people, had no idea what Encephalitis was until the words fell out of my neurologist’s mouth after I was misdiagnosed as having had a mental breakdown and had spent 3 months in a psychiatric ward…….Regardless, I am one of the lucky ones, and I hope that by continuing to post about encephalitis, someone will one day remember one of my posts when their loved one begins to act strangely, and they will ask their doctor to test for it, and it may just save a life”.
Daisy Garuvadoo: World Encephalitis Day today, from being critically ill with Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis in Nov 2017, 2 years ago, having to relearn to walk, speak, to brush her teeth. to get dressed, to read, to write, to learn basic maths, to tell time and to regaining her cognitive abilities to Medical School and thriving. Yesterday, my daughter was honored for her research project related to Intrathecal procedures at her Medical School. INTRATHECAL RITUXIMAB TREATMENT(though the spine) IS WHAT SAVED HER LIFE.
Kimberly Anne Thompson I beat this. I have no lasting side effects. But awareness is so important… Because Encephalitis often presents with psychiatric symptoms it is often misdiagnosed… I spent six weeks in a Psychiatric Hospital originally diagnosed with having a Nervous Breakdown. I was given meds that only made My condition worse. It wasn’t until I started having Seizures and the Encephalitis began affecting My Heart that I was transferred to ICU and had a Lumbar Puncture which showed I had Anti-NMDA Encephalitis…. It is this delay that kills. I urge all Medical Professionals to consider Encephalitis in Patients that present with Hallucinations for the first time… You could save a life.”
I was determined to walk … determined to get my eyesight back determined to get back on that horse determined to get a job … I walked into my 21st blind.
These awesome warriors and their brave care givers look at World Encephalitis Day and the new Autoimmune Encephalitis Month as a milestone. Where was I last year and where am I now? Some who have been floundering in a wilderness of lost memories have found their way or at least see a light at the end of their tunnel. Some are still, though making progress, struggling with issues others cannot even begin to imagine. Not only one year at a time but moment to moment. Some have been in comas only to wake up to a new truth, new situation, others are missing months or years of their lives. People they will never see again and new members of family and friends they are only meeting now. Such is the nature of Autoimmune Encephalitis. Your own body turning on you and messing up your brain. Sometimes making you hear, see, taste or smell things that are not there. Trying to make the family and friends in their lives understand the impossible.
March on brave warriors, continue to fight and savor your special month and the day set aside for you every year. May your lives look better next February.
Become an Advocate by sharing your story. It may result in accurate diagnosis for someone suffering right now who is yet to be correctly identified. Submit your story with two photos to IAES@autoimmune-encephalitis.org
Our website is not a substitute for independent professional medical advice. Nothing contained on our website is intended to be used as medical advice. No content is intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, nor should it be used for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for your own health professional's advice. Although THE INTERNATIONAL AUTOIMMUNE ENCEPHALITIS SOCIETY provides a great deal of information about AUTOIMMUNE ENCEPHALITIS, all content is provided for informational purposes only. The International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society cannot provide medical advice.
International Autoimmune Encephalitis Society is a charitable non-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2016 by Tabitha Andrews Orth, Gene Desotell and Anji Hogan-Fesler. Tax ID# 81-3752344. Donations raised directly supports research, patients, families and caregivers impacted by autoimmune encephalitis and to educating healthcare communities around the world. Financial statement will be made available upon request.
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