Some Thought She Was Possessed By The Devil, But Doctors Figured Out What Was Causing This Little Girls Uncontrollable Laughter

[SilentLoner]

Some Thought She Was Possessed By The Devil, But Doctors Figured Out What Was Causing This Little Girls Uncontrollable Laughter

 

Researchers report the curious medical case of a six-year-old girl from Bolivia who had uncontrollable and inappropriate fits of laugher. “She was considered spoiled, crazy, even devil-possessed,” José Liders Burgos Zuleta of the Advanced Medical Image Centre in La Paz, Bolivia, says in a news release. Doctors diagnosed her with “misbehavior.”

After imaging her brain using CT, PET, and MRI scans, Liders Burgos and colleagues were able to diagnose the cause of the girl’s gelastic (or laughing) seizures: They discovered a hamartoma -- a small, benign, tumor-like growth -- pressing on the temporal lobe of her brain. 

Gelastic seizure was first described in 1877, and it comes from the Greek word “gelos,” for laughs. Normal laughter is an emotional reflex and its accompanying motor action involves the hypothalamus, the temporal cortex, and several regions of the brain stem. Gelastic nervous breakdowns occur mostly in the temporal lobe, and the rare condition is more frequently diagnosed in children. 

After surgery to remove the tumor, the child's now healthy and developing normally without further seizures. The doctors hope her case will help parents and neurologists better diagnose children with apparent behavioral issues in Latin America. 

 

Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/some-thought-she-was-possessed-devil-doctors-figured-out-what-was-causing-little#sgsUWdIPuBTLqw1e.99

 

[★ Citsonga ★]

Just imagine all the people who have been slammed as demon possessed for conditions like this and epilepsy. The slander is no laughing matter. It's great that this girl has been healed with modern medical intervention. (I wonder how many unanswered prayers there were before this doctor solved the girl's problem.)

[mymistake]

The real danger is what ignorant people do when they attempt to treat demon possession.  Ignorance can be very dangerous.

[Aries256]

just goes to show behind every " demonic possession" there's a real reason ( aside from paid actors) Praying, and exhorcisms dont do shit, and can cause more harm. Personally I think these clergy who do exhorcisms should be arrested for (insert medical crimes here), and locked away.

[TheRedneckProfessor]

If jesus really was god, why do people still believe in demon possession?  Think about it.  jesus would have been omniscient.  He would have known how the human brain works, and also the kinds of defects it has.  If jesus was god, he would have said, "Your name isn't Legion, you just have multiple personality disorder."  Yet he attributed a lot of what psychology has shown to be mental diseases to demon possession, allowing the continued belief in, and subsequently often disasterous results of, the idea that demons are real and can possess people.

[seven77]

If jesus really was god, why do people still believe in demon possession?  Think about it.  jesus would have been omniscient.  He would have known how the human brain works, and also the kinds of defects it has.  If jesus was god, he would have said, "Your name isn't Legion, you just have multiple personality disorder."  Yet he attributed a lot of what psychology has shown to be mental diseases to demon possession, allowing the continued belief in, and subsequently often disasterous results of, the idea that demons are real and can possess people.

 

Simple answer: Jesus was a man of his times and didn't know any more than any other first century man did about mental illness.

 

Jesus wasn't God, a god or anything but the creation of a multitude of imaginations with an agenda.

[pawn]

Jesus was a typical, primitive dumbfuck.  Yet millions worship him as the "lord of wisdom"...some of his sayings and proverbs are downright non-sense.

[midniterider]

So the kids wasnt just laughing at the stupidity of the sermons in church? :-)

[earthmama514]

When I was a teenager we had a man attending our church who had tourettes syndrome (randomly yells out expletives, has tics, repeats words etc) his story growing up as a kid was so sad. His very Christian parents were downright abusive to him to "cure him of the devil". It wasn't until he was in his 20's that he sought help from a Dr and was diagnosed. His parents never believed it.

 

I'm.glad this girl was helped and cured. What an interesting diagnosis.