A musician and guitar luthier who’s no stranger to loud noises, Dave Lovos admits to being a bit undone by the boom he heard in his head one night earlier this year. It hit just as Lovos was drifting off to sleep, the force of it snapping him to attention.
What Lovos experienced is known by the unscientific but evocative moniker “exploding head syndrome” (EHS), a mysterious example of a parasomnia, or sleep disorder. Parasomnias include sleepwalking, sleep talking, sleep paralysis, and pesky muscle spasms known as “myoclonic jerks.” In most cases, these parasomnias are normal and harmless, except when physical danger or pain is involved.
“My office would be a lot messier if heads were actually exploding,” says Brian Sharpless, [former WSU psychology faculty member and] a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in sleep. Sharpless is among the handful of psychologists and others researching EHS. He says the condition is harmless.
Classified as a sleep disorder in 2005 by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the small number of studies to date have dismissed earlier clinical claims that women over 50 were more prone to EHS. Data today show that the incidents are almost equally divided among men and women. In a study out of Washington State University, authored by Sharpless, upwards of 13 percent of college students reported at least one episode.
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National Geographic Magazine