Improbable research
Is nothing sacred?
http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1958067,00.html
Marc Abrahams
Tuesday November 28, 2006
The Guardian
He who prays fervently courts danger - neurological danger.
"This stark fact has only recently been reported to the public, in a
study published by five neurologists at Christian-Albrechts University
in Kiel in Germany. But fear not - the risk for any particular
individual is low. In the recorded history of the world, the
physicians try to assure us, this is probably the very first case.
Perhaps to avoid inciting jitters among the devout, perhaps due to
worries about inter-cultural tensions, or perhaps merely through
professional tradition, the doctors couch their tale in dry,
medico-lingo-laced language:
"We report on an unusual presentation of a task-specific focal
oromandibular dystonia in a 47-year-old man of Turkish descent. His
speech was affected exclusively while reciting Islamic prayers in
Arabic language, which he otherwise did not speak."
The problem - involuntary jaw muscle twitching - had been cropping up
for two years. It occurred only when the man recited the Arabic
prayers he had been using since childhood, never at other times. It
would cease right after he finished praying.
An extensive battery of tests showed him to be otherwise in good
neurological, muscular, and dental health.
The doctors came up with a simple, fairly effective fix: they had the
man touch himself on the jaw. Usually, this interrupted the spooky jaw
gyrations.
You can watch a short video of the poor fellow; the doctors put it
online at www.mrw.interscience.wiley.com/suppmat
This general kind of problem is called "focal dystonia". It's the
involuntary fluttering of muscles that one ordinarily controls
masterfully. It arises, somewhat mysteriously, in a few
extraordinarily unlucky people who perform "a highly stereotyped and
frequently repeated motor task". It's what happens in writer's cramp,
and in the eyelid twitching known as blepharospasm, and very
occasionally in certain specialised professions. Doctors have seen it
in pianists, tailors and assembly-line workers. But never before in
someone whose repetitive action consisted only of saying prayers.
The doctors, Tihomir Ilic, Monika Pötter, Iris Holler, Günther
Deuschl, and Jens Volkmann, appear to have been surprised - and
possibly a bit delighted. They bestowed upon this condition the name
"praying-induced oromandibular dystonia".
And digging through medical histories, they did find one earlier case.
It happened in England in the early 1990s. The doctors (NJ Scolding of
London and four colleagues) involved in that case later published an
account:
"A 33-year-old right-handed agricultural auctioneer first noticed
involuntary deviation of his jaw to the right developing while
auctioneering ... Further attempts to conduct auctions met with an
inevitable recurrence of his symptoms, usually after two to three
minutes of speaking, and eventually he had to move to a clerical job."
Those doctors, like their later German counterparts, suffered the
involuntary fluttering of heart and mind that is triggered by the
beckoning finger of fame. They concocted a new piece of medical
jargon. Thus did the term "auctioneer's jaw" enter medical literature.
(Thanks to Erwin Kompanje for bringing these to my attention.)
· Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly magazine Annals of
Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel Prize"
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