There are 34 Days left until Halloween- I hope we get there in showroom condition:

Do you know if  there is damaged to the  cerebral regions (temporoparietal junction) of your cortex you could end up with a syndrome where you wake up and look down at your arm or leg or foot  and you will swear to God that you see an alien limb, a twisted monstrous thing that some evil mad scientist sewed in it’s place.

This affliction is called Somatoparaphrenia.

I read a case where a patient woke up and saw this hideous alien looking leg in his bed and when he tried to push it away he fell out of bed- what he saw was pretty horrifying and there was no convincing him of the reality. In the end he was ‘cured’ but on the other hand ( see what I did there ) maybe he just said what people wanted to hear.

It’s a theme that has turned up in horror fiction- the human/bug hybrids, the eyes that are transplanted from a corpse  to another person and take on a ‘life’ of their own.

Turns out that those ideas came from a very real place- our brains.

Where I first heard about Somatoparaphrenia – 

” The Man Who Fell Out of Bed ” from the book ” The Man who Mistook His Wife For A Hat “. Personally, I Think this book is perfect for your Halloween reading list. You’ll recognize the inspiration  for all sorts of stories from Sci-Fi and Horror.