Hand of ghost

Continued from "Hunters get hunted"...

I reached raghavendra's house. Raghavendra's mom had taken him somewhere so waited for them to come back. When they came back, Raghavendra had some yellow paste smeared on his face, red powder on his spandrel. A kind of look that could scare away children. His mom said she had taken him to an exorcist. She gave you-are-responsible-for-all-this kind of look. I was taken aback him, i looked at raghavendra. He looked straight at me without embarrassment. After sometime i took him out to know what had happened.

He said, since the incident, without his conscious thinking, he was trying to strangle himself with his left hand. He would somehow ward off the left hand by using his right hand. He said he dint consciously try to strangle himself. His mother believed that the ghost had come upon him which was doing this. It was scary. The ghost hunter got hunted? He was talking plainly, there was no sense of pain, regret or remorse. He also had lost the sense of smell.

I asked if he never went to doctor these days. He said "I had been to a physician who thought that i was depressed and i was attempting it myself and referred me to a psychologist. Then i went to see a psychologist, he said he found no signs of hysteria or other mental disorders - he gave some anti-depressants."

I suggested that we see a neurologist. I took him to a neurologist. As we explained to the doc, he hardly gave any thought to whatever we said, the issue being so eerie. He suggested us to get the MRI scan of skull done. "Did you have any head surgery or injury". Doctor said "Its hardly surprising the way he is bahaving. His pareital lobe in right hemisphere is partly damaged. parietal lobes process information from senses, especially touch. Thats probably the reason he is not able to smell anything.

The corpus callosum which is a bundle of nerve fibres is the bridge between left and right hemisphere is damaged, almost severed. Through corpus collosum the two hemisphere exchange information. Each hemisphere has some specialized functions. In most people, language abilities is controlled entirely by the left hemisphere.

Our neuron circuitry is such that anything that happens in the left part of the body, that information is processed by the right hemisphere and vice-versa. With his condition, sensory information received by the right hemisphere cannot be transferred to the language systems of the left as the corpus collosum is severed.

A person with his right hemisphere damaged will experience inappropriate emotional response. Like being extremely depressed. In his case he is feeling extremely depressed, which is in-explicable but happens due to right hemisphere being damaged. Right hemisphere cannot transmit the associated sensory data to the left hemisphere and its language centers. The left hemisphere perceives a change in the body's state, but does not know why.

Their verbal left hemispheres do not know some things that their right hemispheres do know. In short, these people's callosal disconnections have produced two separate consciousnesses - two distinct spheres of awareness - within their minds. "

Kind of startling revelation. "Is there no cure for it". "There is no known formal treatment for Alien Hand Syndrome at this time, the symptoms can be reduced and managed to some degree by keeping the alien hand occupied and involved in a task. There is generally a gradual reduction in the frequency of alien behaviors observed over time and a gradual restoration of voluntary control over the affected area. Neurons change and the organization of their networks do change and so their function by experience, resulting re-formation of corpus callosum. I can even teach him some exercises to keep the alien hand occupied and override the behaviour of alien hand"