Today, you’ll learn about Locked-in Syndrome, the connection between social anxiety and nostalgia, and how continental shift is knocking GPS out of whack.
Today, you’ll learn about Locked-in Syndrome, the connection between social anxiety and nostalgia, and how continental shift is knocking GPS out of whack.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/locked-in-syndrome-anxiety-nostalgia-continental-shift
Locked-in Syndrome
Anxiety & Nostalgia
Continental Shift
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[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about Locked-in Syndrome, the connection between social anxiety and nostalgia, and how continental shift is knocking GPS out of whack.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Imagine sinking into a state where you can’t move a single muscle except for your eyes. You can still hear, and you are awake and aware, you just can’t move. Nobody around you knows that you are aware of your surroundings. You want to talk to them, to communicate, but you just can’t. And now imagine that this isn’t something that just goes away - but that could last for years.
CALLI: That just sounds like a nightmare.
NATE: Sadly, it’s not. It’s a condition called Locked-In Syndrome, and while it’s pretty rare, it’s one of those mysterious conditions that doctors are struggling to understand because it isn’t necessarily caused by an accident or anything. But a new paper is shedding some light on the patients who suffer from LIS.
CALLI: I just can’t imagine. It’s one thing to be totally unconscious, but another to be fully aware of your surroundings but unable to do anything about it.
NATE: Absolutely. Patients who have come out of their locked-in state could remember everything. They were fully aware of what was happening around them - of the conversations swirling at their bedside, the tv playing in the background, all of it. It’s unsettling to say the least, and it’s horrifying at worst. The good news is that Locked-In Syndrome is incredibly rare - although researchers are unsure exactly how rare because the condition is often misdiagnosed. They think it’s only a handful of cases per year.
CALLI: You mean, like, maybe doctors don’t know that the patient is conscious?
NATE: Right. There are a few different states that look a little like LIS. There’s coma, vegetative state, totally unconscious state, semi-conscious, and fully conscious. The main differences between all of these is the level of activity in the brain, and, well, the level of consciousness.
CALLI: Are there different causes?
NATE: There are. And that’s what makes this new report important. They’ve found that this condition is essentially caused by lesions in the brain, and most often those lesions are caused by a stroke. But they can also be caused by traumatic brain injury, growths, and in some cases, by infections. But the thing is, this condition isn’t always permanent.
CALLI: Huh. So people can kinda just…wake up?
NATE: They’re already awake - which is what makes LIS so devastating. But they’ve found that they can sometimes regain the ability to move and function, especially when the lesions are isolated to the brain stem. The study looked at 51 patients, and found that 23 of them had emerged from their locked-in state within two years - three of them even regained all motor function. But one of them did not show any signs of improvement.
CALLI: So does this study outline any treatments?
NATE: Not exactly. Researchers and doctors have a few treatment options open to them, but there are no silver bullets here. In fact, the difficulty in treatment is made worse by the difficulty diagnosing this condition. And all of that is what makes research like this so incredibly important. We can’t treat what we don’t understand.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Do you ever get nervous in social situations?
NATE: Never. I mean. Not unless it’s like a group of people who are probably going to be judging me because they think they’re all better than me. And what have I ever done to them, anyway? I’m just a science podcaster doing my best to bring curious listeners interesting stories about all kinds of new studies. What do they want from me?
CALLI: Oooookay. That was…telling.
NATE: Maybe I get a little anxious in some social situations. But don’t we all?
CALLI: I mean…yeah. Most of us absolutely get a little bit nervous in social situations, but up to a third of people worldwide could experience social anxiety, which is an extreme fear of social situations. It can be so extreme that people who suffer from it will do just about anything to avoid seeing people.
NATE: Wow. A third? That’s a ton of people.
CALLI: It’s a real problem for some folks. Often, someone with social anxiety will imagine exactly what you were saying - that others will judge them negatively, or that they’ll feel humiliated or embarrassed by others. It’s not a great feeling, obviously, and as you can imagine, it’s also not always tied to reality.
NATE: Right - like, I know that anytime I feel that kind of anxiety, it’s just my own mind spinning in its tracks.
CALLI: Exactly. And when it’s really bad, it can affect someone’s ability to make and maintain friendships - and that can lead to a host of other issues. But a series of recent studies have made a pretty interesting connection between social anxiety and…nostalgia.
NATE: Nostalgia? Like…that kind of wispy, hazy emotion you feel when you think about the good ol’ days?
CALLI: That’s it.
NATE: How could social anxiety and nostalgia possibly be connected?
CALLI: That’s what researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK wanted to know. They hypothesized that nostalgia can be a form of self-soothing that could actually alleviate some of the bad feelings involved in social anxiety.
NATE: So…sort of like a treatment?
CALLI: Not exactly - but, I mean, sort of. It’s important to understand a little more about social anxiety to really see what’s going on here. They know that often these feelings come on because of what they call ‘interpersonal competence deficits…”
NATE: Right - like my feeling that they’re all judging me or that I’m just not good enough.
CALLI: Yep. It’s not rational, exactly, but if that is often the underlying cause, then a treatment for social anxiety would be anything that makes someone feel confident or…you know…good enough - whatever that ends up meaning for you. So they ran six different studies looking at the connection between social anxiety and nostalgia from six different vantage points. And they found that not only did nostalgia have a positive effect on those kinds of feelings, those feelings of anxiety from social events actually triggered feelings of nostalgia.
NATE: Wow. So maybe our minds go into some kind of self-preservation mode?
CALLI: I mean, it could be.
NATE: Okay. But I’m still not clear what the connection is between the two things - nostalgia and social anxiety.
CALLI: That’s the most interesting thing. Nostalgia is a sort of longing for the past. When you feel nostalgia, you’re usually thinking about a really positive time in your life, and usually it’s a time when you felt supported and connected to others who were important to you.
NATE: Aha! Which is the opposite of feeling not good enough?
CALLI: Exactly.
NATE: So nostalgia actually counters the feelings of social anxiety.
CALLI: That’s right. The researchers say that this could lead to more subtle but effective approaches to treating social anxiety. But not only that, nostalgia is an emotion that just isn’t studied enough, and it seems like it might have more emotional benefits than just daydreaming about days gone by.
NATE: Come to think of it, nostalgia is kind of an amazing emotion. It’s both kinda sad and kinda happy.
CALLI: Yeah. It’s a very rich, deep emotion that researchers would like to know more about. And who knows? Maybe the next time you feel some nerves about going out with friends, you’ll just have to think about that time your mom made you cookies down by the old rope swing.
NATE: How did she make cookies by a rope swing? Was there an oven down there?
CALLI: Oh you get my point!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Remember the time before we had GPS on our phones and we had to get around using, like, actual maps?
CALLI: I never used maps.
NATE: Never? How’d you get around?
CALLI: Okay, I would stop and get directions. And the directions were always like, “Go past the third tree on your right, and you’ll see a red barn and a barking dog. Take the fifth left after the second hydrangea bush.” You get the idea.
NATE: How’d that work out for you?
CALLI: Pretty well, actually. I kind of miss it, to be honest. GPS is just so accurate.
NATE: Yeah, it is. In fact, according to GPS.gov, the global average for accuracy can often be within about two feet. That doesn’t always translate to the maps on our phones because of environmental conditions - like if you’re standing next to a giant building, it might block the signal and you’ll lose some accuracy. But think about that for a second: satellites hundreds of miles above our heads can locate each of us just about anywhere on the globe within a few feet.
CALLI: When you put it that way, it’s even more stunning how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time.
NATE: Right? Well…it turns out that this accuracy is actually a problem because while GPS can find a single point on any continent…what happens when the continents…move?
CALLI: Wait a second. I know that the continents are moving. But are they moving fast enough for it to be a problem for GPS? I thought it took, like, millions of years for continental shifts.
NATE: Yes and no. I mean, if you’re wanting to stand on the beach in LA and shake hands with someone in China, you’ll be waiting a VERY long time - like forever maybe. But the fact is, every continent is constantly in motion - some of them as much as several inches a year. And recently, one of the fastest moving continents had to change the way it processed GPS data.
CALLI: Let me see if I understand this: GPS is so accurate, that even minor changes in the location of continents can kinda throw it off?
NATE: Yep. And Australia moves nearly 3 inches every single year. It’s headed north and just a smidge counterclockwise. And that was causing Australia’s maps to be out of line with the global navigation satellite systems, which include GPS.
CALLI: So…the maps weren’t matching up?
NATE: Nope.
CALLI: That is crazy!
NATE: It’s actually not so crazy - they’ve had to adjust maps of Australia four times over the last 50 or so years. In 1994, they had to correct it by over 650 feet!
CALLI: 650 feet?! I’m pretty sure that’s bigger than a football field! Imagine the chaos that would cause on a maps app!
NATE: Well…we were still using paper maps and asking for directions at the gas station back then. But now the entire world runs on GPS. Everyone from first responders to the military to developers to farmers depend on location data accurate to within feet - and sometimes inches.
CALLI: So what made Australia’s system different? Wouldn’t all maps be out of alignment?
NATE: Great question. The thing is, Australia had developed its own system called Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994, or GDA94. It took into account the drift of the continent and was based on fixed points on the globe. But most other global systems aren’t based on fixed points. They average out the locations of all continents.
CALLI: That sounds complicated.
NATE: It is, but the simple fact is that the two systems were growing further and further out of alignment.
CALLI: That would be a problem. If you use the wrong map to get to the store you’ll end up in the billabong.
NATE: That’s one way to put it. And the thing is, making these changes so that all of our systems align is going to be a real thing moving forward. I know self-driving cars seem like they’re getting further and further into the future, but if we ever have a chance at that, we’ll need GPS maps accurate to within centimeters.
CALLI: So is Australia back where it belongs for now?
NATE: Yes - it will continue its journey northward, but thankfully, next time you’re Down Under and ask your phone’s mapping app for directions, you won’t end up on a walkabout.
CALLI: Unless you want to.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Researchers are looking for connections between people diagnosed with Locked-In syndrome, a condition in which the patient is completely conscious, but totally paralyzed. In other words, they become trapped in their own minds. The condition is caused by lesions on the brain stem and surrounding areas, but researchers need more data in order to find more effective treatments.
CALLI: Researchers have found some incredible links between social anxiety disorder and nostalgia. That joyful longing for the past can not only be triggered by feelings of social anxiety, nostalgia can actually sooth our minds, leading to more productive and healthy social interactions.
NATE: GPS coordinates have become so precise that adjustments need to be made for continental shift. Australia is moving a few inches northward each year, and its old mapping system was growing further and further out of alignment with global systems.