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by cpncrunch 2028 days ago
>brain abnormalities

There are no brain abnormalities. They simply found different values for grey/white matter in certain areas of the brain from controls, but these values vary among the population, and it isn't evidence of brain damage.

>"Doctors see these symptoms many times every day" Thats why it's called a syndrome - no one positive indicator.

Indeed, and these symptoms can be very serious in many cases (having experienced them myself, to a much worse degree of impairment than described here).

>The possibilities of it being crickets or mass hysteria have been put forward before.The authors obviously decided these explanations didn't fit the clinical observations, and I suspect they're thorough enough to consider that they're looking at nothing.

It's not "nothing". FND (and variations thereof) is incredibly serious, and not "mass hysteria", and it is the most common complaint seen by neurologists. People who actually understand about FND are saying it is the most plausible explanation for these symptoms:

https://www.edinburghneuroscience.ed.ac.uk/news/functional-n...

1 comments

"It's not "nothing"" By nothing I mean there's no syndrome. Symptoms can be real.

From what I understand, you're saying the FND occurrence rate among these embassy workers is the same as that of the general population, but for some presumably conspiratorial reason, they're being treated specially.

Let's give credit to the many neurologists on this who know about FND, and many other disorders, and assume that they and the authors probably have considered it.

>conspiratorial reason,

No, not conspiratorial. People just don't like functional disorders, as they think it means they are weak/crazy/lazy etc. Having recovered from CFS, I have seen this preducice first-hand.

>Let's give credit to the many neurologists on this who know about FND, and many other disorders, and assume that they and the authors probably have considered it.

Unfortunately FND (and functional disorders in general) are very misunderstood by almost everyone, including the authors of this report (they say that vestibular and balance symptoms would be "hallucinations" and are very uncommon, and liken them to schizophrenia).

According to the DanFunD study, the prevalence of functional disorders is about 16% in the general population (which includes all the symptoms being discussed).