Exploding Head Syndrome – Brian Sharpless

In today’s episode, we’re talking about Exploding Head Syndrome. It sounds like the stuff of nightmares, but in reality, it’s a sleep disorder where sufferers hear a deafening bang just before they fall asleep.

Little is known about the condition, so last year, the Focus team and a group of scientists from Goldsmiths University, Harvard Medical School and Argosy University launched a study to find out more. The goal was to get a sense of how common the condition might actually be and hopefully to crowdsource the beginnings of a treatment for it.

The results of our experiment will be published later in the year in BBC Focus magazine, but with World Sleep Day just around the corner, we thought it this would be a good moment to catch up with professor Brian Sharpless, one of the world’s leading experts on the syndrome and one of the scientists leading our study.

Here’s Brian explaining exactly what Exploding Head Syndrome is…

Did you enjoy this podcast? If you liked what you heard, then why not subscribe and leave us a review? You can find us on iTunes, Acast, Stitcher, and many of your favourite podcast apps.

Listen to more podcasts:

• Adventures in brain enhancement
• The future of humanity with Michio Kaku
• How emotions are made
• The London Fatberg + Why you should break up with your phone
• How plants can survive space missions and Chernobyl
• Royal Institution Christmas Lectures past and present

Follow Science Focus on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Flipboard