Stuff You Should Know - How Alien Hand Syndrome Works

Episode Date: March 5, 2009

When a person has alien hand syndrome, his or her hand can move involuntarily, and seemingly of its own volition. Tune in and learn more about this misunderstood syndrome in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like, he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, this creepy, creepy podcast. It's not even Halloween. They'll come in.

I'm Josh. That's Chuck. This is Stuff You Should Know. How you doing? I'm well, sir. Good. Chuck, it's going to sound like a bad edit. I know. Sorry to our producer Jerry for that one. That was just weird. Chuck, I think I speak for everybody when I say I want to hear about one of your favorite movies, one called Doctor Strange Love. Yes. Subtitled, or How I Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Great, great film. Do you like this one as well? I've only seen parts of it here. I've never seen the whole thing.

You continually disappoint me cinematically. I can't help it. It's all I ever do, Chuck. Yeah, that was, I think, a 1964 Stanley Kubrick's awesome, awesome, awesome movie. I did like Eyes Wide Shut. I made my entire family go to the theater to see it for my birthday. You're kidding. There was a row of uncomfortable people seated on either side of me. It was hilarious. Wow. I like that movie too, but I can't imagine taking my mother. Anyway, getting back to Kubrick, 1964, yeah, Doctor Strange Love

starred Peter Sellers in three different roles as Doctor Strange Love, as an army officer in England, and as the president of the United States. That sounds familiar. Yeah, tour de force performance. It was awesome. There was the parts he was born to play. But I know why you bring this up, because Doctor Strange Love, the character of Doctor Strange Love, was a Nazi who... Well, you know, the U.S. used to like to poach Nazi scientists after the war. True.

You know? Well, and that's exactly what happened in the movie. And he has a condition, even though they don't speak of it in the film. It's pretty clear once you know something about it. It's Alien Hand Syndrome is what's going on there. And he loses control of his arm, and he does the Zeke Heil and beats his arm into submission, and it's really, really funny. He has some real trouble with it, I remember.

He does. Yeah, so I think that's very appropriate that we just talked about that movie, Chuck, because this very podcast is about Alien Hand Syndrome. Oh, wow. How nuts is that? I know. It's almost as if we planned it. Yeah, kind of. So Chuck, this one's yours. I would like everybody to go ahead and read this by my...

It's called How Alien Hand Syndrome Works. It was written by my colleague and love of my life, Charles W. Bryant. Go on. Who I could never do without. Go on. Go on. And basically Alien Hand Syndrome was first recognized in 1909, I understand. True. It was first described by the Germans, right?

And it wasn't until 1972 that it really became part of the medical lexicon. Right. Or accepted by the medical establishment, am I correct? Yeah. Okay. So since 1909, when it was first noticed, there's been 50 cases or less documented, right? I mean, that's the definition of extremely rare. So what is it? I mean, are these people just crazy? What's the deal? Well, I should point out though that there are possibly a lot of other cases that have

never been officially diagnosed, but it's still really rare. Is it because they were mistaken for crazy? Maybe. Yeah. I would say so because what happens when you have Alien Hand Syndrome is your hand, one of your hands will involuntarily start doing something. Right. And you don't know what's happening until you look down and see your hand.

If you're asleep, you might not even know what's happening. So wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry because I didn't, I wasn't aware of this. This can go on while you're sleeping. Oh yeah. I did not know that. Yeah, it can go on while you're asleep. Wow. So what happens is your hand just starts doing things and it's all purpose oriented,

which is one of the most fascinating parts of it. Like your hand will grab the remote control and change the channel. Or tear at your shirt or unbutton your shirt. Yeah. And it seems like something out of a movie, but it's real. It is real. It's crazy. But there's some science behind it, which I know you're into.

Well, first of all, what I understand, there's four main hallmarks to this. I guess disease or disorder. Disorder, yeah. One is that the, I guess, offending limb feels like it's foreign. Right. Another hallmark is that when you're not looking at it. Or Alien. Yes, that's an even better way to put it.

When you're not looking at it, it doesn't feel like it's a part of your body or that it's attached maybe. And that there, people who suffer from alien hand syndrome have trouble distinguishing between what's voluntary movement. Right. Like, oh, I want to grab that cup of coffee and what the alien hand is doing. It doesn't seem to them that it's coming from the same place, although it is, which I know we'll get to in a second, right?

Sure. And then the fourth one is that the limb is often personified. Like it has its own. Right. Its own personality. Maybe you call it Roger. Well, a lot of people do name the limb. Is Roger a popular name?

I bet it's the number one. Oh, that too. Roger the hand. So those are the four hallmarks, Chuck. Yes. All right. But what's, let's talk about the brain, the aspects of the brain that are thought to be responsible for this.

Yeah. We've learned a lot about the brain ourselves from doing this podcast. I know. It's pretty amazing. The number one thing I've learned is that we know almost nothing about the brain. I know. Yeah. We can put man on the moon, which happened and supposedly supposedly, and we still don't

even know exactly what's going on with brain function. They do know that there are, you know, certain things like two hemispheres, four lobes, lateralization of brain function, which we've talked about. Explain that real quick. Oh, well, let a literalization of brain function is say the left side of the brain being more detail oriented while the right side of the brain evaluates the big picture. Very nice. So the brain functions are lateralized.

One side is responsible for one thing and the other is responsible for the other. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. Miami had become the murder capital of the United States. They were making millions of dollars. I would categorize it as the Wild Wild West. Unleashing a wave of violence. My God. Talk about walking into the devil's den.

The car fells. They just killed everybody that was home. They start pulling out pictures of Clay Williams' body taken out in the Everglades. A world orbiting around a mysterious man with a controversial claim. This drug pilot by the name of Lamar Chester. He never ran anything but grass until I turned over that load of coke to him on the island. Chester would claim he did it all for this CIA. Pulling many into a sprawling federal investigation.

So Clay wasn't the only person who was murdered? Oh, no, not by a long shot. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for Murder in Miami. Listen to Murder in Miami on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1968, five black girls dressed in oversized military fatigues were picked up by the police in Montgomery, Alabama.

I was tired and just didn't want to take it anymore. The girls had run away from a reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children. And they were determined to tell someone about the abuse they'd suffered there. Picture the worst environment for children that you possibly can. I believe Mt. Megs was patterned after slavery. I didn't understand why I had to go through what I was going through and for what. I'm writer and reporter Josie Duffy-Rice.

And in a new podcast, I investigate how this reform school went from being a safe haven for black kids to a nightmare, and how those five black girls changed everything. All that on Unreformed. Listen to Unreformed on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You did such a good job there. I'm going to ask you to explain Alien Hand Syndrome with the brain.

Okay. And actually, I have to tell you, I went behind your back and I did a little additional research. I came up with a couple of other things, too. Okay. Do you forgive me? I can take it. All right, so there's one really clear way that Alien Hand Syndrome is created, and that is usually a lesion on the corpus callosum.

Which, as you so aptly put it in the article, is like the brain's email server. It's a bundle of nerves that are important in communication between the hemispheres and different regions of the brain. Right. You need the key to the brain is to have the lobes and hemispheres all working together. And that happens thanks to some corpus callosum. Right. So when that doesn't happen, and the regions of the brain

are communicating with each other, specifically say the frontal lobe, which is involved in planning and organizing action. When that happens, say it can't send a message to the motor strip, which actually carries out those movements. Right. When that happens, the motor strip isn't dead. It's still functioning. So it may just be sending random messages to your arm to say,

grasp that shirt and pull at it. Oh, it's your shirt, but do it anyway. That kind of thing. So whenever there's a malfunction, again, usually caused by a lesion on the corpus callosum, where the frontal lobe and the motor strip are engaged in telling each other what's going on, there is this purposeless motion, which is alien hand syndrome.

And really think about it. Purposeless motion is basically just motor activity out of context. There's no context to it. So I mean, like all of a sudden, your hand's grabbing a coffee mug, right? But it seems foreign and weird because you don't understand why. You didn't form the thought that said, I need that coffee cup. Right. Which I guess makes the whole thing kind of chilling.

It is. Indeed. And even worse, Chuck, there's no curious there. No, there is no cure. They've done some studies as recently as 2007. One of the reasons they haven't done that many studies over the years is because it's so rare. Yeah.

I should just say that. And it's not, I guess you could say it's not dangerous. It's more of a nuisance than anything. There have been really, really rare cases where someone's choked themself. To death? No, no, no, not to death. But they found their hand creeping up around their throat,

which is really creepy. Yeah. But since it's not that, since it's so rare and since it doesn't do any real damage to your body, they haven't really been interested in studying it that much. But they did in 2007 a bit and put people in an fMRI machine. And they found, you know, they basically said what you just said, which is the motor strip has been singled out as a center of activity,

even though they don't know what triggers it. It's still shooting messages, but it's not, it's not taking orders any longer for that one side of the body, that one limb. Exactly. From the frontal lobe. Exactly. Also, there's another thing.

It's kind of a variation on alien hand syndrome, which by the way is also called anarchic hand. Yes. And Dr. Strangelove syndrome. Yeah, is that for real? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's probably like a more casual term

that doctors use when they're playing golf and stuff. Especially if they're Kubrick fans, right? Right. So there's a, it's kind of a variation on it. It's caused by damage to the parietal lobe. And usually what it results in is basically a levitation of the hand. And it's, I can't tell if it's dominant, the dominant hand, like with corpus colossal damage, corpus colossum damage.

Usually that is the non-dominant hand. So if you're right-handed, your left hand's going to be alien hand. Okay, yeah. If you have actual damage to the frontal lobe, that usually results in the dominant hand, if you're right-handed, your right hand would have alien hand syndrome. Damage to the parietal lobe doesn't go one way or the other necessarily. But what happens is, especially when you close your eyes,

the hand will start to levitate because they're no longer in sync. And it makes, you know, dressing kind of difficult, that kind of thing. So parietal lobe damage, since the parietal lobe is responsible for sensation and sensory input, when you close your eyes, Oh, right. Your hand just kind of goes a little wacky because like you said in the article, visual cues kind of are very important in associating your hand with your body when it's disassociated like this.

Right. And like you said, there's no cure. I think you said that. I think you said it. Either way. You said it. There is no cure. A lot of times, this seems humorous, but people will do things like

wear an oven mitt or keep their hand occupied by giving it something to hold onto. And some cases it's so severe that they've actually like tie their hand behind their back. Wow. I know. Wow. In 1980, cocaine was captivating and corrupting Miami. Miami had become the murder capital of the United States.

They were making millions of dollars. I would categorize it as the Wild Wild West. Unleashing a wave of violence. My God, talk about walking into the devil's den. The car kills. They just killed everybody that was home. They start pulling out pictures of Clay Williams' body taken out in the Everglades. A world orbiting around a mysterious man with a controversial claim.

This drug pilot by the name of Lamar Chester. He never ran anything but grass until I turned over that load of coke to him on the island. Chester would claim he did it all for this CIA. Pulling many into a sprawling federal investigation. So Clay wasn't the only person who was murdered? Oh no, not by a long shot. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Join me for Murder in Miami.

Listen to Murder in Miami on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 1968, five black girls dressed in oversized military fatigues were picked up by the police in Montgomery, Alabama. I was tired and just didn't want to take it anymore. The girls had run away from a reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, and they were determined to tell someone about the abuse they'd suffered there. Picture the worst environment for children that you possibly can.

I believe Mt. May for pattern after slavery. I didn't understand why I had to go through what I was going through and for what. I'm writer and reporter Josie Duffy-Rice, and in a new podcast I investigate how this reform school went from being a safe haven for black kids to a nightmare, and how those five black girls changed everything. All that on Unreformed. Listen to Unreformed on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But Josh, we're not done yet.

One of the things I thought was interesting was all the different times that Alien Hand Syndrome has been portrayed in some way or another in books and TV and movies. Yeah, I like this point you made about that. It's as many as there have been real cases or more. It's been depicted on the silver screen and small screen. And it goes back all the way to... 1935, the film Mad Love followed an obsessed doctor who replaced the hands of a would-be lover's husband with those of a knife-wielding murderer.

Yeah, I looked this movie up because I hadn't heard of it before, and it was actually the Mad Doctors played by Peter Lorre, and he's totally bald. Peter Lorre's not creepy looking enough. His head is bald as a baby's butt, and he looks really creepy. Interesting. I'm sure he played the part very, very well. The Addams Family, Josh? Actually, I watched, I think, well, two of those movies recently. They're actually really good movies.

Yeah, my brother worked on the second one. Did he? Good stuff. Yeah, young Christina Ricci had a crush on him. Really? It is true. Wow. But she was, you know...

Do you think she remembers him now? Uh, I bet she does. She sent him Christmas gifts for a couple years. What? And Angelica Houston had the hotspots for him, too. What? My brother's a handsome guy. I guess so. Off track there, but interesting nonetheless.

Addams Family had the thing, which wasn't quite alien hand syndrome, but... No, it was like a detached hand. Exactly. But doing its own thing, purposeful things. Yeah, it was also very helpful a lot to drive the getaway car for Pester. True. Yeah. So, Chuck, yeah, I find it interesting, too, that Hollywood has this fascination with it. And...

Well, so creepy and cool and unknown. It is, but at the same time, apparently modern medicine doesn't have as much of an interest as Hollywood does. That's true. It's sad. So, get to it, physicians and medical researchers of all stripes. And while you're doing that, we're going to do some listener mail. Josh, you know what we're doing?

High-Q Theater. I'm ready for this, Chuck. I've been waiting for this one, but... I know. This is good. I'm very psyched about this. The High-Qs are rolling in at an unprecedented rate. Veronica 13.

It's hot in winter. All the people start to melt. Welcome to Texas. Nice. So, I'm guessing she's from Texas. Yeah. This one is from Crystal Dupuis. I found your podcast.

I just could not get enough. Told Chuck I love y'all. He sent me a pic, which I added to my shrine. Just kidding, not nuts. Keep up the great work. Can't wait to hear the next one. Why Chuck Love High-Qs? That's an excellent question.

It is. Diego Garcia, Philadelphia. City of Brotherly Love. Glasses caked with filth. Nanner's Yogurt Strawberry. Smoothie Aftermath. Yes. So, you must have made one of my smoothies.

Yeah. Andy 16 from Idaho says, I want to suggest a podcast about Greek myths that would be so boss. And I love the use of the word boss there. Yeah. And we have two more. Sandra Thompson of Irvine, California.

I learn neat things when listening on the train. Then the song I'm Sad. And I guess the music that she's talking about is the outro music. The ending. Sure, the end of the podcast. Well, thanks for that. And then we got one from Bob,

capital, B-O-B, exclamation point. Bob. Is how he says his name, apparently. And he wrote us a limerick, but explained that he would do so in the form of a high-Q. I'm not sure that's possible. He said, it ain't a high-Q. It's a limerick you see.

Hope you enjoy it. And now the limerick. The edited version. It's Friday the 13th today. A day for bad luck, so they say. So I'll damn Josh and Chuck, because they have all the luck. Let's keep out of misfortune's way.

Fantastic. Gosh, I love limericks. Thank you. Bob. Bob. And thanks to everybody who wrote in, whether you sent us a high-Q or otherwise. And if you have not done so yet,

you can send us something. The email is stuffpodcast.com. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it.

Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Balangene. He used to say,

what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.