These stories surely rocked your childhood, but also perhaps disturbed your nights with their scary characters. Children's tales or fantastic tales are full of supernatural creatures and unexplained phenomena. In her book La belle au bois she really sleeps? , the doctor and neurologist at the CHU Grenoble-Alpes Laurent Vercueil has fun wondering if these phenomena can be explained or not by real neurological or medical disorders.
Is Sleeping Beauty Suffering From Hypersomnia?
After being stung on a spindle bewitched by the wicked fairy, the Sleeping Beauty falls asleep for a long sleep of a hundred years. In medicine, if such a long fall asleep obviously does not exist, "there are real hypersomnias which constitute health disorders, and which have a real impact on the daily life of its teenagers", explains Laurent Vercueil. Which refers in particular to narcolepsy, this brutal falling asleep sometimes caused by emotions, pain, etc.
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A syndrome also bears the name of the princess from the Perrault tale: Kleine-Levin syndrome, named "sleeping beauty syndrome" in the United States. This syndrome, explains the guest from Europe 1, "concerns adolescents who will have very prolonged sleep phases, lasting several days or weeks, in an inexplicable or recurrent manner". However, specifies the neurologist, the people reached by this syndrome, contrary to Belle, "do not fall asleep suddenly as in narcolepsy, and have small phases of awakening with very particular, hyperphagic behaviors, ( manifested by overconsumption of food) or hypersexual ".
In the tale, all the inhabitants of the castle also fall asleep. A phenomenon no doubt inspired by real events, explains Laurent Vercueil. "In the 17th century, when folklorists sent their collectors to the countryside, there were epidemics of lethargic encephalitis, that is to say an inflammation of the brain which leads to sleep," he says. Thus, in Denmark or even in England, in several villages, many inhabitants have started to sleep massively.
Do zombies have a damaged cerebellum?
With his jerky, slow gait and spread legs, but also his blank gaze, the zombie is one of the scariest fantastic creatures. "In the brain, for balance and walking problems, it's the cerebellum," explains Laurent Vercueil, while memory problems are managed in the hippocampus. However, "we know that these two structures share the same property, namely a major sensitivity to anoxia, that is to say oxygen deprivation," says the neurologist. Thus, "what zombies potentially suffer from is a lack of oxygenation in these two structures", which may have been caused by cardio-respiratory arrest ".
The elves and Simplet of "Snow White" recall known syndromes
In Nordic mythology, recalls Laurent Vercueil, elves are beings of small size, with a large mouth and a turned up nose. They are also very social and very fond of music. These characteristics, he says, "are identified as those of Williams syndrome". This genetic syndrome "leads to a cognitive handicap and particular traits such as a very important empathy", explains the doctor again, as well as a facies "quite close to that described for the elves".
Much more recent, the figure of Simplet, presented in the cartoon of Walt Disney Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a dumb character, always happy and laughing very often, but also very clumsy, also recalls an identified syndrome, assures Laurent Vercueil : Angelman syndrome. But this disorder will only be described "28 years after the cartoon," he said. "Perhaps in the entourage of Disney or one of the people who contributed to the film, there was a child who had Angelman syndrome," he advances.