Cotard’s Syndrome Research Paper Essay Example

has derived various different stories due to a lack of actual evidence. There has been conspiracies and stories that Mata Hari was simply a scapegoat by French counterespionage.

Some researchers believe she was ever a double spy rather a victim of manipulative setups of which the man who recruited her was the actual spy who used her as a cover. Cotard's Syndrome Research Paper By mariaolsen166 Cotard's syndrome, also known as Walking Dead Syndrome, is a rare mental disorder in which the said person holds a belief that they are dead, putrefying, don't exist, or have lost all of their blood and internal organs. This disorder was named after Jules Cotard, who was a French neurologist that was the first to describe it.

He was especially interested in cerebrovascular accidents, or strokes, and what happened as result of them. He took to performing autopsies so he could better understand how they affected the brain. Cotard's syndrome, like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, is a form of delusional psychosis. The severity of this disorder differs from person to person, from mild to severe. In more severe cases, such as the original case, the person can die from starvation, because of the belief that parts of their body do not exist, and therefore do not need to eat. There are 3 distinct stages in Cotard's syndrome: germination, blooming, and chronic.

In the first stage, the said person ould have psychotic depression and hypochondria. The second stage is when the syndrome has fully developed and the patient starts to have delusions of negation, which is the delusion that everything is nonexistent, or a sense that everything is unreal. In

the third and final stage of this disorder is when the person experiences severe delusions and can develop chronic depression. This stage is what leads theses people to have a completely distorted view of the world in which they live in. These people can also become socially withdrawn, negligent to their hygiene, and nable to make sense of reality.

The cause to this distorted reality is when their is a malfunction in the part of the brain called the fusiform gyrus, the part of the brain that recognizes faces, and also in the amygdala, a small almond shaped set of neurons that process your emotions. The combination of these two is a lack of recognition when they are viewing familiar faces (even their own) and it can leave the person feeling disconnected with reality. Some cases are brought on by accidents, such as a man in Scotland in the 1990s, who was in a motorcycle crash that caused brain damage.

When he was released, he was brought to South Africa by his mother, but he believed that he was brought to hell by the soul of his mom. Also, according to research by Doctor G. E. Berios and Doctor R. Luque, as a person ages, there is a higher likelihood of one developing this disorder, though it is still incredibly rare. It is assumed that this is an extreme form of depression, though in a somewhat recent case, a man's brain was PET scanned, and while he was walking, talking, and breathing, his brain was working as though he was in a coma, or under anesthesia. The man also claimed that he didn't have a

brain.

Doctors said that part of his brain was nearly dead (all of these tests were performed after a suicide attempt in which the man put an electrical device in a bathtub he was in) but with the help of medication prescribed by doctors, and psychotherapy, he has returned almost completely to normal. As of now, the cure to Cotard's disease is still unknown as scientists are still in uncharted territory when it comes to finding a treatment for the cause of it. But because of this, doctors are trying to treat the symptoms rather than the cause. Antidepressants and antipsychotics are common treatments, as well as