what did the girl have on brain on fire
Brain on Fire The book narrates Cahalan's issues with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis and the process by which she was diagnosed with this form of encephalitis. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of the events of the previous month, during which time she would have violent episodes and delusions. Her eventual diagnosis is made more difficult by various physicians misdiagnosing her with several theories such as "partying too much" and schizoaffective disorder.[2] Eventually several physicians, including Dr. Souhel Najjar, began to suspect that Cahalan was suffering from an autoimmune disease.[2] Najjar diagnosed Cahalan using a test that involved her drawing a clock, a test normally given to people suspected of having dementia or Alzheimer's disease.[3] Rather than drawing the clock face normally, the disease caused Cahalan to draw all of the numbers 1 through 12 on the right face of the clock, because the right side of her brain, which regulates the left side of the body, was inflamed. Najjar used this to help diagnose Cahalan and start her road to recovery.[4]
Brain in a vat In philosophy, the brain in a vat (alternately known as brain in a jar) is a scenario used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of human conceptions of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, consciousness and meaning. It is an updated version of René Descartes' Evil Demon thought experiment originated by Gilbert Harman.[1] Common to many science fiction stories, it outlines a scenario in which a mad scientist, machine, or other entity might remove a person's brain from the body, suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect its neurons by wires to a supercomputer which would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those the brain normally receives.[2] According to such stories, the computer would then be simulating reality (including appropriate responses to the brain's own output) and the "disembodied" brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences, such as those of a person with an embodied brain, without these being related to objects or events in the real world.