Oliver Sacks: A Tale of Awakenings

[Music] I have a clip to introduce a video clip from a BBC documentary that's never been shown in the United States this is 1974 and it's about uh something that you said inspired you to examine or to continue examining um reawakenings in the brain so let's look at the clip and then you tell us you interpret what we're seeing on his arrival sax brought all the Sleepy sickness patients together into one Ward hello an how are you he started looking for friends and relatives who had lost touch and he himself formed with them such relationships as he could okay [Music] goodbye come on everybody move your fingers move your fingers out up back of your head in front SX noticed that although the patient seemed grossly physically disabled for brief and surprising moments they could ReDiscover their lost coordination in 1967 came the first reports of a spectacular breakthrough using a new drug L dooper Dr George kotas had a resounding success in curing the symptoms of Parkinson's disease kotas Cel DOA the miracle of our age for the first time in 40 years there was hope one knew that El DOA was useful in ordinary parkinsonism of Fairly mild degree and fairly short duration here one saw people who had the profoundest disease uh of the longest duration uh could they be equally helped sax decided to use ELO not so much in the expectation of miraculous success but as a last result the condition of many of the patients now in their 50s and 60s was deteriorating rapidly none more so than Lola who was unable to swallow solid food and was threatened with starvation she was first given El doer in May 1969 in the hope of keeping her alive it did much more than that Lola had been had been transfixed in a state of extreme really in a state of infinite parkinsonism in Catatonia for decades and her change her Awakening uh occur occurred in in seconds and she jumped out of the chair and she flew down the passage and she burst into conversation and um it was um it was an incredible scene and I would doubt my own memory uh were not supported by everyone else's memory and of course by uh um by our accounts and films and so forth which which we took at the [Music] time during the summer months the patients came back to life their childish gity and enthusiasm shattered the hospital [Music] routine um so tell us can you pick out one of the patients or two of the patients and just tell us the trajectory and what actually happened explain it to us um well with um uh the one whom the movie centered on lardell you see him briefly he is the first one who who returns of all um he had been a teenager when he started to freeze up uh originally no diagnosis was made um but it was evident by his mid-20s that it seemed that he had a um uh an illness which was Progressive and from which he would never recover and he was put away in this chronic disease hospital um he retained all his intelligence and um and was actually one of the first to hear about El DOA in 1967 it was in the newspapers and uh Leonard l or uh the man he read about dopamine the transmitter in the brain and he called it resurrect to mean and uh he like a lot of the patients started to wonder if the impossible could happen if they could be resurrected and uh um I keep wanting to give his real name which is Ed he's Leonard in the in the book in the film that I can only think of him as Ed um he um uh he he gloried in the effects to begin with and and and became um exuberant and and almost Manic and then ran into problems as as all the patients did but the summer of 69 was a a wonderful lyrical sort of time for him and for all the others who um although uh a perplexing time because they were encountering they had been out of the world sometimes for 30 or 40 years um and uh the U the one silver you see how we turn the ball while like that um she had had a very acute form of sleepy sickness in 1926 and um basically had been frozen for 43 years are they frozen in their minds or can they actually hear what's going on are they well um we wondered about that and um when she became able to talk I I asked her the date and things and she said I know it's 69 but I feel it's 1926 she said that so far as she was concerned nothing had happened in the intervening years

Channel: World Science Festival

Views: 93,565

Keywords: Oliver Sacks, A Tale of Awakenings, Neurologist, music as a treatment, neurological disorders, music could restore the mind, Awakenings, robin williams, New York, world, science, festival, NYC, New York City, short, 2012

Id: 4H9ul7pqezs

Length: 7min 15sec (435 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 11 2017