Psychosomatic Illnesses and Seeing Behind a Black Hole
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2021
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan demystifies psychosomatic illnesses. Then, learn how scientists saw behind a black hole.
Additional resources from neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan
- Pick up "The Sleeping Beauties And Other Stories of Mystery Illness" here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/606597/the-sleeping-beauties-by-suzanne-osullivan/
- NHS page: https://www.uclh.nhs.uk/our-services/find-consultant/dr-suzanne-osullivan
- Follow @Suz_OSullivan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Suz_OSullivan
Scientists saw behind a black hole for the first time by Briana Brownell
- Wilkins, D. R., Gallo, L. C., Costantini, E., Brandt, W. N., & Blandford, R. D. (2021). Light bending and X-ray echoes from behind a supermassive black hole. Nature, 595(7869), 657–660. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03667-0
- XMM-Newton sees light echo from behind a black hole. (2021). Esa.int. https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2021/07/XMM-Newton_sees_light_echo_from_behind_a_black_hole
- Sophie, S. (2021, August 3). Astronomers spot light from behind a black hole for the first time — proving Einstein right, again. Cbsnews.com. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supermassive-black-hole-light-behind-einstein/
- Patel, N. V. (2021, July 28). Astronomers have spotted x-rays from behind a supermassive black hole. MIT Technology Review; MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/28/1030233/x-rays-behind-supermassive-black-hole/
- Shah, S. (2021). Scientists spot light behind a black hole for the first time | Engadget. Engadget; Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/black-hole-light-behind-092317917.html
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity daily from |
| 0:05.1 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about |
| 0:09.4 | psychosomatic illnesses with help from neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan. |
| 0:14.0 | And you learn how scientists saw behind a black hole for the first time. |
| 0:18.0 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. |
| 0:20.0 | When I say an illness is psychosomatic, what does that mean to you? |
| 0:26.0 | That it's all in your head, or maybe that it's not even real? |
| 0:30.0 | Well, today's guest is here to clear up all of those misconceptions. |
| 0:34.0 | Suzanne O'Sullivan is a neurologist and science writer who has just published her |
| 0:38.9 | latest book The Sleeping Beauty's and Other Stories of Mystery mystery illness. It's all about |
| 0:44.4 | psychosomatic disorders that grip individuals or even whole communities and |
| 0:49.3 | what's being done to treat them. Have a listen. What a psychosomatic illness is real physical |
| 0:55.5 | symptoms and I really emphasize the word real here because they're every bit as sort of problematic |
| 1:00.8 | and troubling to the person who's affecting them as any other illness, real physical |
| 1:05.4 | symptoms that are not caused by a disease and usually have a psychological cause. |
| 1:11.2 | But a psychological cause does not have to mean stress or anxiety. Anything can cause a change in how we interpret our bodies, difficulty recovering from an injury, how the attention we pay to our bodies can make us notice symptoms we wouldn't usually notice and once we notice them and they disable us, they become a psychosomatic disorder. |
| 1:32.0 | So in your research right now what game-changing science |
| 1:36.6 | has been conducted in the last, I say 20-30 years to help us understand these |
| 1:40.0 | better? Yeah I think what's really helped is now for the first time we can look at |
| 1:44.8 | healthy brains. So I trained as a doctor sort of in the late 1980s into the 1990s and |
| 1:50.9 | we have to remember that at that time there was no safe way to look inside the body at the healthy brain. |
| 1:57.0 | We had a CAT scan which comes with loads of radiation so you're not able to sort of just do CAT scounds on anybody because you've got potentially harming them and you certainly can't do it on a child with a developing brain. |
... |
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