Last night I came down with a fever of 102 Fahrenheit and have been experiencing some strange things. While staying in bed shivering and sweating, in and out of sleep, I've been having what could be called fever dreams or hypnagogic hallucinations or maybe delirium. T.N. suggested it was sleep paralysis but there was no paralysis, I was flailing around and had subjective semi-conscious awareness of surroundings even while I thought I was moving, and blabbering incoherently about it the whole time. [So, really not that different from my waking life.]
In bed I had many thoughts along the lines of: how high does a fever need to be to cause delirium? What does 104 degrees do to the brain? 102? What is the definition of a fever dream (surely an old term) and how does it differ from hypnagogic hallucinations, lucid dreams, or dream fugue states? What's going on in the reticular formation or the reticular nucleus of the thalamus? What's in common with other parasomnias like sleep talking, sleep walking, sleep eating, etc.?
PubMed, I moaned, bring me my laptop so I can look this stuff up on PubMed... but it was all I could do to sit up and drink water. T.N. looked at me sometimes like I really was delirious. I extended my arm toward a glass of water that was out of my reach and T.N. said, oh, your powers of telekinesis aren't working, so I said, no, but if I blog about it, that should do it. (Now, every time we want something the act is "blog." "Will you get the DVD?" "No, I'm not blogging about it." "I'm too sick to blog about it, you blog about it." "All right, I'm blogging about it.")
I'm feeling a bit better now but not well enough yet to investigate. Instead I'll ask you - what do you know of these dream/semi-conscious states? What have you learned, and what have your own experiences been?
Comments
I've had a lot of fevers above 102 without ever getting delirious, but my mother had one in that range or around 103 about 10 years ago, and she said she was definitely hallucinating.
Posted by: Katherine | March 12, 2007 11:05 AM
On the very rare occasions I've suffered a temperature >102
Posted by: Gav | March 12, 2007 2:18 PM
Interesting. Any idea what the mechanism behind it is?
Posted by: Sandra | March 12, 2007 3:56 PM
I used to get "sleep paralysis" all the time, though I find that there are really two different phenomena that end up getting categorized incorrectly by most people, or at least by me:
1) Sleep paralysis, to me, is a state in which you have conscious awareness of your environment, can interact in some way with a TREMENDOUS amount of effort (like moving a finger when your hand is asleep), but can at least watch TV if it happened to be on when you fell asleep. Last time it happened to me, I was watching Star Trek. It wasn't a particularly good episode, and the thought of not being able to change the channel was more frightening than the actual paralysis.
2) The other kind of paralysis is weird. Usually I'm having a dream that I'm awake in bed, and can't move. This happens much more frequently, but I think is probably not the same thing as sleep paralysis. Usually I realize that I'm sleeping and try to wake up, but I can't (no matter how hard I try). Anyway, I used to actually think I was awake while this was happening, so I started to doubt whether any of my sleep paralysis episodes were real.
Posted by: Brian | March 12, 2007 4:14 PM
I have dreams about your mom brian...
Posted by: steve | March 12, 2007 6:07 PM
No wonder you have no trouble waking up ;)
Posted by: Brian | March 12, 2007 6:27 PM
I'm not blogging about it...
Posted by: The Neurocritic | March 12, 2007 6:41 PM
I've had the same experience with fevers at or slightly above 102. The hallucinations (best word for them) were vivid and always with strongly negative imagery.
I'd love to know what the mechanism is that causes this.
Peace,
Bill
Posted by: William Harryman | March 12, 2007 8:27 PM
OK, OK, I'll blog about it.
Why Does a Fever Cause Delirium?
...A fever can cause delirium because elevated body temperatures interfere with the metabolic processes of the body. In order for a fever to cause delirium, the body would have to reach a temperature of at least 105 degrees Fahrenheit or more in most cases. Fevers of 104 degrees Fahrenheit or lower are considered moderate to low-grade fevers and typically do not cause delirium.
That's kinda general. This is better:
Onoe S, Nishigaki T. (2004). EEG spectral analysis in children with febrile delirium. Brain Dev. 26:513-8.
Febrile delirium is defined as an acute and transient confusional state with high fever. There are very few reports on febrile delirium, although fever is one of the commonest symptoms in children. We previously found a posterior slowing in the EEG of delirious patients with fever. ... RESULTS: Febrile delirium was seen during the first three days of fever. The episodes lasted up to 10 min. Four patients showed febrile delirium again after admission but they became conscious a few minutes later. The relative power in the delta frequency band was increased in 65% of patients with preservation of the occipital alpha rhythm. In addition, repeated febrile delirium did not cause worsening of the posterior slowing. The duration of abnormal EEG was only a few days and the decrease of relative power in the delta frequency band was the best parameter of clinical improvement. ...
Posted by: The Neurocritic | March 12, 2007 10:04 PM
My assumption has always been that during hallucinations, the brain has trouble solving the binding problem (i.e. binding features to their corresponding objects), which would explain the bleeding together of features, or illusory conjunctions sometimes reported during hallucinations. It is assumed (by some) that the binding problem is solved via synchrony/asynchrony of firing in the brain, so it would be interesting to see if a disruption of firing synchrony (via TMS, perhaps?) might lead to a similar percept.
If this link posts well enough, it might be interesting to those of you who agree or disagree with this characterization of hallucinations.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:TLFpp7WbTAEJ:www.brain-dynamics.net/publications/pub_files/Lee_03_gamma-review-schizo.pdf+firing+synchrony+in+schizophrenia
Posted by: Brian | March 13, 2007 7:39 PM