A Case of Exploding Head Syndrome

Abstract

Received March 27, 2012 Revised May 30, 2012 Accepted May 30, 2012 Address for correspondence Sang-Ahm Lee, MD, PhD Department of Neurology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, 88 Olympic-ro 43-gil, Songpa-gu, Seoul 138-736, Korea Tel: +82-2-3010-3445 Fax: +82-2-474-4691 E-mail: salee@amc.seoul.kr Exploding head syndrome (EHS) is a rare phenomenon of unknown etiology, characterized by a sense of an explosive noise in the head usually in the wake-sleep transition. The sufferers experience a loud bang in their head that seems to originate from inside the head. We describe a 55-year old male with symptoms of a loud bang, spark and electrical current running like noise at sleep onset for one year. On video-electroencephalography monitoring, the events occurred during sleep-wake transition. We diagnosed him to EHS based on typical clinical features. J Korean Sleep Res Soc 2012;9:19-21