Neurology and Films

        I will talk about Bollywood films only

I had witten about One Hollywood  movie in which Parkinsonian patient was shown with remarkable improvement on treatment of L-DOPA, an experience that I had lived through during my last years of Neurlogy residency (Awakenining- 05/07/2018)

 Bollywood movies of which I have seen so many and I wrote a blog about it was 2 months ago (See my July blog the last one)

   It so happens I did not write another blog  since that one and today I end up talking about the same subject. Well I have so many other filmland  medically possible as well as impossible type of events in the movies like the one I wrote about Amnesia and twins (05/13/2018 possible type) The movie I am talking about today is Gharana ( I just watched for second time) which is neurologically wrong

  Here a man gets a shock and is declared by the doctor to have complete paralysis of both sides as well as speech paralysis, Obvious mistake, you dont get quadriplegia (Cerebral) from like that unless you break your neck,  or Breainstem stroke (in which case speech is not paralysed) And on top of that later he was able to move his right hand a bit and exhibited right facial paralysis with no speech (no expression) though apparantly was able to understand  Speech is represented in two different areas for receptive - Temporal lobe and Expressive -frontal lobe) and see good. Neurologically all wrong or  impossible but Psychologically may be OK He remains in wheel chair and in the last scenes another shocking type of experience brings back his speech as well as his ability to use all his extremities:That is more like  - classical hysterical paralysis rather than true neuro deficit. "Strokes" only rarely occur on shocks but in movies understandably happen far more frequently to comply with the story background

 So psychological and neurological are considered mixed up as is often mistaken by well- educated and even poorly educated doctors also. It is painful for a neurologist like me to see and tolerate such things After all, everything is possible in the filmland, so OK.

In my 39 years of experience as a neurologist I emember one single patient with hypertention who developed a stroke as a result of a shocking experience- a trueblue stroke indeed, Generally however these strokes  from a shock are common in movies. But they make so many  obvious 'neurological mistakes'. Why dont they consult a Neurologist? like me so that picture is closer to reality

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