NEW YORK: People who suffer from what was once called “hysteria” show altered patterns of brain activity connected to their symptoms, researchers have reported.

Though hysteria is now known by the kinder name “conversion disorder,” its unusual features haven’t changed. Sufferers have neurological symptoms, ranging from numbness in a limb to paralysis, memory loss and seizures, that cannot be traced to any known medical problem.

Conversion disorder is so named because it’s thought that people “convert” a psychological distress into a physical symptom-- though it’s not under their conscious control. Freud himself coined the term.

Now the new study, published in the journal Neurology, offers brain evidence that “validates” the general Freudian view of the disorder, said study co-author Dr. Anthony Feinstein of the University of Toronto in Canada.

Using brain imaging called functional MRI, he and his colleagues found that three women with conversion disorder showed an unusual pattern of brain activity related to their symptoms.—Reuters