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The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine
In the late 19th century, a rare and highly unusual neuropsychiatric condition was observed among a group of French-Canadian lumberjacks living in the Moosehead Lake region of northern Maine. Those affected exhibited an extreme and exaggerated startle reflex.
When startled by a sudden movement or loud noise, they reacted with dramatic involuntary responses, such as leaping into the air, screaming, repeating words, or instantly obeying shouted commands. In 1965, Reuben Rabinovitch, an assistant professor of neurology at McGill University, wrote a letter to the editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, where he described a children’s game he had witnessed in the Laurentian Mountains, north of Montreal. While it acknowledges the theory of operant conditioning, NORD notes that some researchers believe that jumping Frenchmen of Maine may be a somatic neurological disorder, caused by a gene mutation that occurs after fertilization and is not inherited from the parents or passed on to children.
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