Strange Love: Emotions Cause Temporary Paralysis in Oregon Man

Aug. 17, 2010— -- Love looks different on Matt Frerking. His eyes struggle to stay open. His neck gives in to gravity. His body slumps.

During an attack of love, Frerking can hear and feel everything going on around him. He is not in pain. But his eyes are closed. And he cannot move.

Frerking has narcolepsy with cataplexy, a rare cousin of the better-known disease that causes sudden sleep attacks.

With cataplexy, a disease estimated to affect at least 50,000 Americans, many of whom suffer for years before they're diagnosed, the slightest trigger can cause an attack of paralysis.

For Frerking, 39, a stepgrandfather from Portland, Ore., the trigger for cataplexy is love. Love for his wife, Trish, love for his stepchildren and their children. He can also have an attack after watching strangers show love.

Love, that basic human emotion, becomes his prison.

If Frerking wants to avoid an attack, he needs to avoid the things most people long for, including physical affection and giving and receiving love. Even thinking about his feelings for others or watching strangers express love can trigger an episode of paralysis.

"I have to limit those things very carefully,'' Frerking told "Nightline's" Cynthia McFadden, in the first episode of a new "Nightline" series, "Secrets of Your Mind: Why We Do What We Do," which begins Thursday.

"The brain is behaving as if it's asleep while Matt is awake," said Carol Ash, a sleep specialist at the Sleep for Life Center at Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey. Ash has not treated Frerking but has seen many cases like his.

Typically, when a healthy person is sleeping, a switch is turned on to inhibit motor neurons and muscles.

"[It] inhibits the muscles at night so that you can't get up and start running in your sleep, turns on during wakefulness and suddenly you're paralyzed,'' said Ash. "And so in someone like Matt, strong emotions are flipping a switch."

The faulty "switch" in question is located in the brain's hyphothalamus region. No one knows why or how, but somehow, increased blood flow to the brain centers where emotions are processed -- the amygdala and the cingulate gyrus -- triggers attacks.