A 22-year-old Australian man has been suffering from a mysterious illness that causes his body to feel hot when he experiences cold, and cold when he touches anything hot.

Aidan McManus’ troubles began at the age of 17, when he was in his final year of high school. At first, he lost feeling in his feet, telling his mother that they felt “tingly and numbish”. When his feet started swelling, he went to the hospital, where doctors gave him some medicine for fluid retention, but that didn’t help his condition at all. Things only got worse from there, as the simple act of walking felt like stepping on sharp tacks, and he was diagnosed with post-viral irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which complicated his condition even more. Despite his failing health, Aidan managed to graduate from high school, but then he began experiencing a bizarre sensation in his hands as well. When he touched something cold, his hands felt like they were burning, and when he touched something hot, it felt extremely cold.

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Scientists at Johns Hopkins University recently reported the strange case of a man’s whose rare degenerative brain disease left him unable to distinguish basic numbers from 2 to 9.

After studying an engineering geologist diagnosed with a rare degenerative brain disease called corticobasal syndrome for eight years, researchers published a study which they claim suggests that a brain response to a picture or a word does not necessarily mean that person is aware of it. The protagonist of their research had suffered neurological damage to such an extent that he could not distinguish or reproduce numbers between 2 and 9, nor pictures or words with such digits embedded in them. And yet, electroencephalography (EEG) results showed that his brain was able to properly identify all pictures and words, even id he wasn’t aware of it.

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