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Hermit
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Brain Redundant?
« on: 2006-03-29 13:29:51 » |
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A beheaded body can take 32 steps
[Hermit] While some of you may recall my conclusion based on observation of Hypatia Lucifer before myelization had occured that the brainstem is a lot more competent than I had previously credited, and others will remember tales of surviving "headless" chickens (where the brainstem or a portion of it was left attached to the spine after an incompetent decapitation) this old article, while fascinating, is most likely, largely untrue. Still, it is certainly good for a grin or two in a "News of the World" kind of way.
Source: Pravda
Dated: 2002-09-02
The abilities of the human brain are astounding and shocking sometimes
Academician Natalia Bekhtereva said, 'One may not say that there is a part of the human brain that was studied better than another part of it. The whole brain has been studied, but not very well, really. We have to find out much information about the peculiarities of the human brain. We know a lot about the organization of body movement. We know several basic principles of emotional and thinking processes. The function of the administration of the entire internal sphere of the human body was also studied thoroughly.'
However, the abilities of the human brain are very wide-ranging. Sometimes, they are very surprising and even astounding. A brain is still a big riddle for scientists. It deems that everything that happens in the human body is subjected to cerebral activities. Is this really true?
In 1336, King Ludwig of Bavaria sentenced nobleman Ditz von Shaunburg and four of his associates to death. They were sentenced to death for rebelling against His Majesty and for disturbing the peace in the kingdom. The nobleman and his friends were to be beheaded. Before the execution, the king asked Ditz to express his final wish. The nobleman asked the king to forgive his friends if his beheaded body runs by them. Schaunburg specified that the convicted were supposed to get in a line with eight steps between each other. The king burst into laughter, but he promised to fulfill the nobleman's last wish. Ditz got down on his knees in front of a block. The executioner cut his head off, but the body jumped up and ran by the other convicted people to the immense horror of the king and everyone who witnessed it. The beheaded body made 32 steps, having passed the last person in the line, tumbled down to the ground, and remained quiet. The king kept his promise.
An infant was born in an American hospital in 1935. The baby did not differ from others: he did the things that all babies do, such as sleep, eat, and dirtying his diapers. Unexpectedly, the baby died. When the body was dissected, it was discovered that the baby did not have a brain!
A German doctor, Professor Hufland, was once present at a dissection of the cranium of a patient, who allegedly died of a brain hemorrhage. The patient was of sound mind until his death. However, the results of the dissection were astounding. The man had about 30 milliliters of water instead of his brain.
Bacteriologist Louis Paster suffered from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 46. His right cerebral hemisphere stopped functioning. However, the scientists lived for 27 more years and made many scientific discoveries. Another interesting story was published in the magazine Miracles and Adventures, as told by soldier Boris Luchkin. He was in an intelligence group during World War II. They had to cross the front line and go behind German lines. The commander of the group, a lieutenant, stepped on a mine. One of its fragments chopped his head off. Yet, the beheaded lieutenant remained standing, he unbuttoned his coat, took the map of their itinerary out, held it out to Luchnik, and then fell down on the grass.
There are many other such interesting stories. After astronomers make maps of billions of galaxies, people will still be studying the brain that counted them all.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:Brain Redundant?
« Reply #1 on: 2006-04-28 22:54:49 » |
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Like anyone with an interest in the field, I know the responsibilities of the brain stem (and spinal reflex) - in an adult!
However, in an infant below the age of 9 months or so, there is no or at best little myelization of the cortex. So there is no cortical function (readily demonstrated with an EEG with the subject sleeping or sufficiently focused to remain passive enough to get solid readings which reflect temporal and stem activity (data subsequently lost in a drive crash :-( ) to "manage" the sometimes complex behaviors reflected by perinatal infants- and judged by careful observation (by me) some of the behaviors displayed (and invokable) can appear to be very complex, quasi analytical, indubitably reactive and often highly specific indeed - both through observation and through EEG (unconstrained activity makes it very difficult to get good results from an EEG). All indications of "higher" thought processes (and of course yielding completely different EEG results to infants).
This left me formulating the hypothesis (a fairly strongly supported one) that the temporal lobes and brain stem which are undoubtedly present and very busy from birth on, must be responsible for a great deal of early behavior management. As myelization proceeds, and the rest of the brain "lights-up", I suspect that the functions are transfered via what seems to be largely a trapdoor process (i.e. there seems to be no way to transfer functions back as is shown by the permanent vegetative state caused by late perinatal cortical damage) to the adult zones of the brain.
I am not sure whether this has been the subject of much study. I suspect that parents tend to be nervous of permitting their children to be "skinnerised", limiting the availability of suitable subjects and constraining the range of interventionary stimulatory protocols (I used scents, sounds, lights and water squirts and "normalized" against chronologically separated sessions). Questions about the state of responsiveness in subjects where the brain did not have the opportunity to transition through myelization, but where the subject did not terminate until after the perinatal phase might be suggestive that I'm onto something solid. I suspect that careful comparative investigation using CAT and fMRI or less dominating protocols (infrared tomography or diffuse optical imaging perhaps?) to track brain function from neonates through myelization might well yield fascinating and illuminating results.
Hermit
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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