Page 12 - 201205 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - May 2012

The Brain at Work The Brain at Work Is the brain merely a kind of complex organic computer that operates a self-contained unit and ceases to function with the death of our bodies? Or could it be controlled by an intangible power source - perhaps the mind - that survives beyond physical death? A patient lies on an operating table, her scalp cut of the right side of her shaved head and a tiny segment of her skull removed ot expose the surface of her brain. Yet her eyes are open; she is lucia and wide awake, nervous no doubt, but in no pain. A surgeon leans over her and gently touches an electrode to different points on the brain surface. Each point that the surgeon stimulates electrically elicits a different reaction - one causes a tingling in the patient’s thumb another makes her tongue move automatically. Although conscious, she is like a puppet, and the surgeon is pulling the strings. human mind. simple act of recognizing a face. During his long career from the 1920’s As early as the 19th century, One of the most remarkable scientific onward, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, founder investigators observing brain-damaged patients investigations of the brain has been the study of of the Montreal Neurological Institute, carried noted with amazement how precise the loss of split-brain patients. In the 1960’s scientist out over a thousand operations like the one mental faculty could be. Damage to one part of Roger Sperry and his colleagues at the described above. Although there was always a the brain after a stroke, for example, might California Institute of Technology began medical objective, usually the treatment of make a person incapable of forming a sentence, experiments on patients who had had the epilepsy, Penfield was fascinated by the yet leave intact the comprehension of other millions of nerve fibers of the corpus callosum, potential of his technique for studying the people’s speech. Yet if a different area of the linking the left and right hemispheres of the secrets of the brain. By observing which brain were put out of action, a patient might cerebral cortex, surgically severed as a defense electrical stimulus produced what result, he was cease to understand speech, but still be able to against epilepsy. In ordinary life the patients able to plot out a “brain map,” showing the talk fluently - in fact, might be likely to babble showed few effects of this operation - they location of many faculties - for example, where on endlessly and meaninglessly. seemed to function as usual. But under special in the brain the instruction to life the right arm Modern research into brain damage has experimental conditions, it was possible to would come from, and which part of the brain, only served to emphasize the fact that precise control the information entering each half of the when electrically stimulated, created a sense of abilities are situated in specific parts of the brain. Since the two halves were not in smell. brain. In 1956, Dr. Donald Macrae and Dr. Elli communication, the result apparently was to Penfield’s electrodes were even able to Trolle from the University of California School split the person into two virtually separate provoke in his patients a precise and detailed of Medicine’s Department of Neurology, minds, each with its own strengths and memory of a completely trivial scene observed a young man who had been the victim weaknesses, and its own “personality.” The left- experienced many years earlier, with every sight of a road accident. After recovering from a hand side, at least in right-handed people, was and sound relived in the mind. “A young man,” concussion, his vision appeared to be normal, skillful at speaking and writing. The right-hand Penfield wrote, “stated he was sitting at a yet he suffered from a severe disability: he side was almost mute and could understand only baseball game and watching a little boy crawl could not recognize anyone, including his wife very simple language, but it was better at under the fence to join the audience.” Each time and children. Every time he saw them, he could recognizing and manipulating shapes. And it Penfield touched the same point on the brain’s only hope to identify them by a lengthy process was more instinctive than the analytical left surface with the electrode, exactly the same past of elimination and deduction. To help cope with brain. experience would unfold in all its detail. On his difficulty, his wife agreed always to wear another occasion, as the electrode stimulated something very striking item of clothing, such Mind and mystery her cortex, a woman on the operating table was as a large hat, which he could use as an It was almost impossible to communicate with suddenly aware of being in her kitchen and identification marker. Immediately after his the right side of the brain or to find out what it hearing the voice of her child playing outside accident, the patient could not even recognize was thinking because of its limitations with the house. Indeed she could hear the complete his own face in a mirror. According to Macrae, language. A decade later a team of Cal Tech soundtrack of the past experience, including the “he slowly began to recognize it, but not in a researchers managed to teach one patient’s right noise of passing cars, which worried her flash as in the past - he relied on the hair and brain to take control of the speaking process. because she thought the child might wander facial outline, and on two small moles on his left The resulting communication revealed quite onto the road and be involved in an accident. 4966< O K=6C:@? @7 D96 3B2:? 925 ?@D 92B>65 D96 different attitudes to those of the left brain in the ability to put them together in the normally same person. For example, when asked to say Mechanical feelings what profession it would ideally desire to If stimulation with an electric current can follow, the left side said it wanted to be a produce such effects, it is easy to see how some The ‘X’ Zone Radio Show draftsman. The right side, in contrast, expressed scientists have come to believe that everything 9 %A <)13)*3- an overriding ambition to become a race-car human beings think and feel can be explained in 7 Days a Week / 24 Hours A Day driver! electrical and chemical terms - that it is all the result of a chain orf measurable physical causes 365 Days of the Year Continued on Page 13 and effects taking place in the brain, obeying the at Send us your comments laws of physics and chemistry. But this, many www.xzbn.net/live.htm publisher@xchronicles-newspaper.com suggest, does not explain the mystery of the We Want To Hear From You!