BRAIN SHRINKS, YET THINKS
http://www.energetic-medicine.net/bioenergetic-articles/articles/64/1/BRAIN-SHRINKS-YET-THINKS/Page1.html
Paul Pietsch
Paul PietschDISCIPLINE: Anatomy, Research Fields: Developmental biology (regeneration); Neurosciences (biology of memory, neural plasticity, eye transplantation)
Current Professional Interests:
* Website Producer (Shufflebrain)
* Neurosciences: the brain's role in creating and storing information; nature of neural information; analogy of the brain to the hologram.
* Developmental Biology: logic of regeneration [can the same abstract rules account for both organ regeneration and the storage of neural information?]
* Literary: Science education and enlightenment for the general public -- using the World Wide Web to bridge C. P. Snow's Two cultures gap; use of fiction for exploring and explaining scientific concepts and ideas (see http://www.indiana.edu/~pietsch/zook-title.html )
Full CV see here: http://www.indiana.edu/~pietsch/cv.html
By Paul Pietsch
Published on 05/16/2008
BRAIN SHRINKS, YET THINKS
BRAIN SHRINKS, YET THINKS
BRAIN SHRINKS, YET THINKS
By Paul Pietsch
This article originally appeared in Science Digest, October 1983 (vol. 91 No. 10)
Anatomy textbooks contain detailed maps of "normal" human brain function. Sight,
we are told, resides in one region, hearing in another. But one fascinating patient
who was referred to the eminent British neurologist John Lorber demonstrates that
there are exceptions to every rule.
Lorber, who specializes in birth defects caused by fluid build-up within the interior
of the brain, tells of a 26 year- old man referred to him for a brain scan.
Ordinarily, the walls of the cerebrum are 4-5 millimetres thick. This man's
cerebrum had been squashed by fluid pressure a condition known as hydrocephalus
to a thickness of less than one millimetre.
That Lorber's patient was alive at all seems incredible. But he was socially normal,
had an IQ of 126 and had earned a first class honors degree in mathematics. His
relative lack of gray matter had not apparently affected his intelligence. How
could this possibly be? If the way the brain functions is similar to the way a
hologram functions, that one-millimetre sliver might suffice. Certain holograms
can be smashed to bits, and each remaining piece can reproduce the whole
message. A tiny fragment of this page, in contrast, tells little about the whole
story.
Observations such as Lorber's suggest that input- output functions of different
parts of the brain can be shifted and that there's a great deal of functional
plasticity in it. Indeed, in recent years, plasticity has become a major topic among
neuroscientists. That valid maps exist at all and they do suggest that there is a
strong tendency as we mature for certain regions to assume particular chores. But
that a brain one millimetre thick functions as well as its 4 to 5 millimetre
counterpart illustrates that these tendencies are not etched in stone.
* Roger Lewin, "Is Your Brain Really Necessary? Science vol. 210, December 1980, p.
1232
Source
www.indiana.edu/~pietsch/Lorber.html
By Paul Pietsch
This article originally appeared in Science Digest, October 1983 (vol. 91 No. 10)
Anatomy textbooks contain detailed maps of "normal" human brain function. Sight,
we are told, resides in one region, hearing in another. But one fascinating patient
who was referred to the eminent British neurologist John Lorber demonstrates that
there are exceptions to every rule.
Lorber, who specializes in birth defects caused by fluid build-up within the interior
of the brain, tells of a 26 year- old man referred to him for a brain scan.
Ordinarily, the walls of the cerebrum are 4-5 millimetres thick. This man's
cerebrum had been squashed by fluid pressure a condition known as hydrocephalus
to a thickness of less than one millimetre.
That Lorber's patient was alive at all seems incredible. But he was socially normal,
had an IQ of 126 and had earned a first class honors degree in mathematics. His
relative lack of gray matter had not apparently affected his intelligence. How
could this possibly be? If the way the brain functions is similar to the way a
hologram functions, that one-millimetre sliver might suffice. Certain holograms
can be smashed to bits, and each remaining piece can reproduce the whole
message. A tiny fragment of this page, in contrast, tells little about the whole
story.
Observations such as Lorber's suggest that input- output functions of different
parts of the brain can be shifted and that there's a great deal of functional
plasticity in it. Indeed, in recent years, plasticity has become a major topic among
neuroscientists. That valid maps exist at all and they do suggest that there is a
strong tendency as we mature for certain regions to assume particular chores. But
that a brain one millimetre thick functions as well as its 4 to 5 millimetre
counterpart illustrates that these tendencies are not etched in stone.
* Roger Lewin, "Is Your Brain Really Necessary? Science vol. 210, December 1980, p.
1232
Source
www.indiana.edu/~pietsch/Lorber.html