10 stunning examples of what a human brain

After an injury or surgery of the brain can be expected that ugodno

The human brain is able to do amazing things. A simple example: we can perceive the light that is reflected from various objects around us. Light enters the eye, optic nerves, and we convert it into electrochemical impulses. Pulses - a "language" of the brain, which it uses to communicate. Electricity passes through the neural network and reaches the hippocampus, a brain region responsible for the analysis of these pulses. It distributes the received pulses of the hippocampus in different areas of the brain. And the impulse toward the optic portion of the cerebral cortex suddenly turns into a road sign, seeing that we know where to send the car.

And even the most conventional brain surgery can be spectacular cases. As a result of surgery, injury or illness of the human brain may start doing amazing, and in some cases, and terrible things.

1. Pam Reynolds and her experience of "life after death"

Apparently, Pam Reynolds, blues singer from Atlanta, Georgia, was a normal person before she underwent surgery to remove an aneurysm in the brain. During operation doctors pumped all the blood of her brain, thus it has been inactive for 45 minutes. In it we broke all the processes from the receipt of the feeling of hunger signals from the stomach and ending with the transfer of visual and audio information.

Despite this, after waking the singer was able to describe in detail everything that the doctors did to her. Her example is the most striking example of post-mortem experience. However, Reynolds experience is far from unique. In one hospital in the Netherlands conducted a study of cardiac patients. And the survey found that of 344 patients who have experienced clinical death, 18% reported their experiences with the experience of "life after death».

And most of all in the history of the singer's impressive is the fact that the "temporary shutdown" of her brain engaged experienced physicians. Nevertheless, she was able to reproduce all the details of the operation, from the description of the instruments used by doctors and ending themes of their conversations during the operation.

2. Molayson Henry and his inability to form new vospominaniya

Henry Molayson - The patient is the only one of its kind. Because only he had to go through surgery to remove the medial temporal lobe of the brain. This was done in order to save him from exhausting attacks. When the doctor who performed the procedure found out what happened to the memory of Henry, he categorically refused to do such operations to someone else, and began to oppose the holding of such procedures by other doctors.

Removal of the medial temporal lobe, above the ear, leading to what Molayson began to suffer from a very rare disorder known as anterograde amnesia. In this disorder, the patient's brain can not form new memories, but the patient remembers everything that happened to him in the past. That is Henry remembered everything that had happened to him before the operation, everything that happened to him 27 years of his life. He remained procedural ability to form memories, to put it simply - habits. But his mind was not able to fix the new declarative memories, and he could not remember his friend, with whom he had just had lunch, he could not remember the name of the current president, and so on.

In this state, Henry lived for 55 years, and he died in 2008, when he turned 82 years. Because of its uniqueness, Henry was the subject of a number of studies in neurological circles he is now known as the patient «HM».

3. Robin Jenks Vanderlip and her Russian aktsent

Robin Jenks Vanderlip never been to Russia. Robin - resident of McLean, Virginia, and all her life she spent in the US east coast. But after a couple of days after she fell down the stairs and hit her head, she woke up and found that he could not talk. Over time it has recovered Robin, and then she noticed that speaks native English with a Russian accent.

Robin - one of the 60 patients in the world, which the doctors diagnosed "foreign accent syndrome". This is a very rare disease that is always associated with brain damage or as a result of physical injury or a stroke.

This may sound like a foreign accent, but patients do not "train" it specifically, just their speech center changes the way in which patients form words. And the most amazing thing in this syndrome is that the words are formed in a predictable manner, and it all begins to resemble some existing accent, even if a person has never before faced him.

4. Howard Engel can write but can not chitat

When, in 2001, the Canadian writer Howard Engel suffered a stroke, he thought, "Well, with finished on writing." It really was so, because after a while he realized that one of the consequences of suffering a stroke was the inability to recognize printed text. Instead, Howard thought he sees a text written in an unknown foreign language to him. He could not read a single word. He could not even pronounce the names of the letters.

A surprising thing is that soon Engel continued to write, and to do it despite the fact that did not understand the meaning of words. The ability to write from the visual memory passed into the motor memory. Engel defines words in a special way, he repeatedly drawing the letters, using their writing exclusively motor memory. And he found that being able to read while writing text. Since the ability to write is not lost, the writer began to actively fight for a normal life. As a result, he was able to achieve significant results in the fight with his illness, but completely recover the ability to read it and could not.

5. The Girl from Germany sees only one perfect hemisphere mozga

Excellent vision of 10-year-old girl from Germany has put doctors in a deadlock, because she was born with only one, the left brain. And for a good view of both hemispheres are necessary, since visual information from the optic nerve, is fed into the opposite hemisphere of the brain for processing and storage. Therefore, with one hemisphere must see only one eye in the case of a girl - just right.

Nevertheless, the girl sees the great, and she has normal binocular vision. In 2010, the doctors performed brain scans of her, trying to figure out the cause of this phenomenon. It turned out that the optic nerve of the left eye girl "migrated" to the left hemisphere, that is, the girl left brain can perceive the information from both eyes. In the visual cortex of the left hemisphere it formed a special area designed only for processing visual information from the left eye. This helps to avoid confusion.

6. Almost molten children mozg

A girl from Australia, now known in medical literature as «Baby Z», born in the year 2008, began to suffer from seizures. Their cause was a rare genetic defect known as "molybdenum cofactor deficiency." Because of him, the brain can not produce enzymes that create a cofactor, a special non-protein component necessary for the body to other substances in the body to perform their functions. As a result, the brain child has accumulated a huge amount of sulfite. Sulfite - toxic and it just melts the brain, resulting in death of the patient.

In the process of "melting" the child suffered severe pain and seizures, and brain tissue damage occurred, followed by a loss of function, and swallowing movements.

«Baby Z» - the first time that the above mentioned disorder successfully treated. The experimental method of treatment, established in Germany, has been delivered to Australia, and after the permission to use it, the doctors began to treat the infant. Three days later, seizures and twitching stopped. A few weeks later the girl is fully recovered, to date, it is alive and well, and her brain processes sulfites as well as any other.

7. A woman from Pittsburgh, where all my friends seemed neznakomtsami

In 1996, the 22-year-old American has received a head injury in a car accident. Two years have passed, and it began to torment the attacks. In 2004, the year it was taken to the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Pittsburgh, as a woman all the time saying that it is surrounded by strangers, although these "strangers" were her friends and members of her family. Female doctor told me that one of the neighbors in the ward - it's her boyfriend, a nurse who worked with her - it was her sister, and that one of the hospital doctors - it's her mother.

Doctors diagnosed a rare disease of women called fregoli delusion. It named it in honor of one actor from Italy, which is famous for its very rapid change costumes during performances, and very rapid change of roles. Patients suffering from this syndrome, often claim that people around them - this is one and the same person or several persons is potentially dangerous for the patient.

After a month of treatment the woman's condition was stable, while she did not remember anything of what she had experienced.

8. Orlando Serrel and his incredible pamyat

Orlando Serrel - an incredibly gifted man. But his gift he received is not a natural way, and after hitting a baseball bat. At the age of 10 years old boy during the game I received a blow, after which his head was sick for several days. And after a while Orlando found that being able to remember anything that happens in a day, starting from August 17, 1979, the (on this day he was hit on the head).

In most cases, it can even remember the weather, standing in a given day, and the like minor details of his life. He himself said that his amazing ability - is the result of the fact that before his "mind's eye", he sees the calendar, with no special exercises to train memory it does not perform.

9. Michael Cork and its inability zasnutDo 1990 world record of wakefulness - 11, 5 days (276 hours), belonged to a man from Finland named Toimi Soini. After that, the Guinness book of records no longer appear as the organization refused to pay her records, which tell about the behavior, it is extremely dangerous to health.



Because we all need to sleep, and those who do not sleep at all, will live very long. It is because of lack of sleep died a music teacher from Chicago named Michael Cork. His brain just was "blocked", and did not let the man sleep. Cork was suffering from a rare disease called "fatal familial insomnia," in which a particular gene stops encode certain proteins, resulting in the thalamus begin to accumulate toxins. This part of the brain responsible for sleep, and as he begins to work properly, the body and mind are constantly awake.

After a few months, there have been signs of dementia Cork. In an attempt to somehow regulate the work of his brain, doctors tried using drugs to enter it into a state of artificial coma, but even in this state, the brain still remained active. Died Cork in 1992, six months after my first sleepless night.

10. Sam Eskyubel and his foot in mozgu

After another ultrasound Eksyubelya Sam's mother was shocked by the news that her son's brain tumor develops. Three days after giving birth to Sam underwent surgery on the brain, in which the tumor was removed.

When surgeons finally got to the tumor, they were surprised to realize that in the brain of a child growing small human foot. Doctors put forward two possible diagnoses: either it is a teratoma, or the so-called "fruit in the fruit." Teratoma - a rare kind of tumor, which can grow inside the hair, teeth, nails and skin. "The fruit in the fruit" - another very rare disorder, when one of the twins in the womb absorbs the other.

After careful research, the surgeons found that in front of them is really a case of "fetus in fetus," because in addition to the feet, they found more arm, thigh and intestines. All of these tumors, surgeons successfully removed, and now the child is alive and well.

via factroom.ru