Life Without Brain
A heroine in Tarantino's Curdled was so eager to know whether a human head will be able to speak after it is cut that she couldn't rest until she ascertained it herself. As they say, this is a creative fantasy. But how it actually happens in fact? Is it a true axiom that says a human body cannot live without brain and dies almost instantly when the brain stops functioning? It is known that body of a decapitated chicken can move for some time. This fact cannot be explained with reflex actions, as clonus commands originate from the brain. Probably, the head of a chicken is not so perfect as a human head. Can similar things happen with humans?
Any doctor knows that when the head is separated from the human body, the heart inside of this body still continues functioning for some time. It means that agonies of the body are still possible after decapitation, but it's generally believed that a headless body cannot perform movements. Once the St.Petersburg press reported about a man who gathered mushrooms in the forest and found an explosive device. The man took the devilish device; and an explosion that sounded next tore his head off. Witnesses saw that the decapitated mushroomer managed somehow to walk 200 meters more, at that his 3-meter way was along a narrow plank across a brook.
WWII soldiers told they saw bodies of their comrades continued attacks on the enemy while their heads were hanging by a thread or were torn off by shells. History tells lots of phenomena of this kind. Witnesses told they saw an executioner holding the head of a just guillotined woman, the eyes and the mouth of the victim were open wide at that. It is strange but the victim's brain was still functioning for some time, and the mouth opened as if the woman cried.
The old manuscript of the Troitse-Sergiev monastery describes a tragedy that occurred in the Pskov-Pechora monastery in 1570. Father Superior Kornily was the prior of the monastery at that time; the man was famous not only for his healing talent and good deeds, but for his courage as well. He ordered to build a high wall around the monastery for protection from enemies, but he got no consent of the tsar for this construction. Ivan the Terrible was informed of the unauthorized construction, and the tsar went to the monastery to administer his cruel justice. Father Superior Kornily met the tsar near the gates with a cross in his hands, but enraged Ivan the Terrible was implacable. He ordered to decapitate Kornily.
The execution was committed before the eyes of the whole monastery. Kornily's head rolled down, and then mysterious things occurred: a decapitated body took the head and made its way toward the temple. Only before the altar Kornily fell dead. Ivan the Terrible was struck with the mysterious accident, repented sincerely and made generous presents to the monastery to pray for forgiveness of the sin. The path that Kornily followed was called "a bloody path" and even now it is decorated with flowers. Martyr Kornily himself was canonized.
In 1386, Ludwig I, King of Bavaria sentenced trouble-maker Ditz von Schaunburg to death for rebelling against His Majesty. The nobleman and his four landsknecht were to mount the scaffold.
Before his death, the rebel made an unusual request: he asked the King to mercy those people past whom he would be able to run after his head was cut off. The King laughed but promised to fulfill the wish of the man sentenced to death. The sentenced were aligned at a distance of eight meters from each other. A sharp sword whizzed in the air, and the head of Ditz von Schaunburg fell down on the scaffold making a loud sound. Then incredible things occurred: the body of the decapitated men sprang up and rushed along his associates standing in a line. The body of the nobleman collapsed only when it made 32 steps. The King was shocked, but he kept his word and fulfilled the promise. The incredible accident was explained with the God's will who protected the convicted soldiers.
There are documents describing instances when a human body could wonderfully do without brain. A baby was born in the New York hospital of Saint Vincent in 1935; he did all things that babies usually do: slept, ate and even cried. When the baby died, doctors were surprised with the results of autopsy: there was no brain inside the cranium. The incredible instance was registered as a scientific mystery.
Scientists were racking their brains more and more over new facts that contradicted the traditional medical canons. Information about new incredible instances was reported from reliable sources and couldn't be falsification.
Famous German neurosurgeon Professor Haufland described a case of a patient stricken by paralysis; the man was of sound mind until his death. At that time doctors had no equipment to look inside the patient's head to discover the fact, but even if they had such an opportunity, they would have seen nothing inside the cranium. When the cranium was dissected after his death, Professor Haufland discovered spinal liquid instead of brain there.
In 1940, a 14-year-old boy was delivered to a Bolivian hospital of Nikolay Ortiz, his diagnose was brain-growth. The patient complained of severe headache that became especially painful in the evening. Soon the boy died, and doctors even had no time to perform an operation on him. What doctors discovered after the dissection wasn't certainly human brain. A giant abscess filled almost the whole of the cranium, which made doctors hesitate whether the medical science was precise at all.
Unlike religion, science failed to explain such phenomena. Otherwise, the basic medical postulates would have to be obligatorily revised. Indeed, complex movements such as walking or running are performed with the help of feedback with the brain. The theory of "abdominal brain" seems to be the only believable hypothesis. American scientists found accumulation of nerval tissue on the inner surface of the gullet and the stomach. Scientists counted that the number of neurons in the "third brain center" made up over 100 million, which is more than even in the spinal cord. They say, it is not a mere nervous joint, but a formation capable of keeping information and even influencing our emotions and health. American scientists say, "the abdominal brain" commands secretion of hormones in stress situations, it urges the body for struggle or escape. However, the phenomenon isn't thoroughly studied; it is not ruled out that it may unveil the mystery of decapitated bodies that can run after execution.
Oleg Doronin
UFOZONE
Translated by Maria Gousseva
21:39 2003-03-26
Think about the brain
By Jen Waters
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 15, 2003
Twentieth-century physicist Albert Einstein may have been a genius among geniuses, but the size of his brain probably was not what accounted for his heightened intelligence. In fact, scientists don't know why some individuals' brains work more efficiently than others.
"If we knew, we'd all be geniuses," says Rhonda Friedman, a professor in the neurology department at Georgetown University Medical Center in Northwest. She holds a doctorate in psychology.
"We don't really know why some people are better at thinking than others," she says.
Although there are many unanswered questions in the field of neuroscience, most researchers agree that the size of the brain does not influence whether people use the organ to its full potential. Instead, it's more important how effectively the parts of the brain work together.
In general, the cerebrum, which is the portion of the brain that performs mental activities and motor and sensory functions, is divided into four lobes: the frontal, temporal, parietal and occipital.
According to a study published in Nature Neuroscience last month, a rather large expanse of the regions of the brain is active during intelligent activity. This information gives credibility to the notion that people who have excellent communication among a variety of areas of the brain use their brains in the best manner.
Therefore, the idea that people use just 10 percent of the brain at any given time is certainly a myth, as seen in the fact that the destruction of the smallest area of the brain can have a debilitating effect on behavior. For this reason, neurosurgeons painstakingly map the areas of the brain before removing tissue during operations for problems such as epilepsy or brain tumors. They don't want to risk damaging any area of the brain.
Researchers assume a highly unified brain comes from the strength and number of synapses, or connections, among the brain's neurons, the main cells of the nervous system. The neurons carry signals and communicate with one another through both electrical and chemical processes. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons that come in many shapes and sizes. They range in size from about 4 microns wide to 100 microns wide. One micron is equal to one-thousandth of a millimeter.
On the other end of the spectrum, individuals with mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, may have an adequate amount of brain cells, but the connections don't function properly. Information cannot flow from one neuron to the next, which can give rise to delusions and hallucinations.
Despite various questions about the brain, it is clear that the basis of the nervous system develops through a genetic plan, says Larry Squire, a professor of psychiatry in neurosciences at the University of California at San Diego. This is why children of intelligent parents usually are bright.
Mr. Squire, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience, is a research career scientist at the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in San Diego.
"You and I, no matter how much training, might never be a professional golfer because of genetic constraints," he says.
Yet, depending on the person, practice and hard work can develop certain skills, Mr. Squire says. As an individual becomes an expert in a specific field, more synapses are formed in the areas of the brain that specialize in those abilities. For instance, a professional basketball player probably will have more efficient connections among the areas of the brain that involve sensory perception and coordination.
In time, the training of certain abilities also might contribute to a tiny growth of specific sections of the brain that are used more frequently. For example, a 1995 Science magazine article reported that the cortical area of the brain corresponding to the left hand is larger in string musicians than in non-musicians. String musicians usually use the left hand for intricate finger movements while playing.
The sections of the brain used for certain tasks can be revealed through functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows the amount of activity in the brain and the location of the action. When a person is asked to perform tasks or answer questions, the test detects changes in blood flow to particular areas of the brain. The machine takes pictures of the brain's increased blood flow, which records the portions of the brain being used.
If people were better educated or taught how to think effectively, everyone would be able to use the entire mind to its fullest potential, says Dr. Samuel Barondes, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at the University of California at San Francisco.
"Humans are lazy creatures," he says. "We try to get by with the least amount of work we can. If we get away with it, we develop those habits."
When good thinking practices are implemented, the brain becomes more efficient, Dr. Barondes says. For example, if people engaged their brains, they could learn to pay close attention to surroundings, filter the information and focus on the important issues at hand, such as when driving a car. The brain's potential is limited only to the amount of time spent developing those skills.
"It's an amazing machine," he says. "It gives things different degrees of value. It learns what's most important. Then, it tries to analyze what's happening. It uses past information to respond to what's going on. The details are unbelievably complicated. It's wonderful."
Every experience in life contributes to the strength of the connections among the neurons in the brain, says Alarik Arenander, director of the Brain Research Institute in Fairfield, Iowa (www. brainresearch institute.org).
While cells and connections can be lost through prolonged stressful experiences, such as trauma, Mr. Arenander says, "Whatever your experiences, the brain adapts to those to make you as successful as possible in that environment."
However, the specifics of the brain functions of extremely intelligent individuals are still unknown, says Mr. Arenander, who holds a doctorate in neuroscience. He says he wishes the scientific community would invest more money in researching how the brains of these individuals work.
"If we did, we'd find ways to [increase] the percentage of the population who use their brain to the full potential," he says.
Mr. Arenander stresses that researchers should realize that there could be a difference between a genius who may be skilled in a few areas as opposed to a thriving individual who uses the total possibilities of the brain.
"Everyone has a huge potential," he says. "In general, we are not accessing it. Very few people understand about the wholeness of brain function."
Paralyzed People Use Mind Control
30-May-2003
German neuroscientist Niels Birbaumer is teaching 11 paralyzed patients who can't even blink their eyes how to use their brain waves to control a computer. They've learned to change the electrical signals coming from their brains by visualizing an arrow about to be shot from a bow or a runner crouched at the starting line. The electrical brain waves generated by these types of thoughts can used to control a cursor that selects letters to spell words, meaning these formerly mute people can now communicate.
Many of his patients have degenerative diseases such as Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS, the disease the English physicist Stephen Hawking has). As the disease progresses, they lose the ability to move, talk, swallow or breathe. But their minds stay as sharp as ever. Michael Pellatt, an Australian ALS patient, says, "If you can't communicate, it would be like living in a clear casket. It would make a huge difference."
Their messages about being "locked in" aren't as awful as Birbaumer imagined, before he taught them to communicate. "They describe sleep-like fantasies and thinking going on most of the time, not the desperation you would expect of someone in such a state," he says. "There seems to be some changes in time perception. Time doesn't seem to move as fast for them."
Writing this way takes timeit can take 10 minutes to complete a short sentence. Birbaumer gets the best results with paralyzed patients who start learning how to use his Thought Translation Device before they lose their other means of communication, so they can move a finger or their blink eyes to indicate "yes" or "no."
What he teaches is not like mediatingin fact, people who've studied meditation have more trouble learning his techniques. Healthy volunteers can learn to control their brain waves in three to four sessions, while it takes paralyzed patients take 30 to 40 sessions. However, some people, both healthy and paralyzed, simply can't seem to learn how to do it. Birbaumer also teaches epileptics to avoid seizures by controlling their brain waves.
There are many different kinds of brain waves. Birbaumer teaches patients to control the ones called slow cortical potentials. Physicist Nigel Livingston uses alpha waves, which are generated by thinking about relaxing, pleasant things, such as clouds floating in the sky, walking on the sand in bare feet or eating ice cream.
Livingston started studying mind control because he has a disabled daughter. He worries about the moral position he'd be in if someone trapped in their body communicated that they wanted to die. But Birbaumer has found that paralyzed patients aren't usually severely depressed and do find their lives worth living.
The next step would be to implant mind-control implants directly into a patient's brain. Experiments with monkeys have shown that implanted electrodes can control brain waves much more efficiently, but so far, there have been no human volunteers. Birbaumer says, "They find this idea too risky."
and:
Mind control: The Zombie Effect
11/10/2004 20:09
Methods of latent impact on the human psyche are no longer secret.
Academician Igor Smirnov of the Russian Academy of Sciences is often referred to as a father of psychotropic weapons. At the age of 28, he became the head of a laboratory in Russia"s 1st Medical Institute. He is the author of numerous sensational discoveries. Back then, he was faced with a task to "create" human-geniuses, who would be capable of becoming great scientists, magnificent inventors. Smirnov main goal was to make those people use the reserves of their own psyche. His first top-secret experiment in psycho-reconnaissance was carried out in 1984. Professor Smirnov possesses several dozens patents on various inventions.
Nowadays, staff researchers of Russia's Scientific Research Institute continue to conduct in-depth studies of human psyche under Dr. Smirnov"s direct guidance.
Methods of latent impact on the human psyche are no longer secret.
"I allow for the possibility that perpetrators can and do use such methods to manipulate one"s conscious for the purpose of creating terrorists-kamikazes," stated Dr. Smirnov in his interview to MK. Professor Igor Smirnov was in fact the world"s first man to get into the human mind by means of a computer.
Back then, society was completely unaware of the so-called Shakhids. Now, the most logical comes to mind: what triggers a person to commit such act of violence? How come the instinct of self-preservation fails to block one"s inner urge to destroy oneself? This was the main topic of my discussion with Dr. Smirnov.
The explosive oblivion
-How is it possible to erase one's memory?
-There exists an entire array of possible methods. Majority of them are psychochemical. Electroshock can also have the same effect on a person. However, nothing works better than the so-called semantic influence, when a person is given certain orders that he then executes without hesitation. Personally, I wouldn"t want to go into details on such matters. As a result of such "outside influence", a person"s "self" gets totally blocked. Instead, another "self" is being created. That second identity in turn can have a number of various programmed urges, such as killing oneself.
-Are there many people in our country capable of carrying out such procedures?
-I can"t say for sure. Obviously, the knowledge acquired at school is not enough to carry out such experiments. I think the amount of such specialists is rather limited.
-Do you think you could restore people"s memory?
-This is a very hard procedure. Thing is, those people will have difficult time recollecting that lost time fragment that had been torn out of their lives. We did manage to help several our patients to regain their memory partially.
How to "cure" one"s mind
Many still remain rather doubtful about the fact that it is possible to affect one"s behavior while surpassing his conscious. In reality however, people have been doing this for a hundred years already.
-As far as I know, we are the first in this field of research.
-Interesting as it may seem, but you are right. Similar methods have been born in Russia and American almost simultaneously; in Russia however, they emerged 9 months earlier. Our department at the institute was in fact the first in the world. American laboratory in Michigan however is our main rival nowadays. In 1993, Americans established a company especially for me; I am currently its board member. Due to my presumptions however, I refused to stay there for good. Many of my colleagues have immigrated a long time ago and now lead pretty comfortable lives there. Unfortunately, our inventions are not in high demand in Russia.
-Is it possible to defeat terrorism?
-Only informational war is capable of defeating terrorism completely. And we possess this weapon. Peoples" actions can in fact be controlled by unnoticed acoustic influence. Look-it"s easy. All I have to do is record my voice, apply special coding, which converts my voice to mere noise and afterwards, all we have to do is record some music on top of that. The words are indistinguishable to your conscious; however, your unconscious can hear them clearly. If we were to play this music over and over again on the radio for instance, people will soon start developing paranoia. This is the simplest weapon.
An image can also be coded. After 12-14 minutes the information begins to get into one"s conscious. Our department is the only one in the world that possesses such instrument of informational war. However, no one seems to be interested in it.
-Several years ago you were trying to lobby a law that would protect people from unendorsed interventions into one man"s psyche. Where is this bill now?
-Mr. Lopatin from the Security Committee used to work on the bill concerning informational-psychological security back in 2000. However, he is no longer a delegate; and the law is nonexistent. Russians remain unprotected from such concealed message that could be "hiding" in the media. There is no state control over the works in psychotechnologies whatsoever. In the meantime, USA approaches this subject much better. More than 140 universities conduct thorough research in this area.
Delving into mind over matter
CLAIRE SMITH
IT WAS during a weekend of fire-walking in the Welsh hills that scientist David Hamilton decided to change his life.
As an organic chemist with a major pharmaceutical company, he was on a good salary, developing a new generation of drugs by synthesising molecules found in nature. But Hamilton was never convinced that man could improve on nature, and instead was becoming more and more fascinated by the potential healing power of the mind. So, inspired by his body's ability to withstand heat during fire-walking, he began a quest to investigate the mysteries of the mind-body connection. It was the beginning of a journey which brought him into contact with alternative therapists, spiritual teachers and faith healers, and was to inspire him to try and fill Hampden stadium with thousands of people all thinking positive thoughts.
He also began hosting seminars where he encouraged people to believe in the power of their mind to positively improve their health.
Unlike many self-help gurus, Hamilton backs his arguments with scientific research and combines his work with a post as a part-time lecturer in chemistry at Glasgow University.
In his first book, It's The Thought That Counts, due to be published next year, he will put forward the scientific arguments about the mysterious mind-body connection and argue that powerful human states such as happiness and optimism can actually change your DNA.
"I'm interested in the whole self-improvement thing but I am the only scientist talking about it," he says.
His interest in the power of the human spirit began when he was working as an organic chemist for a major pharmaceutical company. Put in the fast-track by the company because of his skill in the field, Hamilton worked on creating new drugs by re-creating molecular structures found in nature with slight differences in order to develop new drugs. "You study nature's molecules and re-create them slightly differently. You might make 10,000 versions of the same molecule and study the effects," he says. "The idea is to take nature and improve on it."
However, he was not sure that was the right approach. He was also becoming uneasy about the way pharmaceutical companies were operating, particularly in the developing world, and became fascinated by the placebo effect, the scientific principle which shows that in drug trials, people given sugar pills often recover just as well as those on other medication. "On average, placebo effects cure anything between 30 to 90 per cent. That has been written up in many scientific journals. I thought, 'Why not see if you could extend it'," he says.
ON A WEEKEND retreat with Tony Robbins, the pioneer of fire-walking, Hamilton decided it was time to change his course in life. "When you walk on fire for the first time you feel incredibly euphoric. At the end of it I felt like I could do anything, and, more specifically, that I could live my dream."
He set up New Awakenings, giving talks and workshops about the power of the mind over the body. While many new-age types talk about positive thinking, Hamilton is different, in that he gives listeners a view based on the latest developments in chemistry, biology and physics. By presenting arguments backed by science, he hopes to motivate people to work on their minds in order to improve their health: "With faith hope and determination people can change the state of their health, life and world".
At the end of 2000, Hamilton set up Spirit Aid, with the actor David Hayman, to stage a Live Aid-style event at Hampden stadium, Glasgow, where inspirational spiritual teachers from different traditions would address the crowd between musical acts.
The plan foundered after 18 months, leaving Hamilton in a perilous financial state. Undeterred, he began work on a book - aiming to bring a scientific approach to self-help.
"I have found around 500 scientific papers from mainstream academic journals which directly talk about the effect that thought, feeling and faith have on the body's systems," he says.
Recent research into spontaneous remissions from cancer found that a radical change of belief system seemed to be a common factor. While few would argue with the idea that a good attitude can speed the healing process, Hamilton believes emotions, such as happiness, can change DNA.
What is surprising is that a growing body of scientific thought appears to agree with him.
As an example, Hamilton quotes the work of Eric Kandel, joint winner of the 2000 Nobel prize for medicine, who carried out pioneering work into the way genes can be switched on or off by social influences.
Kandel's conclusion is that many genetic differences between people are influenced by society and conditioning, rather than incorporated in the genetic makeup of the parents.
HAMILTON SAYS: "About 99.9 per cent of our genes are exactly the same. The differences between us are determined by whether our genes are switched on or off.
"There is a whole branch of medicine called psycho-neuro-immunology, which studies the effect of thoughts and emotions on our biochemistry. The biochemistry is intimately connected with the DNA, so if these biologichemical components are affected by thoughts and emotions then thoughts and emotions must also affect our DNA."
He also cites a well-known scientific study of rat pups which showed that two separate growth hormones are switched off in those deprived of a mother's touch. By pulling together the evidence that love and kindness can have a positive effect on health, Hamilton hopes to make people more aware of their own healing power.
The most common reaction to his seminars is to be told that people have always believed in his message, but that he has given them more confidence in their ideas. "I wrote the book to give scientific credibility to what most people already know," he says. "The most powerful cure for anything is faith, hope and determination."
It's The Thought That Counts will be published by Hamilton Press next year
Brain Scan Reads Minds
Shows thoughts people don't even know they're having
Betterhumans Staff
4/25/2005 4:01 PM
Brain scans have been used to read people's unconscious thoughts.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine blood flow, researchers at University College London can determine what people are thinking even when they don't know themselves.
For their experiment, Geraint Rees and colleagues measured brain activity in the visual cortex while subjects looked at objects on a computer screen.
The measurements showed what subjects had seen, even when participants couldn't say. When two images were flashed consecutively, for example, volunteers only consciously saw the second one but the brain scan clearly distinguished the first.
"This is the first basic step to reading somebody's mind," says Rees. "If our approach could be expanded upon, it might be possible to predict what someone was thinking or seeing from their brain activity alone."
In a similar study, Japanese researchers were able to detect which direction of stripes subjects were attending when shown a plaid pattern.
Both studies are reported in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Parts of the brain used in daydreaming are the same areas that fail in people who have Alzheimer's disease - 8/25/05
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