FREE ESSAY ON BRAIN SCIENCE

BRAIN SCIENCE

The Enlightened Machine
Brain Science, also known as nerve science, has been classified as an adventure. It
mostly deals with our behavior, as well as speech, movement, coordination, and basically
any part of our life in general is associated with it. As we study the brain more and
more over the last twenty years, we begin to discover more and more about it and its
hundreds of thousands of complex and involved tasks. Let us start with the basics, the
brain from the out side is about 3 pounds of tissue. It contains two main hemispheres,
and is filled with a liquid known as cerebral spinal fluid, or CSF. Our brain has been
compared to many different inventions over the past few centuries. As far back as the
seventeenth century, our brain was compared to a water pump, thus being called the main
pump of our body. Then, during the industrial revolution, it was contrasted to the Great
Telegraph. And later on to the circuit board of a telephone that was invented by
Alexander Bell. And now, it is being associated with the motherboard of a computer. Over
all, our brain can be compared to a racing team; every member of it has a small job, but
it is a very important one. Our brain does not function as only one part, every part is
constantly being active with all the other parts. 
Now the inside of our brain is completely different. There are different sections for
different areas of sensory activities, and different areas for motor tasks. Our memories
and our intense emotions are generally considered to be part of the brain right above the
brain stem. The back of our brain, or the occipital region, mostly interprets our vision,
or in other words it processes what our eyes have seen into impulses. The frontal lobe
part of our brain deals with most of our thinking, but a lot of our strategies and
complex thoughts occur there. There are two ribbon like parts of our brain, both of which
go down vertically from superior and inferior portions. The more posterior ribbon is
mostly associated with touch and pressure, while the more anterior portion deals with
movement. The impulses are sent down the spinal cord to our motor units which in turn
change them into our normal movements. 
Now there are many different types of new and not so new machines that man has made over
the last few centuries that allow us to take pictures of our brain and it also allows us
to locate diseases and trouble areas. The two newer types of devices would be the CAT
scan and the PET scan. The CAT scan is basically a type of x-ray for the brain that shows
us where the neural tissue is located in our brain. The PET scan shows us where the more
active areas and the less active areas of our brains are. The third type of test is the
EEG. This is an older type of test, but recently it has undergo a few upgrades to it so
that we are now able to connect a video monitor to it and that will allow all the
information to be passed on through wires and then sent to the monitor where we will view
the images in color. It used to be hooked up to a few pens, and they would scribble on
paper the amount of activity. The smaller the lines, the less active that part of the
brain is. On the monitors, however, activity is rated by color. The warmer colors, such
as yellow and red, are the positive or active parts. The colder colors, such as blue and
green, show areas of non-activity. Activity mostly starts in the back or posterior
portion of our brain, where our eyes first sense the surroundings. Then, about three
tenths of a second later, it reaches the top of the brain and then it fades away. 
The first subject that was studied in the video was Jason. Jason is a 10 year old male
that suffers from almost the purest form of epilepsy, also know as Pimy Epilepsy. He
suffers from constant seizures and also he has developed not only an extreme hated but a
fear of medicine. The reason being is that he has had some terrible side effects from the
many different types of drugs and medications that were prescribed to him that now he is
reluctant to take them at all. This is unwise for Jason, because he desperately needs to
take his medications in order to survive, if not more. His seizures are uncontrollable
for the most part, and he him self does not realize the fact that he is having a seizure
only until it is over. During the seizure, his eyes seem to roll back, he has heavy,
unsteady breathing, and even he has had uncontrollable facial twitching. One of the most
unusually things is that he can remember things said to him during the seizure. During
normal brain function, the neurons are switching on and off information at a normal,
controlled pace, kinda like lights in a big city; but during a seizure, it is like a
giant thunder storm. Everything goes off, the reactions and the amount of exchange that
is taking place is amazing. The neurons however still never touch. One of the main
reasons that the seizure might take place is because not enough inhibitors are present.
Inhibitors are one of the two types of neurotransmitters that our body has. Inhibitors
stop the impulse, and the other type excites the impulse. When Jason was taken to a
hospital to be tested out on hate sort of drug he should take for his illness, he was
asked to forcefully have seizures so that the doctors can determine the drug. He had
sensors hooked up to different areas of his brain, then he was asked to breathe deeply
till he had a seizure. At the end of the experiments, the doctors prescribed Velcrolic
Acid, which produces Gabba, which in turn inhibits or stops the firing of electrons.
Since he has started taking the medication, he has experienced less and less seizures.
Before the Velcrolic Acid, he was having as many as sixty seizures a day, now its down to
about eight a day. Also, the overall length of the seizures has dropped dramatically,
where before they would last up to a minute and thirty seconds, to where now they average
at about five seconds a piece. Doctors now presume that maybe someday he will be able to
lead a normal life style, maybe even drive a car, but even for now, he is able to ride a
bike and play basketball without having to worry about falling down and hurting himself
through a seizure. 
Dr. Fred Plum studies people in hospitals and tries to determine what sort of disorder
they have by just the way they act, or the way they do not act in that case. He tries to
advance his knowledge of the healthy brain by studying the unhealthy brain. He usually
looks for inconsistencies, things that may be small, but may also have a huge difference
in the way the person is. He took three different subjects; the first was an elderly
woman that was laying in a bed. After he had talked with her a bit, asked a few
questions, he pointed out that she did not move at all as she spoke, she just lay there
motion less. He also noted that as she lay, her head and neck was upright, a task that
would require large amounts of energy on any normal human being. His symptom: Parkinson
disease, a movement disorder. The next patient was an elderly male who stated that he has
had the symptoms for about 7 days now, he complained of a loss of movement on the right
side of his body. The verdict was that he had a light stroke near the back of the brain.
The third patient was a middle aged female that complained of her right side feeling
weaker. She drags her right leg, her eyes seemed to wonder about, and he had a stiffness
in her arm. Her verdict was unfortunately multiple sclerosis. 
Dr. Eric Kendel is called a master of the history of brain science since the 1800s. A
little after his time, a Vietnamese physician named Fransod believed he could localize
distinctions of character in areas in the brain, if fact in very small and accurate areas
in the brain. He believed that if there was a certain trait that you were good at, you
would get a lump of some sort that had enlarged that part of your brain. Many people
believed that, and soon there were cartoons drawn of people with huge lumps in certain
areas of the brain. As many followers as he may have had, he also had critics. One of
those, a certain Pier Florence, didn't at all believe that any higher function could be
localized on the cortex of the brain. He took romantic love as an example. The center for
that feeling is in the posterior part of the brain, so he took a cat, surgically removed
that part of the brain, and after the cat had recovered it was just as aroused and just
as willing to mate with the opposite sex. Thus proving Fransod wrong and leaving a major
new found truth about the brain with use. In 1861, Dr. Broker had encountered a patient
named Tan that had difficulty with language, he could read and write just fine, but he
could not say a whole sentence by him self. While studying this patient, Dr. Broker
realized that language is localized in the frontal area of the left hemisphere of our
brain. Another great scientist was Kahal. He was able to visualize a nerve cell and then
explain how it worked. He explained to use for the first time about how exactly a neuron
is shaped, the basic parts of it. He also stated that information was passed from one
part of a neuron to the other. It is stated that he was able to look at a dead structure
through a compound microscope, and then tell about its function. 
Dr. Nancy Wexel was a doctor that spent most of her life studying Huntington's Disease
(HD).
One of her expeditions took her to a town in Venezuela where most of the population
suffered from it. She was trying to find a certain trait, or gene, that can be linked to
this disease so that the future children of the people living there could be maybe cured.
The quest for a cure for HD for Dr. Wexel is quite personal, considering the fact that
her mother and all of her brothers died from it which mean that now she has a fifty fifty
chance in inheriting it. When she was younger, she was always told that she hasn't a
thing to worry about simply because of the fact that woman are not able to inherit this
disease. But in recent studies, it has been proved that men and women suffer from this
disease equally, and there is no know trait that can suddenly stop the cycle.
Huntington's Disease is a very serious and very deadly disease. Those who are affected
are scared for the rest of there lives, as short as they are. They have uncontrolled
facial expressions, irregular walking patterns, and also irregular upper body movements.
There is no way for anyone to really know if they have the disease for sure until they
start to show symptoms, in which case it is already to late to cure. The way that it
effects the brain is that it starts to kill all the cells in the middle of the brain, and
that basically then cancels out all of our brain activity. At first, Dr. Wexel planned
that the quest for that certain gene that causes HD would take a minimal of ten to
fifteen year. But much to everyone's amazement it took them only four years to find. Now
doctors are able to tell which people have inherited this gene and which haven't. 
Another type of brain disorder, or brain disease, is Hydrocephalus (HS). This disorder is
has only effected infants, mostly newborns. In this type of disorder, the normal flow of
Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) is blocked in one of the brains ventricles, thus causing
pressure to build up in the brain, causing severe misshaping of the cranium. If left
untreated, it will result in death. The ventricles, which usually are butterfly shaped,
are enlarged to the point at which the brain itself is only about a centimeter thick. The
Plasticity, or the way that normal brain activity is spread out, is thus disturbed. Most
neural activity comes from the back, or posterior, area of the brain. One invention that
has saved many individuals from this sort of terrible death is a plastic bypass. The
procedure is quite simple, the neurologist takes the bypass, inserts it into the part of
the brain of choice, then he simply bypasses all of the Cerebral Spinal Fluid to the
heart, where it then gets pumped back into the body as it should normally. A special case
that should be noted is that of a girl named Sharon. She was born with Hydrocephalus, and
she had a bypass made, and that has saved her from death. But what is truly amazing is
the fact that even though her brain is considerable smaller in area then ours, she has
been rated in school as being above average. She seems to basically excel in everything
she does. She has stated that If someone says I can't do something, I do it just to show
them that they are wrong. But her case really does not help much. If anything, it raises
more questions then answers. 
Agnes de Hille was a professional dancer that was rising to the top. She had everything
she needed to be quite possibly the best. On May 15, 1975, she had a huge concert held
for her. It was great, it was sold out and everyone that was anyone was going to be
there. Before the she was going to go on stage, however, one of the dancers did not make
it. So they sent an extra to her room. She said great, but we need to fill out the paper
work and make a contract so that the union would allow the kid to go out. So she picked
up a pen and the contract, and right when she was about to write, she realized that she
can not write. She could not do anything with a pen. So then the ambulance came, and she
was paralyzed in the ambulance on the right side of her body. She later recollects that
through it all, she honestly felt no pain, she felt no sensation of any kind going
through her body. In the hospital the doctors discovered that she had a hemorrhage in her
brain. A vessel ruptured on the left side of her brain, the side that contains the
neurons for motor control and for vision. The rupture squeezed most of the tissue around
it, which is interesting and quite lucky for her because usually when something of this
nature occurs, it does not just squeeze the tissue, but it cuts and breaks it. So that is
one reason for her successful recovery. After she had gotten out of the hospital, she
then went into rehabilitation. Although she can't tell here her right hand is unless she
looks at it, she has learned to use it. The same can be said for her right foot. Since
she is mostly paralyzed on the right side of her body, she had to learn how to do
basically every movement all over again, which includes walking. She also has to watch
out how she eats, because her right side is paralyzed, if food happens to go there, she
will without a doubt drop it out of her mouth. Because of the difficulty of all of this,
most people who survive this types of diseases usually don't walk or do much ever again,
they just simply give up on life in general and just lay in bed all the time. But Agnes
had the perseverance and the determination to do things on her own, she wants to be
normal. Now, she teaches at a dance studio, and she has even mentioned that she may be
planning to return to the stage herself, it all depends on how well she recovers. ?