Nature has done everything possible to protect the human brain from harmful external influences. She placed him in a very strong cranium, and covered him with a shock of hair on top. She surrounded her with cerebrospinal fluid so that it washes over the gray matter and protects it from excessive shaking. These protective measures look very thoughtful, rational and practical.
But in any case, no matter how securely the brain is "packed", its defense has its ultimate strength. She cannot resist the onslaught of very heavy loads and is forced to surrender her positions. Hence, there are various concussions, hematomas, destruction of the bones of the skull. All this leads to sad consequences. At best, you can get off with epilepsy or some other unpleasant, but not fatal disease. The worst case scenario is death.
However, even in critical situations, things do not always turn out sadly and tragically. Medicine knows cases when damaged and tortured gray matter showed amazing vitality and came out victorious in the battle with external aggressive factors. There are few such examples, but since they all defy explanation from the point of view of medical science, we can safely say that these are the real secrets of the human brain.
Tragic incidents
The first tragic incident
One such mystery took place in England in the late 19th century. A tragic incident occurred at one of the factories. A large bolt accidentally fell into the rotating mechanism. He did not jam the gearbox, but was thrown by it with great force. A heavy piece of metal whizzed through the air and hit the forehead of a young engineer with its narrow end, who was standing very close to the working equipment.
The bolt pierced the frontal bone of the skull and entered the brain above the right eye, just at the edge of the hair. Machine-oil-soaked steel plunged ten centimeters into the delicate gray matter. The matter was aggravated by the fact that bone fragments also penetrated inside and mercilessly cut the brain tissue intertwined with thousands of vessels.
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Others rushed to the fallen man. He breathed heavily, rolled his eyes, did not say a word, but most importantly, he was alive. The victim was taken to the surgical department of the nearest hospital, where he immediately underwent a complex operation.
The doctors removed the bolt, bone fragments, and removed a decent part of the medulla along with them. The gaping hole was repaired with a bone fragment taken from the skull of a slain dog. The hope that man would survive was insignificant. The operated patient was placed in a ward and began to wait for a natural sad outcome.
At first hours passed, then days dragged on. The victim was by no means going to leave the mortal world. He felt very good. The very next day after the operation, the man ate with appetite. His speech, thoughts, judgments, coordination of movements were not disturbed at all. The person who suffered a severe trauma did not even suffer from headaches.
Soon he was discharged from the hospital, but was under the supervision of doctors for a year. Two years later, he was thoroughly examined, but no abnormalities in physical health and psyche were found. The man demonstrated the amazing capabilities of the human brain. He raised children, survived the World War and died at a ripe old age, never experiencing any discomfort after suffering a terrible trauma. The only reminder of her was a large scar on her forehead.
Second tragic incident
An even more striking case, once again pointing to the mysteries of the human brain, occurred in 1887 in Massachusetts (USA). Here misfortune happened to the master of the railway, who took part in laying a new branch.
The man was in charge of blasting. He needed to destroy a large section of rocky rocks located just in the path of the railway under construction.
In the rocky steep, the henchmen drilled a long narrow hole (hole). The master began to put gunpowder in it. In order for the explosive to enter as much as possible, the man tamped the gunpowder with a long iron bar. On the one hand it had a flat end, on the other it was pointed. It was with the flat end that the master pressed the gray powder, reduced its volume and added a new portion.
At one point, the iron base of the crowbar struck the stone. The escaping spark hit the gunpowder. It instantly flared up, and a violent explosion occurred. The scrap was thrown out of the narrow opening with great force. Its sharp end sank into the master's lower jaw. The metal went through the head and out into the back of the skull. The blow was so strong that the left eyeball crawled out of the socket.
To the surprise of the witnesses of the tragic incident, the victim did not even lose consciousness. He independently got on a carriage, which took him to the nearest hospital department. He also went to the doctor on his own feet, refusing help.
The operation was very difficult. The Aesculapians pulled out a crowbar, removed part of the brain and a large chunk of the occipital bones of the skull. It was striking that all these manipulations did not affect the state of health of the unfortunate. He did not lose consciousness for a minute, did not delirium and, apparently, did not intend to leave this world at all in the prime of life.
Within a few days, the victim's health improved markedly. He seemed to have completely forgotten about the terrible wound. The only thing that upset the person was the loss of his left eye. All other organs in his body worked just fine.
The unlucky master recovered completely, recovered and lived for many more years, once again demonstrating to others, one might say, the fantastic capabilities of the human brain. History has preserved the name of this man. His name was Finise Gage.
Third tragic incident
In the mid-50s of the XX century, a sensation was the amazing recovery of a patient in one of the German clinics. As a result of a brain tumor, the entire right hemisphere was removed. The surgeon's scalpel ruthlessly wedged into the gray matter, carving out half of its mass.
The patient was in good physical shape and had a high level of intellectual development. His mental abilities, and the general state of his body, in theory, should have been irreversibly disrupted. But the man did not live up to the completely natural expectations of doctors.
After the operation, he felt weak and unwell for some time, but he recovered very quickly. Within a few months, the operated man completely forgot that he had once been on the verge of death due to a tumor in the brain. His health returned to normal, and his intellect did not suffer in any way. This amazing case, again, proves once again that in the gray matter there are some hidden mechanisms of self-regulation, which can be safely attributed to the unknown secrets of the human brain.
Life without sleep
First case
But the mysterious world of gray matter does not strike us with traumas alone with a happy ending. There are other mysterious cases and phenomena waiting to be solved. Until now, no explanation has been found for the truly amazing possibilities of some people to go without sleep, that is, not to sleep either at night, during the day, never.
The history of medicine includes a man named Al Herpin, a resident of New Jersey (USA). In the 40s of the XX century, he crossed the 90-year mark. In his entire long life, this man never slept and even had no idea what a dream was.
How did his brain rest, how did his body recover? In those distant years, doctors could not give an answer to this question. The situation is similar these days. Medicine is unable to explain the phenomenon of living without sleep.
Al Herpin was a poor man. He lived in a modest shack, notable for the fact that it lacked a bed or any other furniture on which to lie down.
There was a rocking chair in the corner. It was sitting in it that the man whiled away his nights. When the whole world fell asleep, Al Herpin took a book in his hands, sat down more comfortably in a chair and read. His body was resting, his brain was clearing. When the first rays of the sun touched the ground, an amazing man left the place of rest and went to earn his living.
The doctors, naturally, at first did not believe in such amazing abilities of the body of this old man. They even arranged night shifts at his chair. But such activities only confirmed a striking phenomenon.
Al Herpin lived 96 years. Whether the lack of sleep influenced his lifespan or not - here no one can say anything definite. He himself explained such an unusual phenomenon by the fact that while his mother was pregnant with him, she hit her stomach hard.
This example, demonstrating similar capabilities of the human brain, once again proves that people know very, very little about gray matter. This is also evidenced by the fact that medicine knows the names of other people who do well without sleep. The reasons for their round-the-clock vigils also defies any more or less acceptable explanation.
Second case
At the very end of the 19th century, in the state of Indiana, there lived a gentleman named David Jones. Unlike Al Herpin, he did not completely reject such a healing elixir of health as deep and restful sleep. His periods of insomnia alternated with normal periods of life, when a man was no different from other people.
David Jones himself could not explain what caused him to suddenly stop sleeping. Twenty-four-hour vigils lasted three to four months, approximately once every two years. This did not affect the state of health. The man felt vigorous and refreshed all 24 hours a day. He allowed himself only 6 hours of rest at night. His body was resting, gaining strength, but his brain did not plunge into sweet slumber, but continued to be awake.
What caused the periods of insomnia - this man could not explain. The only thing was that in two weeks he began to feel the approach of the next 3 or 4 month cycle. Somewhere in the depths of his subconscious, a premonition was born that never deceived.
Third case
No less interesting is the story of Rachel Sagi, a resident of Hungary, which took place shortly before the First World War. Having reached the age of 40, the woman began to experience severe headaches. She was not one of the aristocratic women for whom migraines are common. She was surrounded by middle-class merchants. That is, people who simply have no time to get sick.
Rachel Sagi also never paid attention to individual malfunctions in the body, but in this case she had to see a doctor, as the headaches became simply unbearable. The doctor did not find any dangerous symptoms in her. He recommended sleeping more, not worrying, leading a measured lifestyle, prescribed a sedative and sleeping pill.
However, the recommendations of the Aesculapius did not help the poor woman in any way. One day she went to bed and could not sleep. Even sleeping pills did not help. The most interesting thing is that Rachel Sagi never slept again. She lived another quarter of a century, but never once was able to experience the sweet embrace of Morpheus.
Math ability
The mysteries of the human brain don't end with some people's lack of sleep. They throw another mystery to the bewildered humanity. This is the amazing ability of some men and women to perform complex mathematical calculations in their minds and give the correct answers to a shocked audience in almost seconds.
So in the 50s of the XX century, the name of Shakuntali Davy thundered in the USA. This simple and very humble girl from India has crossed the ocean to shock jaded Americans with her extraordinary abilities. Before that, she first established herself with the best side in India, then in England.
The girl showed her unusual gift when she was only 6 years old. At this age, she already easily added, subtracted, multiplied and divided ten-digit numbers. In order to perform such arithmetic operations, it took her a couple of seconds. She spent more time not on the calculation itself, but on pronouncing the finished result.
Already at the age of seven, Shakuntali Devi began to extract square and cube roots from twelve-digit numbers. A little later, she mastered the extraction of roots of the fourth, fifth and sixth degrees. Easily squared, cube, fourth, fifth power multi-digit numbers. In fact, it was a walking slide rule, which was very popular in those years.
But the girl showed brilliant abilities only in mathematics. In other sciences, she was no different from her peers. In some humanitarian disciplines she was so unsuccessful that she had to take exams twice.
Vito Mangiamele, an ordinary shepherd from Sicily, is no less famous. At the age of ten, when a local priest drew attention to him, the boy did not even have the status of a shepherd, but was considered a shepherd.
The Church was sympathetic to the unusual gift of the child, who handled huge multi-digit numbers with amazing ease. The Holy Fathers helped so that a boy from a poor family came to Paris and appeared before the inquisitive and stern gaze of the members of the Academy of Sciences.
The venerable, gray-haired men looked with disbelief at the neat, fragile young man who respectfully froze in front of them. Tricky questions followed about complex mathematical calculations. The boy easily added, multiplied, divided. He instantly raised to the third, fourth, fifth power, extracted cube roots from ten-digit numbers. All this made an indelible impression on the people of science.
Unfortunately, the further fate of the young prodigy is shrouded in darkness. How his life path developed - there is no reliable historical data about this. But most likely they found a use for the boy. This was the first half of the 19th century, when science was just gaining momentum. She needed young outstanding people who could provide any assistance to her development.
Many other extraordinary people with brilliant mathematical abilities left their mark on history. They were familiar with the world of numbers. True, it should be noted here that some of them, who in childhood amazed others with the speed of calculations, lost this amazing gift in adulthood. They have become ordinary citizens, unable to perform instant calculations in their minds.
Others have carried this amazing ability of the human brain throughout their lives. They did not reach heights in some other areas of knowledge, some disciplines were not given to them at all. But as for the instant calculations of huge numbers, there were no equal to these people.
Sighted blind
It is impossible not to dwell on one more mystery of the human brain. The conversation will be about the "seeing blind" - people who, having lost their sight, still continued to see. But they no longer saw with their eyes, but with other parts of the body. It was the brain that transferred this greatest gift to other organs, trying, to the best of its ability, to facilitate the existence of the unfortunate in the surrounding world.
For the first time this issue was closely tackled by the French doctor Jules Romain in the 20s of the last century. He became interested in rumors of "seeing the blind", found several such people and tried to investigate this interesting phenomenon as thoroughly as possible.
The conclusions that the doctor came to were simply amazing. All these people really had certain rudiments of vision. The organ that received light waves was the skin. It was through her, deprived of the main gift of God, a person distinguished shades of colors, silhouettes of figures, in some cases even individual objects and facial features.
These abilities largely depended on the patient's emotional state. In a good high spirits, a person saw much better than when he was in a bad mood. That is, such a gift directly depended on the psyche, and therefore on the brain, which, by producing thoughts, formed a general mental attitude.
But how the skin could perceive light waves - this question did not give Jules Romain a moment's rest. In the end, he came to the conclusion that the tactile receptors, which are present in huge numbers on the skin, are to blame. It is through them that people perceive the surrounding temperature, feel the wind blowing, experience tingling, tingling, burning from various external factors.
Some of these sensitive nerve endings are redesigned by the brain to perceive light waves. A person does not see with his eyes - he sees precisely with gray matter, which converts incoming signals from the retina into clear and clear visual images. So what difference does it make where these signals come from and which nerve channels they pass to get to the visual center of the brain substance.
As the researcher noted, different people had different areas of the skin responsible for vision. Someone had similar nerve endings on the forehead, someone on the tip of the nose. Someone saw with their cheeks, and someone perceived the beauty of the world around them with their chin.
Jules Roman informed the world medical community with his findings. I must say right away that the pundits were rather skeptical about his rather bold and unusual calculations. Looking at the agitated doctor ardently proving his case, they saw in him not a serious scientist, but a science fiction writer.
However, the respected French physician was by no means the first to notice such a striking phenomenon. 80 years before him, an Italian colleague, whose name has not been preserved by history, also closely dealt with a similar issue. A 14-year-old village girl was under his close supervision. She became blind in childhood, but saw the world around her with the palms of her hands. She was quite capable of distinguishing colors, recognizing people without hearing their voices and without touching their faces with her hands. The Italian press wrote about this girl in 1840.
The famous neuropathologist and psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso did not ignore this issue. At one time, he described the case of a girl who became blind after a sudden and severe incomprehensible illness. However, the gift of contemplating the world around her did not disappear. The poor woman's vision moved to the tip of her nose and the lobe of her left ear. Naturally, these parts of the body were significantly inferior to the eyes in their capabilities, but the person was quite tolerably oriented in space and recognized close people.
But not only blind people have similar features of the body. It turns out that a person with normal vision can also develop the gift of seeing other parts of the body.
An example of this is the striking story of a 16-year-old girl named Margaret Foos from Virginia, USA. She was examined by a whole group of doctors in 1960 and came to the conclusion that she was faced with an inexplicable and mysterious case.
A thick bandage was put on the girl's eyes and asked to read aloud an article from the newspaper. She perfectly coped with the task, and she could distinguish any font, even the smallest and illegible.
All this confused those present. They suspected that Margaret somehow managed to peek from under the blindfold. The bandage was made more dense, cotton swabs were placed under it - the result was the same. Then the girl's eyelids were sealed with opaque tape, but in this case she was at her best.
The shocked doctors eventually gave up and asked Margaret how she did it. The girl said that her father taught all this. He drew attention to the fact that playing blind man's buff with his peers, the daughter is perfectly oriented with a blindfold on her eyes. The man began to study with Margaret, inspiring her that she sees everything perfectly with a blindfold.
Such exercises were good for the girl. She internally tuned herself to the fact that she would be able to consider an object or read a phrase without using her eyes. Such training soon yielded positive results. Margaret began to see without visual organs, and replaced them with her forehead. It was with the help of her forehead that the girl read, wrote, recognized the faces of people and even could freely walk around the city with her eyes closed.
Margaret became famous. In those years, she was often written about in newspapers and shown on television. The amazing abilities of the girl proved once again that the secrets of the human brain are quite tangible and at the same time, for most people, unattainable reality.
A person comes into contact with this mysterious essence very often, but cannot explain the true nature of this amazing phenomenon. Probably many, many more years will pass before medicine can get to the bottom of the truth and fully cognize the deep possibilities of gray matter. This will enable each of us to significantly improve our lives. After all, it directly depends on what is under the skull.
Article by ridar-shakin