As a result of an accident, fourteen-year-old Ahad Israfil lost a significant part of his brain. Subsequently, he had a silicone prosthesis made to hide this flaw. Since then, Ahad has led a life that practically does not differ from the life of his peers, who move in wheelchairs. Still from the movie "101 Things Removed from the Human Body"
It is generally accepted that the brain receives information from the surrounding world, processes it and makes certain decisions. According to some scientists, the brain can store up to 15 trillion different data. But there are researchers who are not sure that the information is actually stored in the brain, and also that it is he who controls our actions
Thinking matter doesn't exist?
More than 1.5 thousand scientists from 60 countries of the world gathered at the XVI World Philosophical Congress, held in 1978 in Dusseldorf. Speaking at it, the Australian neurophysiologist, Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 1963, Ackles John Carew proposed a hypothesis according to which the mechanisms of brain activity are triggered by a "mental principle" outside of a person. At first glance, such an assumption sounds strange, contrary to common sense and the experience accumulated by mankind. But, probably, the famous scientist had grounds for such a statement …
It turns out there were! And he was not the only one who had a similar hypothesis about other than commonly thought functions of the brain. Even in the book "On the spirit, soul and body", the largest scientist, surgeon, doctor of medical sciences, Professor Valentin Feliksovich Voino-Yasenetsky (1877-1961) there were the following words: "The soul protrudes beyond the brain, determining its activity and that's it. our being … The brain works like a switch, receiving signals and transmitting them to subscribers."
The hypothesis that consciousness exists independently of the brain is also defended by modern Dutch physiologists led by Pim van Lommel, who, by the way, stated that thinking matter may not exist at all. The same point of view is shared by some British scientists Sam Parnia from Southampton Central Clinics and Peter Fenwick from the London Institute of Psychiatry. According to Parny, the brain, like any other organ of the human body, consists of cells and is not capable of thinking. It works like a thought-detecting device!
The medical literature describes many cases when a person with a damaged brain continued to live as if nothing had happened. Doctors were unable to explain such cases. However, if the above hypothesis is correct, everything falls into place.
Surplus - down with
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In 1957, the American Psychological Association heard a report from Dr. Ian W. Bruel and George W. Alby, who performed an operation to remove the patient's right half of the brain. To the great amazement of the doctors, the operated 39-year-old man quickly recovered and did not lose his mental faculties.
Doctors Gould and Pyle, in their monumental work "Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine," described a patient who, as a result of tumor removal in the brain, had a cavity about 11 centimeters long. However, he remained fully conscious until his death.
The 1888 New York Medical Gazette describes an incident involving a sailor whose head was between the lower tier of the bridge arch and the superstructure of a boat. A sharp paving beam cut off the upper part of the skull of the unfortunate man, who had lost about a quarter of his head. The surgeons, in whose hands the victim fell after a few hours, found that the cut was clean, as if it had been made with a medical saw. They had been working for over an hour to close the terrible wound, when suddenly the wounded man opened his eyes and asked what had happened to him. When a bandage was put on his head, the sailor sat down, and then, taking advantage of the confusion of the dumbfounded doctors, got to his feet and began to dress.
Within two months, he returned to work on his boat and for many years complained only of slight dizziness. After 26 years, however, he developed some irregularity in his gait. Then he partially paralyzed his left arm and leg. He was hospitalized again in 1887 - 30 years after the accident. His medical history records that the patient developed a tendency toward hysteria. And this despite the fact that a person lived, having lost the upper quarter of the brain!
44-year-old frenchman nearly lost his brain
French doctors who performed computed and magnetic resonance imaging of one of the patients found that most of the cranial cavity was occupied by the ventricles of the brain that were swollen from fluid, and the brain itself had turned into a narrow strip.
Dark places are fluid, light places are the brain.
A 44-year-old man consulted doctors after his left leg became weak and malfunctioning. It is noted that before that he led a completely normal existence, worked in the civil service, had a family and two children. His IQ was 75 points, below the 100-point average, but he was not considered mentally retarded. Looking up the medical history, doctors discovered that as a child, the patient suffered from hydrocephalus - dropsy of the brain. An external drain was implanted in him.
However, when he turned 14, the drain was removed for some reason. Meanwhile, the cerebrospinal fluid continued to accumulate in the lateral ventricles, gradually pushing back and squeezing the brain. According to the doctors, they were surprised how a person could exist for many years with a diagnosis that is practically incompatible with life. Usually dropsy leads to an increase in intracranial pressure, which compresses the capillaries of the brain, impaired blood circulation and gradual atrophy of the nervous tissue and, as a result, to impaired visual and motor functions. However, as doctors suggest, due to the fact that the process of expansion of the ventricles of the brain of the specified patient took place rather slowly, perhaps over several decades, the functions of the damaged areas of the brain were transferred to other areas.
At least a stake on your head
The annals of the Museum of Medical College in Massachusetts includes an incident that occurred on September 13, 1847, with the master of the Rutland-Burlington railway section. Finise Gage, 25, planted explosives in the hole in preparation for the explosion. Leaning over the hole, he tamped it with an iron bar, which was sharpened from above, had a length of 90, a diameter of 3.3 centimeters and weighed a little less than four kilograms. Upon hitting a stone, the rod struck a spark, an explosion occurred. The iron rod jumped out of the hole, hit Gage in the cheekbone, pierced through the head and stayed in it. The head appeared to be strung on a rod. The blow was so strong that the unfortunate man's left eye crawled out of the socket. The explosion threw Gage four steps to the side, and he lost consciousness for several minutes. His comrades took him to the doctor, and then something incredible happened. Arriving at the place,the victim refused the help of his escorts and himself went to the doctor's waiting room, to which he had to go along a long staircase.
Removing the iron bar from Gage's head, the surgeon removed part of his brain and skull. There was almost no hope of a successful outcome, and yet after ten hours Gage regained consciousness. He became blind in his left eye, but he recovered and lived for many more years, amazing the luminaries of science, who believed that it was simply impossible to survive such an injury, and even more so to preserve his mental abilities.
Something similar, however, happened back in 1879, when a large bolt got into the mill mechanism and, jumping out from there, hit the forehead of a woman nearby. He pierced the skull, crushed pieces of bone into the brain and sat in the brain at a depth of ten centimeters. As a result of an accident and an operation to extract the bolt, the victim lost part of her brain and still survived. Two years later, doctors declared her absolutely healthy. After that, the woman lived for another 42 years.
Or maybe biorobots?
Perhaps the most compelling evidence that the brain does not perform the functions that are attributed to it are the following stories.
In 1940, Dr. Augustin Iturrica made a sensational presentation at the Anthropological Society in Sucre (Bolivia). The report concerned a 14-year-old patient at the clinic of Dr. Ortiz, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The boy was conscious and sane until his death, but complained of severe headaches.
When the doctors performed an autopsy, there was no limit to their surprise - the cerebral mass was almost completely separated from the inner cavity of the cranium. A huge abscess took over the cerebellum and part of the brain, so it was completely incomprehensible what the boy was thinking.
An even stranger discovery was made by the German professor Hoofland, who opened the cranium of a paralyzed man. The patient retained his mental abilities until the last minute, and meanwhile, instead of a brain, in his skull there was … 330 grams of water.
And at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York in 1935, a child was born who lived, ate and cried for 27 days, like all newborns. He behaved completely normal, and only as a result of the post-mortem autopsy did it become clear that he had no brain at all!
Of course, all these cases can be called paradoxical deviations from the norm and calm down on that, returning to the traditional ideas about the work of our brain. However, even the most unique and phenomenal car cannot function without a motor, and a computer without a hard drive. Therefore, either our ideas about the human brain are fundamentally wrong, or biorobots of alien origin are wandering among us, the dissection of the skulls of which misleads earth scientists.
Nikolay BEL03ER0V
Secrets of the XX century.