What will become of an animal or a person if a part of their brain is cut out?
In 1939, two American scientists decided to clarify this. They put several monkeys "under the knife" and cut out a part of their brains in the temples.
The monkeys were treated and released into the enclosure. They behaved strangely. For example, before the operation, they were afraid of snakes in panic, now they grabbed them with their paws without fear, twisted them in knots, etc.
Aggressiveness disappeared from monkeys. They became domestic and affectionate like rabbits. They tried to anger the monkeys by all means - they beat them, doused them with cold water, but to no avail. But they became real sex maniacs. They even tried to "communicate" with other animals. Finally, they became incredibly voracious. They ate everything - cardboard, hay, toys, their own feces …
In 1954, a group of American scientists operated on a macaque. This macaque was the "chief" of its tribe. When, after the operation, she was returned "to the throne", she was immediately rejected. This is because the scientists explained that the macaque has ceased to be a tyrant, has become too soft.
The following story at one time went around all the newspapers of the state of Illinois and aroused increased interest in the scientific world of the United States. 24-year-old unemployed Jack Merriweather received a severe blow to the head with a hammer in April 1991 in a drunken brawl.
A piece of metal punctured the skull just above the hairline, pressed the shards of bone inward, and lodged 4.5 inches deep in the skull. The doctors who treated Jack's wound did not dare to remove the heavy blank, which was almost completely drowned in the medulla.
They confined themselves to cutting off the wooden handle of the hammer. There was little hope for a successful outcome. For more than an hour, doctors had been working to close the gaping wound, when suddenly the victim opened his eyes and asked what had happened. When he was properly bandaged, he sat up. No sooner had the astonished doctors restrained him than Jack got up and began to dress, as if nothing had happened. Violently managed to persuade him to stay in the hospital.
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Jack Merriweather, under the supervision of doctors, often complained of headaches and dizziness, moreover, he began to show more and more signs of debility. He held the damaged transistor near his ear for hours, listening for wheezing and clicking.
But there were times when Jack came out of the state of idiocy and surprised scientists. On such days, experts gathered to check if any amazing abilities really awakened in Jack? The glory of the lightning counter was strengthened behind him.
After meeting with him, the scientists left discouraged. A semi-literate guy, and even with a severe brain injury, could make calculations in his mind with a speed and accuracy that defied explanation. Competing with an electronic calculator, he gave an accurate answer within one or two seconds.
One day he was given an exam in front of a group of leading mathematicians at the University of Iowa. Grinning stupidly, Jack got down on all fours, crawled to the chair and laid his head on it - apparently, it was hard for him to hold it. Jack was asked questions about multiplying seven-digit numbers by nine-digit numbers, division with fractions, and extracting square and cube roots from fifteen-digit numbers.
The guy giggled, hid his face from the professors and, as if embarrassed, squeezed out the invariably correct answers. Over time, his calculating abilities became very dull.
And what will happen if a person completely loses his head and with it and the brain? Of course, in the vast majority of cases this means instant death. But sometimes absolutely amazing stories happen.
Once Sergeant Major Boris Luchkin, who fought in the regimental intelligence, told such a case.
Once during a raid in the rear of the Germans, the lieutenant in command of their reconnaissance group stepped on a jumping "frog" mine. An expelling charge threw her a meter and a half, after which an explosion followed.
Shrapnel flew in all directions. One of them completely blew off the head of the lieutenant, who was walking in front, a meter from Luchkin. But the decapitated commander did not collapse to the ground, but continued to stand.
Instead of a face, he only had a chin and a lower jaw. There was nothing above. And so this terrible body unbuttoned the quilted jacket with its right hand, pulled out a map with the route of movement from its bosom and handed it, already covered in blood, to Luchkin. Only then did the lieutenant finally fall. The body of the commander, even in death "thinking" (!) About his soldiers, the scouts carried and buried near the headquarters of the regiment.
Medieval chronicles tell about such an episode. In 1636, King Ludwig of Bavaria sentenced to death a certain Dietz von Schaunburg with four of his landsknechts for raising a revolt. When the condemned were brought to the place of execution, the king, according to the chivalric tradition, asked Dietz what his last wish would be.
To the great surprise of the king, he asked to put his landsknechts in one row, at a distance of eight steps from each other and - to cut off his head first. He promised that he would start running headlessly past his landsknechts, and those that he would have time to run past should be pardoned.
The noble Dietz lined up his comrades in a row, got up on the edge himself, knelt down and laid his head on the block.
But as soon as the executioner took it down with an ax blow, Diez jumped to his feet and rushed past the landsknechts, frozen in horror. Only after passing the last of them, he fell dead to the ground.
The shocked Ludwig decided that it was not without the intervention of the devil, but nevertheless he fulfilled the contract and pardoned the Landsknechts.
Another case of "life after death" is reported in the report of Corporal R. Crickshaw, found in the archives of the British War Office. It describes the downright fantastic circumstances of the death of the commander of company "B" of the 1st Yorkshire line regiment, Captain T. Mulveny, during the British conquest of India in the early 19th century.
This happened during the hand-to-hand combat during the assault on Fort Amara. The captain blew off the soldier's head with a saber. But the decapitated body did not collapse to the ground, but threw up the rifle, fired point-blank at the English officer in the heart, and only after that fell.
An even more incredible episode is cited by journalist Igor Kaufman. Immediately after the war, a mushroom picker found some kind of explosive device in the forest near Peterhof. I wanted to examine it and raised it to my face. An explosion burst.
The mushroom picker was completely blown off his head, but he walked two hundred meters without it, three meters along a narrow board across the stream, and only then died. The journalist emphasizes that this is not a bike, there were witnesses, and the materials remained in the archive of the criminal investigation department.
It turns out that even a sudden and complete loss of the brain does not always lead to instant death of a person. But then who or what controls the body, forcing it to perform quite reasonable actions?
Let us turn to the interesting hypothesis of Igor Blatov, Doctor of Technical Sciences. He believes that, in addition to the brain and the consciousness associated with it, a person actually also has that very “soul”, a kind of “repository of programs” that ensure the functioning of the body at all levels, from higher nervous activity to various processes in the cell.
Consciousness itself is the result of the action of such software, that is, the work of the “soul”. And the information that makes up software is embedded in DNA molecules.
According to the latest concepts, a person has not one, but two control systems. The first includes the brain and nervous system. It uses electromagnetic pulses to transmit commands. In parallel, there is a second, in the form of the endocrine system, in which the carriers of information are special biological substances - hormones. Nature (or the Creator) also took care of ensuring the autonomy of the endocrine command system.
Until recently, it was believed that it consists only of endocrine glands. However, by the eighth to ninth week of pregnancy, the embryo's brain cells break away from their parent and migrate throughout the body. They find a new home in all major organs - in the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, gastrointestinal tract, according to the latest data - even in the skin. Moreover, the more important the organ, the more there are.
Therefore, if for some reason our "commander-in-chief" - the brain - ceases to perform its functions, the endocrine system can take over. It is in its DNA molecules that the "soul" is most likely stored - programs that together ensure the vital activity of the organism and the conscious behavior of a person. This is how one can imagine the action of the mechanism of life after the fact of death.
Author: V. B. Shapar. From the book "The Mystery of Man and Humanity"