I will be on vacation for the next 1.5 weeks and will not be updating the blog. Please visit any of the other websites in my blogroll or feel free to read some of my old posts.
Finals
I’m in the midst of finals and will post when I’m able. Thanks for visiting the site. Please visit one of the other blogs in my blogroll. They are all excellent. I’ve also started writing some posts for BrainBlogger so I’ll have some articles appear over there.
Frontotemporal Dementias
The New York Times has a very nice article about Frontotemporal demetia (FTD). This type of dementia is interesting, affecting personality, inhibition, attention, and language. It is similar to Alzheimer’s Disease but has a different progression and manifestation. Anyway, the article provides a nice picture of the disease.
Frontal Lobes and Memory
I’ve been developing an interest in the role that the frontal lobes play in memory. We traditionally think of memory as heavily based in the medial temporal lobes. At least, the medial temporal lobes are larely responsible for the creation of new memories. Without the hippocampus and the surrounding area people have anterograde amnesia, which is the inability to form new memories. The classic and most well known example of this is the patient H.M. Researchers recognize the role that other areas of the brain have in memory but most memory research has focused on the medial temporal lobes – at least until recently (with recently being the last 20 years or so). New ideas take a while to develop and gain acceptance so some of these ideas about the role of other brain areas in memory creation are still developing.
For example, we now know that when information needs to be organized, such as in something like the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (read here for a short description of the test) or with a list learning task with words from specific semantic categories, the frontal lobes are involved.
If the frontal lobes are heavily involved in the organization of information it follows that memory tests that require more organization of material should be affected by dysfunctioning of the frontal lobes. Some researchers are now trying to place certain functions with greater specificity within the frontal lobes. This isn’t really phrenology because the methods of phrenology were entirely suspect. Phrenologists extrapolated personality and cognitive characteristics of people based of measurements of their skulls. Many researchers who are interested in localizing brain functions do so by testing people with specific brain
lesions (injuries). If enough patients have damage to X part of the brain and subsequently have Y deficits, then we can assume that X is necessary for Y to occur (but is not necessarily sufficient for Y to occur). Phrenologists never looked at the brain or the head in this manner. Paul Broca was one of the first, with his patient Tan, to systematically look at the relationship between brain injury and behavior.
For a long time many people believed (and many still do) that certain areas of the frontal lobes, specifically the most anterior areas of the frontal lobes, are essentially superfluous. They base this idea on cases where
people have had damage to this area of the brain but apparently suffered no ill effects. Research has consistently not supported that view. We don’t have any non-necessary brain. What we do have are tests and measures that are not sufficiently sensitive nor specific. The brain is also very complex and most functions rely on networks of brain structures. We are also learning that the white matter in the brain is very involved in behavior and cognition (this is my own area of research). The more we learn, the more we realize our ignorance about the brain. There are layers upon layers to be unwrapped and understood about the brain.
Image by Debbi in California.
Encephalon #42
I know I’m a few days late but Of Two Minds hosted the latest Encephalon. It’s a well-written collection of hot neuroscience geek writing. Although, I don’t understand how somehow the contributors all managed to miss the Douglas Adams connection with this Encephalon. The Paris Hilton thing was quite funny but this could have been THE ULTIMATE Encephalon, providing the answers to life, the universe, and everything. I, unfortunately, have not participated in an Encephalon yet but I’ll get around to it one of these days.
UK Scientists Create Hybrid Embryos
Hybrid embryos were created in the UK. Scientists used bovine eggs that had the DNA removed and injected human DNA (from skin) into the eggs. The eggs grew for as long as 3 days. The researchers plan on working towards a 14 day lifespan, at which time the embryos would be destroyed. No, they aren’t trying to create a Minotaur or something of that sort; they are seeking for new ways to create stem cells. The researchers see this hybridization as one of the most promising ways. While the researchers on the team state that their research is completely ethical, a broader debate is occurring in the UK. If the research is completely ethical then there wouldn’t really be a debate. What’s ethical to one person is not necessarily ethical to another. Parliament will debate the issue in about a month. The Catholic Church, of course, has condemned the research.
It seems though that there are better ways to get stem cells that aren’t as controversial. I’ll admit that I am ignorant about this type of research but scientists already successfully can get stem cells from other sources, such as skin. There are very few people who believe that it is unethical to derive stem cells from such sources. I’m not saying whether or not I think that they should be doing this research I just think that those of us who are researchers think very carefully about the ethical and moral implications of our research. We can’t just seek consensus among fellow researchers either; we need to be willing to listen to people outside of science.
Read more about the issue here.
First Successful Brain Transplant
Recently, French scientists at the University of Southern North Dakota – Baltimore performed the first successful human brain transplant. Said the chief neurosurgeon, Dr. Cranial Head, MD, “This is a breakthrough of unprecedented magnitude. I’m ecstatic all our research and hard work finally paid off. We couldn’t be more pleased with how things turned out.”
The patient, who only agreed to be called Jose Ivanovich O’Malley, III for anonymity reasons, suffered a massive anterior communicating arterial stroke that left him severely incapacitated. He was a veterinarian at a local clinic before his stroke. His family heard about the research Dr. Head’s team was doing with rats and contacted him about the possibility of being his first human subject. Dr. Head agreed immediately, “I saw this as the perfect opportunity to advance our research out of animals and into humans. We’ve had great success – recently – with brain transplants in rats so it was only logical to start human trials.”
“This new brain transplant surgery is quite remarkable,” said Dr. Head. “My colleague, Dr. Sarah Wu, and I first came up with the idea 40 years ago while we were competing in a triathlon. It came out of the blue, really, neither of us are quite sure why we thought of it but here we are.”
What’s remarkable about the surgery is that it is done all under local anesthetic and the patient is kept talking throughout the procedure, except for the time when the brains are switched (during this time the patient is placed on life support). In this case, the transplanted brain came from a local high school physics teacher Stephen Cabeza who suffered an unexpected heart attack. He was not only young but also in good health. The Cabeza family wishes remain anonymous. The transplanted brain is removed from the original body and cooled to halt neuronal death. The end of the severed spinal column is treated with a new nanoglue that automatically splices individual axons to the new spinal cord when the transplant brain is placed on top.
“It’s incredible,” said Dr. Head, “surprisingly we don’t have much work to do because with this new nanoglue the process of reconnecting nerve fibers is automatic. It only takes 4 minutes. We just inspect the brain and spinal cord to make sure everything is lined up correctly. The nanoglue is also applied to areas like the optic nerves, that need to be spliced into the new brain.”
After the surgery, Jose made a speedy recovery. Within 24 hours he was moving his limbs and within a week he was walking and talking. His wife said, “It’s a miracle. We thought Jose was gone forever but Dr. Head saved him. He doesn’t know who any of us are, of course, and calls himself Stephen but we are all willing to work with the new Jose and learn to love him and hope he will learn to love us.” The medical team, however, remains baffled why Jose insists his name is Stephen. When asked if he planned on returning to work at his veterinary clinic, Jose stated that he couldn’t wait to return to teaching physics: “I’ve always had a love of physics. There’s something about gravity research that really attracts me.” Jose doesn’t remember any of his past self or his work as a veterinarian.
Disclaimer: this post was written in 2008 as an April Fool’s Day joke years before the idea of a head/body transplant was popularized by news media. It was written years before the “Fake News” trendy label. This post is completely made up and was written to be humorous. Surgeons cannot at the present time perform brain transplants, regardless of what is published online. The surgeon who claims he can perform a head transplant will not be successful. The idea of a brain/head/body replacement is interesting both as a potential medical advancement and as a point of ethical discussion. Is it theoretically possible? Yes. Will it happen anytime soon? No. Should it happen? That’s a discussion for another time.