Amazing Things About Our Brains

The human brain can do wonderful things. However, the most common operations it is nothing compared to that capable brain of some people. Below is a list of some of the most incredible features of the brain.

10. Life after death

Apparently, Pam Reynolds (Pam Reynolds), a blues singer from Atlanta, Ga., a normal human being before she underwent surgery to remove a brain aneurysm. During the procedure, doctors remove all blood from the brain Reynolds, thereby making it completely inactive for 45 minutes. All conventional brain surgery, from the receipt of signals from the stomach feeling of hunger and ending with the transfer of audio and visual information, stop.

However, upon waking, Reynolds was able to describe what it did to the last detail. It is considered one of the most striking examples of the test near-death experience. However, the experience is not unique Reynolds. In one study of cardiac patients at a hospital in the Netherlands found that of 344 patients who were declared clinically dead, 18 percent reported experiences "life experience" after his death.

The most impressive in history, Pam is the fact that the deactivation of its brain involved in skilled nursing staff. Nevertheless, she was able to reproduce all the details of the operation, ranging from descriptions of what the tools used by physicians and ending theme of conversation between them.

9. Inability to form new memories

Henry Molayson (Henry Molaison) was a unique patient because only he had the opportunity to experience a radical procedure to remove the medial temporal lobe of the brain to get rid of debilitating seizures. When the doctor who conducted the operation found that was the memory of his patient, he refused to carry out such operations to someone else and spoke out against them for other professionals.

So what happened? Removal of the medial temporal lobes of the brain located above the ears, leading to what became Molayson suffer from a rare disorder called "anterograde amnesia." In this disorder the brain Henry was completely unable to form any new memories, he remembered what happened to him in the past, that is, he remembered all his life before the operation, which had, when he was 27 years old.

He was also able to form procedural memories, or habit. However, his brain could not fix the new declarative memories, he could not remember who was his friend, with whom he had just had dinner, or what was the name of the president. Such a life he lived for 55 years and died in 2008 at age 82.
Because of its uniqueness, Henry served as the object of various studies, and became widely known in the neurological community as "The patient HM".

8. The emphasis of the Russian language

Jenks Vanderlip Robin (Robin Jenks Vanderlip) has never been in Russia. She had not even lived in the region of the U.S., which is closest to this country. Robin, a resident of McLean, Va., spent his entire life on the East Coast. However, two days after she fell down the stairs and hit her head, she woke up and discovered that he could not speak. When Robin in time recovered, she noticed that speaks their native English with a Russian accent.

Vanderlip is one of 60 people in the world who are diagnosed with "foreign accent syndrome", a rare disease associated with brain damage, such as physical trauma or stroke.
Although this sounds like a foreign accent, in fact, patients do not "develop" it, instead of the speech brain centers are changing the ways in which people form the words. The most amazing thing about this little-studied syndrome, that words are formed in a predictable manner, and resemble the current global focus, even if one never before experienced this accent.
7. The ability to write, but the inability to read
In 2001, when Canadian writer Howard Engel (Howard Engel) suffered a stroke, he thought, "Well, I took as a writer, now it's over." It turned out really well, because after a while he realized that one of the consequences of the disease were unable to detect the appearance of printed English text, which he used to write his novels. Instead, he thought he saw before him a text written in a totally unfamiliar foreign language. Moreover, he could not read a single word, or pronounce the name of the letters.

But the surprising fact that shortly Engel continued to write, though, did not understand the meaning of words. His brain suffered the ability to write from the visual memory of his motor memory. Words are defined for him in a special way, he again and again displays the letters using a motor memory for their spellings. He found that he could read while writing the text at hand.

Because the ability to write was not killed, the writer is actively fighting for his normal life, in the end, he achieved outstanding results in fighting the disease, however, until the end of the ability to read back to him and failed.

6. Perfect vision in only one hemisphere

The perfect vision of 10 years of German girls stumped doctors because she was born with only the left hemisphere of the brain. For a good view to the presence of both hemispheres, because the visual information coming from the optic nerves, transmitted in the opposite hemisphere for processing and storage there. Thus, the presence of only one hemisphere should indicate that I should run only one eye, in the case of a girl, just the right.

However, the girl sees perfectly, and enjoy a normal, binocular vision, and in 2010, doctors scanned her brain to understand the cause of what is happening. It turned out that through a process known as plasticity, the optic nerve of the left eye had migrated to her left hemisphere, in other words, the left side of the brain receives visual information to the girls from both eyes.

Strikingly, in the visual cortex of the left hemisphere formed special districts that are intended for processing information received left eye. This helps avoid confusion.

5. Melting brain

Within three days after his birth in 2008, an Australian girl, known in medical literature as "Baby Z", began to suffer from seizures as a result of a rare genetic defect (deficiency of molybdenum cofactor). Because of this defect, the brain is unable to produce the enzymes that generate cofactor (non-protein component, which must be present in the body to certain substances are able to perform their functions). Therefore, the brain accumulates a large amount of sulfite, which is toxic, and which slowly melts the brain until the patient dies.

In the process of "melting" the child suffered from severe pain and the seizures occurred as a result of such damage in brain tissue, which led to the deactivation of the functions of swallowing and movement.

"Baby Z" - this is the first known case in which the disorder is successfully treated. Experimental treatment, developed in Germany, were brought to Australia, got special permission to use in the country and imposed a two-week infant. After three days of treatment, the child stopped twitching, who accompanied her seizures. For several weeks it is completely cured of the disease, and is now alive and well, and my brain till it sulfites in the usual way.

4. His or someone else?

In 1996, a 22-year-old American woman in a car accident was a head injury. Two years later, it began to torment the attacks. In 2004, however, she was taken to the psychiatric ward of Pittsburgh, as saying that she is surrounded by strangers, even though they were her friends and family members. The woman told hospital staff that a patient is her boyfriend, a nurse, and serving it - it was her sister, but under the guise of one of the doctors, her mother disappears.

A woman diagnosed as having a rare disease known as syndrome Fregoli. He was so named after the Italian actor who became famous for his quick changes of costume and character changes. People who suffer from this symptom is often said that the individuals around them - they are one and the same person or several persons posing.

After a month of treatment for epileptic seizures, the woman's condition stabilized, and she did not remember that she had endured.

3. incredible memory

Serell Orlando (Orlando Serrell) - this is a rare type of incredibly gifted man, but his gift he received is not a natural way, and after hitting a baseball bat. During the game, a 10-year-old boy was hit the bat, and then within a few days he had a headache. Then, after a while he found that he could remember what happened in absolutely every day, starting from the date of August 17, 1979 (the day he got hit).

In most cases, he even remembers what the weather was in any given day, and other minor details of his life. Serell says that his remarkable ability is the result of what is before his mind's eye at once presents a calendar, it will not hold any mental exercise or a mathematical calculation.

2. no sleep

Up until 1990, a man named Toima Soini (Toimi Soini) from Finland held the world record of wakefulness - 11 and a half days (276 hours). Despite the fact that no one could beat that record in the Guinness book Soini no longer appears, because the organization refused to categories, which tells of wrecking behavior in relation to their health.

This is because we all need to sleep, and those who did not sleep at all, in fact, must die. It was a terrible killer of Chicago music teacher Michael Peel (Michael Corke), whose brain is literally blocked and did not allow a person to sleep. Cork suffered from a rare form of prion disease called "fatal familial insomnia," in which a particular gene encode proteins longer, thereby surrounding the thalamus gradually begin to form toxic substances. This part of the brain responsible for regulating our sleep, and because its function is violated, then the mind and body remain in the waking state.

Within a few months in Cork have developed dementia. In an attempt to regulate the work of his brain, doctors with the help of sedation techniques have tried to introduce him into a coma, but found that the brain is still active. Cork died in 1992, at 6 months after it happened first sleepless night.

1. The brain has grown a foot

Mum Sam Eskyubelya (Sam Esquibel), as a result of the next ultrasound was shocked by the news that her little boy in the brain tumor is growing. Three days after birth to Sam had surgery on the brain, resulting in a tumor removed and examined.

However, when surgeons reach the tumor and cut it, they were surprised to find that the brain tumor itself quietly developed a small human foot .... Yes, you read correctly, the brain has grown a little Sam, normally developed foot. Scientists have put forward two possible once the diagnosis - teratoma, or "fruit in the fruit." Teratoma - a rare unusual type of tumor, which develops inside the hair, teeth, skin or nails. "The fruit in the fruit" - is even more uncommon disorder (less than 10 cases registered in the world is with the brain), when one twin absorbs the other in the womb. Absorbing twin becomes a parasite and, ultimately, kills his brother or sister.

After a more detailed study, the surgeons discovered that this is really a case of "fetus in fetus" because in addition to the foot, they found a more hip, arm and intestines. Surgeons successfully removed the tumor, and now the boy is alive and well.