Human Nature:
Lesbianism, sexual attraction or emotional and physical relationships between women. The term derives from the Greek
There are no reliable statistics on the percentage of the population that is lesbian, because it has often been omitted from surveys of sexual behaviour. The American feminist Shere Hite, who has conducted several large-scale surveys into women's sexual behaviour, mainly in the
History
Lesbianism has been found in all cultures throughout history. Lesbian relationships were known in the Classical world, among intimate groups of women such as those who gathered around Sappho. Close relationships, including cohabitation, among women have been accepted but not recognized as lesbian for many centuries and in many cultures. The existence of lesbianism has often been ignored because many cultures do not accept the concept of female sexuality at all, or have seen it as something only practised in relation to men, or for the purposes of reproduction. For this reason, lesbianism has sometimes escaped persecution and sanctions: for example, when homosexuality was outlawed in
Lesbians have sometimes been persecuted in situations where their way of life has appeared subversive. For example, many lesbians were expelled from
Lesbianism came to public attention in the West in the late 19th century with the work of the sexologists Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis. These writers presented lesbianism-or "inversion"-as an abnormal condition, and their case studies tended to focus on lesbians who had committed murder or suicide. Their work raised public suspicion about female intimacy, leading to some instances of public prejudice against lesbianism. For example, The Well of Loneliness, a semi-autobiographical novel by the lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall, was tried for obscenity in the
Modern Activism
Lesbians in
The campaign for lesbian rights began in the
Some lesbian activists have used lesbian pornography as a political gesture which enables them to take control over their own sexual pleasure. This is a contentious issue, as others argue that the use of pornography is a submission to male power structures and that pornographic images of lesbians are used by men, invariably making lesbians the objects of male eroticism.
Legal Rights
Although countries such as
Homosexuality, sexual attraction to, and physical and emotional involvement with, someone of the same gender: male with male, female with female. As first used, the term referred to women as well as men, though more recently terms such as "gay" or "lesbian", with a variety of national variations, have been increasingly used to describe specific identities organized around homosexual desires.
Homosexuality, like heterosexuality, is found in all cultures at all periods of history. However, it has been subject to thousands of years of prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, enshrined in religious and legal prohibitions and popular fear, and has often been met with violent opposition. Yet, there are many cultures that have managed to integrate some aspects of homosexuality into acceptable and recognized social forms, and, since the 1960s, in most Western countries at least, male and female homosexuals have become vocal advocates of their own cause.
The term "homosexuality" was not invented until the 1860s, and its emergence reflected a growing awareness of the existence of diverse sexual patterns. The term was intended to be a more neutral alternative to the traditional language of sin, degeneracy, and perversion that had dominated thinking about same-sex activities in the West, and which had their roots in biblical prohibitions. However, the word soon became part of the new language of sexology (the scientific study of sexual behaviour); for many, homosexuality moved from being a sin to being a sickness.
The Search for Causes
The definition of homosexuality as a medical or psychological condition led to a preoccupation with the "causes" of homosexuality. The fact that few people have undertaken enquiry into the causes of heterosexuality indicates the dominance of the view that homosexuality was an abnormality that needed to be explained, while heterosexuality, which leads to procreation, was, and still is, seen as the unquestioned norm of human sexuality. However, after a century of debate and scientific enquiry, the question of causation remains as inconclusive as ever.
The biological theory argues that homosexuality is an inbuilt, and probably hereditary, condition that affects some people and not others. Negatively, it can be seen as a pathological distortion of the natural sexual drive, caused perhaps by imbalances of hormones or chromosomal (genetic) accidents, or more recently, in a surprising rebirth of biological explanations-the result of a "gay gene" or a "gay brain", as suggested by the American scientists Dean Hamer and Simon LeVay. Such explanations have led in turn to more positive views of homosexuality. If homosexuality has a biological explanation, and is a specific sexual orientation, might it not be as "natural" as heterosexuality? Many homosexual activists have in fact argued this since the 19th century. However attractive such explanations are to homosexual activists, they-like the negative views-have the misfortune of being completely unproven, and one suspects, unprovable.
The second approach has concentrated on understanding the psychological reasons for homosexuality. The most famous thinker associated with such explanations is Sigmund Freud, who, building on earlier sexological explanations, attempted to understand what he called "sexual inversion" in terms of the universal bisexuality of human beings rather than in terms of the biological make-up of a distinct group of people. Accordng to Freud, homosexuality resulted from the specific patterns of interaction with parents and the complex and universal processes through which the naturally bisexual infant became an adult. Homosexuality, then, like heterosexuality, in fact resulted from an inhibition of the sexual drive. As a working hypothesis this has been enormously influential, though in subsequent debates it has also led to enormous confusions. Does a child become homosexual because of a weak father and strong mother, or because of an over-dominant father and a weak mother? Both explanations have been frequently offered, and equally often fail to match the biographical facts of individual homosexuals.
Cultural Variations in Attitudes
One further problem is what is claimed as a universal process can be refuted by the sheer variety of patterns of sexuality on a world scale. Recent approaches have tended to try to understand homosexuality in social and historical terms, concentrating less on what causes homosexuality and more on what shapes attitudes towards it. Different cultures respond to homosexuality in different ways, and this in turn helps to determine whether it is possible to live a homosexual life or develop a distinctive homosexual identity.
On a world scale there seems to have been two social patterns that allowed a certain acceptance of some aspects of (usually male) homosexuality. The first, which can be seen historically in cultures as far apart as East Asia, Melanesia, the Islamic world, and the ancient Mediterranean, more or less tolerated homosexual behaviour as long as it was between an adult male and a youth, usually as part of the processes by which the young male was accepted as a full man. It did not normally affect traditional family life. The second great pattern, embracing cultures from the
There have been various attempts to assess the percentage of the population that is predominantly or exclusively homosexual. The work of Alfred Kinsey in the late 1940s has been used to suggest that this was as many as 10 per cent, although more recent research has tended to suggest a much lower figure-perhaps 1 to 2 per cent in Britain, France, and the United States. However, the worldwide evidence suggests that this is a misleading way of posing the issue or assessing incidence; while Western-style identities have begun to spread throughout the world, they are by no means the dominant or only ways of living homosexuality. In many parts of the world, ranging from Turkey to large parts of East Asia, Africa, and South America, homosexuality remains a taboo. Even in Western countries, prejudice remains, and legal systems are often discriminatory.
Recent Social Developments
Neither the Mediterranean nor the tribal cultural pattern allowed the emergence of what has become the dominant Western pattern in the 20th century: the idea that homosexuality could form the basis for a separate sexual and social identity and way of life. This idea probably first emerged in the new urban cultures that developed from the early modern period. Cities allowed groups of people who felt differently to come together in relative anonymity, and develop alternative lifestyles. At first, these subcultures, usually of what were seen as effeminate men, and to a smaller extent masculine women, were secretive and subject to strong persecution. During the 20th century, however, they gave rise to ever more complex social networks, and to a strong sense of community among self-identified homosexuals, who were beginning to resist the hostile labelling of them as sick or inadequate.
This was the basis for the gay liberation movement which emerged powerfully in the United States in 1969, symbolically originating in the New York Stonewall Riots in June of that year, and soon rapidly becoming influential throughout North America, Australia, and Western Europe. This movement has been very influential, even for the many who never took part. It asserted the equal validity of homosexuality with heterosexuality; it rejected medicalizing terms, and popularized new self-descriptions, such as "gay"; it emphasized the importance of "coming out"-becoming identified-as a lesbian or a gay man; and, above all, it affirmed the importance of pride in being lesbian and gay.
The Effects of AIDS and Beyond
The strength of these new identities, and the communities that were built around them, was demonstrated in the early 1980s with the sudden emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. First emerging in American cities, where the gay communities were strongest and most visible, it disproportionately affected gay men, and fed a growing moral backlash against the gains of the gay movement over the previous decade. This had the effect of producing a new solidarity among lesbians and gay men, which in turn provided the means for a concerted campaign to fight the epidemic. It was from within the gay communities themselves that care and support for the sick, the idea of "safer sex", and large-scale fund-raising emerged. In combating a frightening epidemic, the lesbian and gay community came of age.
The idea that lesbians and gays are a distinct group of people has been challenged radically by "queer activists" who argue that sexuality is a matter of choice, and that the divide between homosexuality and heterosexuality is a social and historical one, rather than one based in any fundamental, essential, or biological reality. This has returned the focus of the debate to causation. It is possible that some people develop predominantly homosexual desires as a result of a variety of genetic, psychological, or social factors; this is still not known. In the end, however, causation is not the important question. What ultimately matters is whether homosexuality offers the possibility for viable life choices, and a fulfilling way of living. The evidence of recent years is clearly that it can, though resistance to this evidence is still very strong.
Heterosexuality, sexual attraction to those of the opposite sex. The term was coined in the late 19th century to provide an alternative concept to the categories of homosexuality and bisexuality, newly defined by German sexologists. Until this period, there was no concept of heterosexuality; heterosexuals were simply seen as "normal", and those of other orientations as pathological.
All societies seem to be predominantly heterosexual, presumably because of the association of sexuality with reproduction, although today's increased availability of birth control has meant that people are more likely to engage in heterosexual sexual behaviour for pleasure rather than primarily for procreation. Many forms of heterosexual behaviour are stigmatized just as homosexuality and bisexual behaviour have been. Such deviations from the predominant Christian ideology of "normal" sexual relations as fetishism or group sex are taboo in many cultures, and many religious faiths condemn any intercourse if it is outside marriage or for purely pleasurable reasons.
Exactly what determines people's sexual orientation, heterosexual or otherwise, is unclear. Sexuality was typically seen as a natural, innate force until social influences became increasingly recognized as contributory factors. More recently, genetic predisposition to different types of sexuality has been considered.
Some social scientists have suggested that heterosexuality is a social institution like marriage, and that most people live heterosexual lifestyles at least partly because it is the social norm. Radical feminists went even further and suggested that heterosexuality was an institutionalized means of oppressing women and in the 1970s some heterosexual feminists adopted homosexual lifestyles as a form of political action.
Bisexuality, sexual attraction to both sexes.
Bisexual people are able to fantasize about and enjoy both homosexual and heterosexual acts of lovemaking, although some bisexual people prefer one gender of partner more than the other. Bisexuality should not be confused with transvestitism, which is wearing the clothes and adopting the appearance of a person of the opposite sex, or with transsexualism, which is identification with the gender role of the person's opposite sex. However, it is not true to say that transsexuals or transvestites may not be bisexual. Bisexual people generally are content with the gender they were born to; as may have been believed, they do not possess both sets of sexual organs, as does a hermaphrodite.
Background
Historically, bisexuality was condoned and approved of in ancient Greece, specifically with regard to relationships occurring particularly between older, often married, men and youths as a form of friendship or as an initiatory and teaching relationship. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Greek heroes are sexually active with partners of both genders. Among some Polynesian societies this is still the case.
Research and anecdotal evidence suggests that bisexuality is far more prevalent than exclusive homosexuality, and that it is a sexual identity shared by millions of people worldwide. In the 1940s, in a major social research programme, Alfred Charles Kinsey examined patterns of sexual behaviour and found that 37 per cent of men in the United States had experienced homosexual orgasms; some 25 per cent of men had had incidental homosexual encounters (13 per cent for women). However, as only 5 to 10 per cent of men considered themselves homosexual, it is clear that same-gender sex is neither unusual nor exclusive to homosexuals. Kinsey found that some people had no preference as to their partner's gender; in others, sexual identity had not become fixed, or they had a sexual identity that included both.
Theories of Bisexuality
It has been suggested that human sexual orientation exists along a continuum. This has been an existing theory since scientific examination of sexuality began in the 19th century. Sigmund Freud suggested that sexual life included the child's capacity to gain pleasure from many different body zones. He described infants and children as "polymorphously perverse"-that they could gain sexual pleasure from almost anything. Carl Jung linked bisexuality to the presence in the unconscious of a person's opposite gender. This he called the "anima" (the woman in the man), and "animus" (the man in the woman), which he said exist as "potentials".
Despite the widespread inclination of men and women to reproduce, there is no hard evidence that humans have an inborn instinct towards gender-specific sexual behaviour-that is, being attracted to one gender only throughout life. If this were not so, attachment to parents of the same gender would be difficult, as would close intimacy with same-gender siblings or friends. Adolescents often develop strong attractions ("crushes") for same-gender friends as part of normal sexual maturation. Hence, in psychoanalytical theories, bisexuality is a normal part of childhood experience. Its presence in adulthood may be non-differentiation from this state, or the fulfilment of more than one potential.
Problems arise for bisexual people as most societies have particular taboos that make multiple or varied sexual choices difficult. This can lead to bisexual people feeling that they have to make a forced choice to enter into either exclusive heterosexual or homosexual relationships, which therefore possibly causes emotional distress to them and their partners. Guilt can arise from the difference between who they really are and how they want to live, and who they believe society expects them to be.
Transsexualism, belief that one is born in the wrong gender. It is characterized by strong identification with the gender role of the opposite sex.
Transsexuals adopt the dress, mannerisms, and, usually but not always, the typical sexual preferences of the opposite sex. The pre-operative transsexual may also be prescribed hormones prior to being offered, or actively seeking sex reassignment surgery (SRS; commonly known as sex-change) to alter their physical appearance further.
SRS is available to male and female transsexuals in many countries, with the Netherlands in the forefront, and the numbers requesting such a transition are growing. In biological men, the penis and testicles are removed and a functional vagina is created. Feminizing hormones such as oestrogen are taken to enlarge the breasts, and electrolysis is used for hair removal. Oestrogen does not, however, make the male voice less deep. Biological females can choose to have a mastectomy (and nipple reconstruction) and a hysterectomy; male genitalia may be created, but this process involves many operations and it is not yet possible for such penises to become spontaneously erect. The male hormone testosterone is usually prescribed, producing secondary male characteristics such as body hair and deepening of the voice. It does not alter skeletal shape, and only alters muscular bulk if body-building is carried out. Unlike the effects of oestrogen on biological males, which can be reversed, the effects of male hormones on female-to-male transsexuals are irreversible.
Some doctors believe the gender identification of transsexuals is pathological (abnormal)-it is often known as "gender dysphoria"-and that psychiatry to "treat" the patient, that is, to dissuade the individual from gender reassignment, is preferable treatment to surgery and the major social implications of changing gender. Others distinguish between "genuine" transsexuals and those who are confused about various things in their lives. A "true" transsexual is less likely to have other psychological disorders or psychoses and will not change their minds at a later stage. Pre-operative transsexuals are usually seen by a psychiatrist specializing in the field. Before recommending surgical intervention, and assured that the patient is not suffering from other mental disorders, the psychiatrist encourages the patient to adapt his or her appearance and adopt the mannerisms and perceived social behaviour of the chosen gender for a minimum of two years. The duration of this period may depend on how convincing the patients initially present themselves.
During this transition period hormones may be prescribed, and the person should be medically monitored for side-effects and other health problems. For example, a female-to male transsexual may need to be assessed by an endocrinologist to check on pre-treatment testosterone levels (as some gynaecological ailments would be worsened by testosterone being introduced into the system) and have liver function and processes monitored. Therefore, the gender reassignment process is not simply based on psychological assessments and learning to adopt the appearance of the chosen gender, but to make the transition without endangering health.
Transsexualism does not denote sexual preference; a transsexual of either type may be heterosexual or gay, although many assume that all are heterosexual. That is, a male-to-female transsexual, having become a woman, may prefer female partners; she is therefore a lesbian.
Transsexualism should not be confused with transvestism, which is mimicry of the physical appearance of the opposite sex without necessarily having the desire to become it. Research recently carried out in the Netherlands suggests that the brains of transsexuals may have differences from other people in a tiny group of cells called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST); samples taken from the bodies of six male-to-female transsexuals had smaller BSTs than the norm, but it remains to be seen whether these cells were thus sized from birth or reduced as a result of environment and experience.
Mental Disorders, abnormal or unstable behaviour, thoughts, or feelings. People are defined as mentally disordered because they behave, think, or feel differently from most others. However, even the most bizarre and strange behaviour can often make sense, once it is understood why the person is thinking and feeling that way. It is impossible to identify the precise number of people suffering from mental disorders, but it has been suggested that they may affect some 15 per cent of the population in developed countries.
Psychiatrists have developed systems for classifying mental disorders that describe the kinds of symptoms and behaviour which are commonly seen among those considered to be mentally disordered. These fall into two main groups: personality disorders, and psychoses. Another common group of disorders is usually termed anxiety disorders.
Personality Disorders
Personality disorders are demonstrated in many forms. In severe cases it affects the person's ability to lead a normal life; in milder instances it may mean that a person is seen as being slightly eccentric, or as having mildly compulsive habits, or finding it difficult to make friends. Serious personality disorder is more often associated with anti-social behaviour, and problems in dealing with others. The most widely known form of personality disorder is psychopathic disorder. Personality disorders involve personality traits which are so inflexible that they make it impossible for the person to exist socially or to hold down a job and may cause considerable distress to others if not to the people themselves.
Those with anti-social personality disorders have a history of violating the rights of others and failing to observe socially accepted norms. Borderline personality disorder is marked by unstable behaviour towards others, and in mood and self-image. A person with an avoidant personality disorder is hypersensitive to potential rejection, humiliation, or shame. The dependent personality is overly passive, always allowing others to assume responsibility. Compulsive personalities are perfectionists and unable to express warm feelings. The passive-aggressive personality resists demands indirectly by procrastination and dawdling. These latter four may be considered in the milder range of personality disorders.
Personality disorder is not a mental illness that tends to develop quite suddenly and usually in response to particular stresses. Personality disorder develops slowly, as the person grows up, and is thought to be mainly due to environment and upbringing. For example, someone who grows up in a family where they are constantly criticized and shouted at may develop an anxious, neurotic personality. Similarly, someone who grows up in a family where everyone is aggressive and violent may develop an anti-social or paranoid personality. A growing body of evidence suggests that early sexual abuse also distorts personality development.
The psychopathic personality, or psychopath, usually shows the signs of being abnormal very early in life. Truanting and stealing are common, and some will enjoy showing deliberate cruelty to animals or to other children. Typically such people have a long history of anti-social and violent behaviour by the time they become adults. Sometimes their violent behaviour includes sexual offences such as rape, and some become murderers.
Research done mainly in the United States suggests that serious personality disorder, such as psychopathy, may be linked to brain abnormality. The cause of the abnormality is also disputed: while some believe it is genetic, others think that it is the result of brain injury which may have happened when the child was physically abused by a violent parent, or it may come from birth difficulties or an early head injury.
Brain damage may also produce unusual behaviour and symptoms of mental illness. If the injury happens early in life, it can affect the later development of the sufferer's personality and behaviour. It is becoming accepted that the earlier the injury occurs, the more generalized the effect will be. Some forms of brain injury produce symptoms which mimic mental illness, and people who have suffered brain injury appear to be more prone to develop mental illness afterwards.
Diseases of the brain can also produce symptoms of mental illness. Older people may suffer from destruction of the brain tissue as a result of dementia, often caused by Alzheimer's disease, and this can result in disturbed perceptions, speech, memory, or behaviour. Epilepsy, which is a disturbance of the electrical activity of the brain, is rarely associated with severe mental disorder, even though resulting fits may appear dramatic and frightening. For most sufferers drugs can now control these for much or all of the time.
Intelligence, capacity to learn or to understand. It is generally synonymous with intellect but is usually differentiated from intellect in practice to emphasize ability or efficiency in dealing with concrete situations and in profiting intellectually from sensory experience.
In psychology, intelligence is somewhat more narrowly defined as the capacity to acquire knowledge or understanding and to use it in novel situations. Under experimental conditions, the success of people in adjusting their behaviour to the total situation or in meeting the challenge of the specific situation may be studied and, to some extent, measured in quantitative terms.
Psychologists believe that the capacities measured in testing or laboratory situations are necessary in everyday life, where individuals have to analyse or take in new sensory and mental information so that they can direct their actions towards desired goals. There are differing opinions, however, as to a precise definition of the comprehensiveness and functions of intelligence; for example, one school of thought considers it to be a sum of specific abilities best displayed in specific situations.
In the formulation of intelligence tests, most psychologists tend to treat intelligence as a general ability operating as a common factor in a wide variety of special aptitudes. It is observed and measured by techniques focused upon these aptitudes singly or in combination.
Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) Encyclopedia. ( Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Brain, portion of the central nervous system contained within the skull. The brain is the control center for movement, sleep, hunger, thirst, and virtually every other vital activity necessary to survival. All human emotions—including love, hate, fear, anger, elation, and sadness—are controlled by the brain. It also receives and interprets the countless signals that are sent to it from other parts of the body and from the external environment. The brain makes us conscious, emotional, and intelligent.
II. ANATOMY
The adult human brain is a 1.3-kg (3-lb) mass of pinkish-gray jellylike tissue made up of approximately 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons; neuroglia (supporting-tissue) cells; and vascular (blood-carrying) and other tissues.
Between the brain and the cranium—the part of the skull that directly covers the brain—are three protective membranes, or meninges. The outermost membrane, the dura mater, is the toughest and thickest. Below the dura mater is a middle membrane, called the arachnoid layer. The innermost membrane, the pia mater, consists mainly of small blood vessels and follows the contours of the surface of the brain.
A clear liquid, the cerebrospinal fluid, bathes the entire brain and fills a series of four cavities, called ventricles, near the center of the brain. The cerebrospinal fluid protects the internal portion of the brain from varying pressures and transports chemical substances within the nervous system.
From the outside, the brain appears as three distinct but connected parts: the cerebrum (the Latin word for brain)—two large, almost symmetrical hemispheres; the cerebellum (“little brain”)—two smaller hemispheres located at the back of the cerebrum; and the brain stem—a central core that gradually becomes the spinal cord, exiting the skull through an opening at its base called the foramen magnum. Two other major parts of the brain, the thalamus and the hypothalamus, lie in the midline above the brain stem underneath the cerebellum.
The brain and the spinal cord together make up the central nervous system, which communicates with the rest of the body through the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system consists of 12 pairs of cranial nerves extending from the cerebrum and brain stem; a system of other nerves branching throughout the body from the spinal cord; and the autonomic nervous system, which regulates vital functions not under conscious control, such as the activity of the heart muscle, smooth muscle (involuntary muscle found in the skin, blood vessels, and internal organs
A. Cerebrum
Most high-level brain functions take place in the cerebrum. Its two large hemispheres make up approximately 85 percent of the brain's weight. The exterior surface of the cerebrum, the cerebral cortex, is a convoluted, or folded, grayish layer of cell bodies known as the gray matter. The gray matter covers an underlying mass of fibers called the white matter. The convolutions are made up of ridgelike bulges, known as gyri, separated by small grooves called sulci and larger grooves called fissures. Approximately two-thirds of the cortical surface is hidden in the folds of the sulci. The extensive convolutions enable a very large surface area of brain cortex—about 1.5 m2 (16 ft2) in an adult—to fit within the cranium. The pattern of these convolutions is similar, although not identical, in all humans.
The two cerebral hemispheres are partially separated from each other by a deep fold known as the longitudinal fissure. Communication between the two hemispheres is through several concentrated bundles of axons, called commissures, the largest of which is the corpus callosum.
Several major sulci divide the cortex into distinguishable regions. The central sulcus, or Rolandic fissure, runs from the middle of the top of each hemisphere downward, forward, and toward another major sulcus, the lateral (“side”), or Sylvian, sulcus. These and other sulci and gyri divide the cerebrum into five lobes: the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes and the insula.
The frontal lobe is the largest of the five and consists of all the cortex in front of the central sulcus. Broca's area, a part of the cortex related to speech, is located in the frontal lobe. The parietal lobe consists of the cortex behind the central sulcus to a sulcus near the back of the cerebrum known as the parieto-occipital sulcus. The parieto-occipital sulcus, in turn, forms the front border of the occipital lobe, which is the rearmost part of the cerebrum. The temporal lobe is to the side of and below the lateral sulcus. Wernicke's area, a part of the cortex related to the understanding of language, is located in the temporal lobe. The insula lies deep within the folds of the lateral sulcus.
The cerebrum receives information from all the sense organs and sends motor commands (signals that result in activity in the muscles or glands) to other parts of the brain and the rest of the body. Motor commands are transmitted by the motor cortex, a strip of cerebral cortex extending from side to side across the top of the cerebrum just in front of the central sulcus. The sensory cortex, a parallel strip of cerebral cortex just in back of the central sulcus, receives input from the sense organs.
Many other areas of the cerebral cortex have also been mapped according to their specific functions, such as vision, hearing, speech, emotions, language, and other aspects of perceiving, thinking, and remembering. Cortical regions known as associative cortex are responsible for integrating multiple inputs, processing the information, and carrying out complex responses.
B. Cerebellum
The cerebellum coordinates body movements. Located at the lower back of the brain beneath the occipital lobes, the cerebellum is divided into two lateral (side-by-side) lobes connected by a fingerlike bundle of white fibers called the vermis. The outer layer, or cortex, of the cerebellum consists of fine folds called folia. As in the cerebrum, the outer layer of cortical gray matter surrounds a deeper layer of white matter and nuclei (groups of nerve cells). Three fiber bundles called cerebellar peduncles connect the cerebellum to the three parts of the brain stem—the midbrain, the pons, and the medulla oblongata.
The cerebellum coordinates voluntary movements by fine-tuning commands from the motor cortex in the cerebrum. The cerebellum also maintains posture and balance by controlling muscle tone and sensing the position of the limbs. All motor activity, from hitting a baseball to fingering a violin, depends on the cerebellum.
C. Thalamus and Hypothalamus
The thalamus and the hypothalamus lie underneath the cerebrum and connect it to the brain stem. The thalamus consists of two rounded masses of gray tissue lying within the middle of the brain, between the two cerebral hemispheres. The thalamus is the main relay station for incoming sensory signals to the cerebral cortex and for outgoing motor signals from it. All sensory input to the brain, except that of the sense of smell, connects to individual nuclei of the thalamus.
The hypothalamus lies beneath the thalamus on the midline at the base of the brain. It regulates or is involved directly in the control of many of the body's vital drives and activities, such as eating, drinking, temperature regulation, sleep, emotional behavior, and sexual activity. It also controls the function of internal body organs by means of the autonomic nervous system, interacts closely with the pituitary gland, and helps coordinate activities of the brain stem.
D. Brain Stem
The brain stem is evolutionarily the most primitive part of the brain and is responsible for sustaining the basic functions of life, such as breathing and blood pressure. It includes three main structures lying between and below the two cerebral hemispheres—the midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata.
1. Midbrain
The topmost structure of the brain stem is the midbrain. It contains major relay stations for neurons transmitting signals to the cerebral cortex, as well as many reflex centers—pathways carrying sensory (input) information and motor (output) commands. Relay and reflex centers for visual and auditory (hearing) functions are located in the top portion of the midbrain. A pair of nuclei called the superior colliculus control reflex actions of the eye, such as blinking, opening and closing the pupil, and focusing the lens. A second pair of nuclei, called the inferior colliculus, control auditory reflexes, such as adjusting the ear to the volume of sound. At the bottom of the midbrain are reflex and relay centers relating to pain, temperature, and touch, as well as several regions associated with the control of movement, such as the red nucleus and the substantia nigra.
2. Pons
Continuous with and below the midbrain and directly in front of the cerebellum is a prominent bulge in the brain stem called the pons. The pons consists of large bundles of nerve fibers that connect the two halves of the cerebellum and also connect each side of the cerebellum with the opposite-side cerebral hemisphere. The pons serves mainly as a relay station linking the cerebral cortex and the medulla oblongata.
3. Medulla Oblongata
The long, stalklike lowermost portion of the brain stem is called the medulla oblongata. At the top, it is continuous with the pons and the midbrain; at the bottom, it makes a gradual transition into the spinal cord at the foramen magnum. Sensory and motor nerve fibers connecting the brain and the rest of the body cross over to the opposite side as they pass through the medulla. Thus, the left half of the brain communicates with the right half of the body, and the right half of the brain with the left half of the body.
4. Reticular Formation
Running up the brain stem from the medulla oblongata through the pons and the midbrain is a netlike formation of nuclei known as the reticular formation. The reticular formation controls respiration, cardiovascular function (see Heart), digestion, levels of alertness, and patterns of sleep. It also determines which parts of the constant flow of sensory information into the body are received by the cerebrum.
E. Brain Cells
There are two main types of brain cells: neurons and neuroglia. Neurons are responsible for the transmission and analysis of all electrochemical communication within the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Each neuron is composed of a cell body called a soma, a major fiber called an axon, and a system of branches called dendrites. Axons, also called nerve fibers, convey electrical signals away from the soma and can be up to 1 m (3.3 ft) in length. Most axons are covered with a protective sheath of myelin, a substance made of fats and protein, which insulates the axon. Myelinated axons conduct neuronal signals faster than do unmyelinated axons. Dendrites convey electrical signals toward the soma, are shorter than axons, and are usually multiple and branching.
Neuroglial cells are twice as numerous as neurons and account for half of the brain's weight. Neuroglia (from glia, Greek for “glue”) provide structural support to the neurons. Neuroglial cells also form myelin, guide developing neurons, take up chemicals involved in cell-to-cell communication, and contribute to the maintenance of the environment around neurons.
F. Cranial Nerves
Twelve pairs of cranial nerves arise symmetrically from the base of the brain and are numbered, from front to back, in the order in which they arise. They connect mainly with structures of the head and neck, such as the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, tongue, and throat. Some are motor nerves, controlling muscle movement; some are sensory nerves, conveying information from the sense organs; and others contain fibers for both sensory and motor impulses. The first and second pairs of cranial nerves—the olfactory (smell) nerve and the optic (vision) nerve—carry sensory information from the nose and eyes, respectively, to the undersurface of the cerebral hemispheres. The other ten pairs of cranial nerves originate in or end in the brain stem.
III. HOW THE BRAIN WORKS
WORLD OF SCIENCE
Brain Similarities Found in Chimpanzees and Humans
Is the ability to learn language as unique to humans as people have always assumed? Or is it possible that other primates, such as chimpanzees, also have language? An article from the January 1998 Encarta Yearbook raises some interesting questions.
The brain functions by complex neuronal, or nerve cell, circuits (see Neurophysiology). Communication between neurons is both electrical and chemical and always travels from the dendrites of a neuron, through its soma, and out its axon to the dendrites of another neuron.
Dendrites of one neuron receive signals from the axons of other neurons through chemicals known as neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters set off electrical charges in the dendrites, which then carry the signals electrochemically to the soma. The soma integrates the information, which is then transmitted electrochemically down the axon to its tip.
At the tip of the axon, small, bubblelike structures called vesicles release neurotransmitters that carry the signal across the synapse, or gap, between two neurons. There are many types of neurotransmitters, including norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin. Neurotransmitters can be excitatory (that is, they excite an electrochemical response in the dendrite receptors) or inhibitory (they block the response of the dendrite receptors).
One neuron may communicate with thousands of other neurons, and many thousands of neurons are involved with even the simplest behavior. It is believed that these connections and their efficiency can be modified, or altered, by experience.
Scientists have used two primary approaches to studying how the brain works. One approach is to study brain function after parts of the brain have been damaged. Functions that disappear or that are no longer normal after injury to specific regions of the brain can often be associated with the damaged areas. The second approach is to study the response of the brain to direct stimulation or to stimulation of various sense organs.
Neurons are grouped by function into collections of cells called nuclei. These nuclei are connected to form sensory, motor, and other systems. Scientists can study the function of somatosensory (pain and touch), motor, olfactory, visual, auditory, language, and other systems by measuring the physiological (physical and chemical) changes that occur in the brain when these senses are activated. For example, electroencephalography (EEG) measures the electrical activity of specific groups of neurons through electrodes attached to the surface of the skull. Electrodes inserted directly into the brain can give readings of individual neurons. Changes in blood flow, glucose (sugar), or oxygen consumption in groups of active cells can also be mapped.
Although the brain appears symmetrical, how it functions is not. Each hemisphere is specialized and dominates the other in certain functions. Research has shown that hemispheric dominance is related to whether a person is predominantly right-handed or left-handed (see Handedness). In most right-handed people, the left hemisphere processes arithmetic, language, and speech. The right hemisphere interprets music, complex imagery, and spatial relationships and recognizes and expresses emotion. In left-handed people, the pattern of brain organization is more variable.
Hemispheric specialization has traditionally been studied in people who have sustained damage to the connections between the two hemispheres, as may occur with stroke, an interruption of blood flow to an area of the brain that causes the death of nerve cells in that area. The division of functions between the two hemispheres has also been studied in people who have had to have the connection between the two hemispheres surgically cut in order to control severe epilepsy, a neurological disease characterized by convulsions and loss of consciousness.
A. Vision
The visual system of humans is one of the most advanced sensory systems in the body (see Vision). More information is conveyed visually than by any other means. In addition to the structures of the eye itself, several cortical regions—collectively called primary visual and visual associative cortex—as well as the midbrain are involved in the visual system. Conscious processing of visual input occurs in the primary visual cortex, but reflexive—that is, immediate and unconscious—responses occur at the superior colliculus in the midbrain. Associative cortical regions—specialized regions that can associate, or integrate, multiple inputs—in the parietal and frontal lobes along with parts of the temporal lobe are also involved in the processing of visual information and the establishment of visual memories.
B. Language
Language involves specialized cortical regions in a complex interaction that allows the brain to comprehend and communicate abstract ideas. The motor cortex initiates impulses that travel through the brain stem to produce audible sounds. Neighboring regions of motor cortex, called the supplemental motor cortex, are involved in sequencing and coordinating sounds. Broca's area of the frontal lobe is responsible for the sequencing of language elements for output. The comprehension of language is dependent upon Wernicke's area of the temporal lobe. Other cortical circuits connect these areas.
C. Memory
The Machinery of Thought
Scientists do not completely understand how memory is stored in the human brain. Some researchers believe that short-term and long-term memories reside in separate regions of the brain.
Memory is usually considered a diffusely stored associative process—that is, it puts together information from many different sources. Although research has failed to identify specific sites in the brain as locations of individual memories, certain brain areas are critical for memory to function. Immediate recall—the ability to repeat short series of words or numbers immediately after hearing them—is thought to be located in the auditory associative cortex. Short-term memory—the ability to retain a limited amount of information for up to an hour—is located in the deep temporal lobe. Long-term memory probably involves exchanges between the medial temporal lobe, various cortical regions, and the midbrain.
D. The Autonomic Nervous System
The autonomic nervous system regulates the life support systems of the body reflexively—that is, without conscious direction. It automatically controls the muscles of the heart, digestive system, and lungs; certain glands; and homeostasis—that is, the equilibrium of the internal environment of the body (see Physiology). The autonomic nervous system itself is controlled by nerve centers in the spinal cord and brain stem and is fine-tuned by regions higher in the brain, such as the midbrain and cortex. Reactions such as blushing indicate that cognitive, or thinking, centers of the brain are also involved in autonomic responses.
IV. BRAIN DISORDERS
Quiet Miracles of the Brain
This article taken from National Geographic discusses the functions of the brain, and the new medical techniques that help the brain recover from serious injury and disease.
The brain is guarded by several highly developed protective mechanisms. The bony cranium, the surrounding meninges, and the cerebrospinal fluid all contribute to the mechanical protection of the brain. In addition, a filtration system called the blood-brain barrier protects the brain from exposure to potentially harmful substances carried in the bloodstream.
Brain disorders have a wide range of causes, including head injury, stroke, bacterial diseases, complex chemical imbalances, and changes associated with aging.
A. Head Injury
Head injury can initiate a cascade of damaging events. After a blow to the head, a person may be stunned or may become unconscious for a moment. This injury, called a concussion, usually leaves no permanent damage. If the blow is more severe and hemorrhage (excessive bleeding) and swelling occur, however, severe headache, dizziness, paralysis, a convulsion, or temporary blindness may result, depending on the area of the brain affected. Damage to the cerebrum can also result in profound personality changes.
Damage to Broca's area in the frontal lobe causes difficulty in speaking and writing, a problem known as Broca's aphasia. Injury to Wernicke's area in the left temporal lobe results in an inability to comprehend spoken language, called Wernicke's aphasia.
An injury or disturbance to a part of the hypothalamus may cause a variety of different symptoms, such as loss of appetite with an extreme drop in body weight; increase in appetite leading to obesity; extraordinary thirst with excessive urination (diabetes insipidus); failure in body-temperature control, resulting in either low temperature (hypothermia) or high temperature (fever); excessive emotionality; and uncontrolled anger or aggression. If the relationship between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland is damaged (see Endocrine System), other vital bodily functions may be disturbed, such as sexual function, metabolism, and cardiovascular activity.
Injury to the brain stem is even more serious because it houses the nerve centers that control breathing and heart action. Damage to the medulla oblongata usually results in immediate death.
B. Stroke
A stroke is damage to the brain due to an interruption in blood flow. The interruption may be caused by a blood clot (see Embolism; Thrombosis), constriction of a blood vessel, or rupture of a vessel accompanied by bleeding. A pouchlike expansion of the wall of a blood vessel, called an aneurysm, may weaken and burst, for example, because of high blood pressure.
Sufficient quantities of glucose and oxygen, transported through the bloodstream, are needed to keep nerve cells alive. When the blood supply to a small part of the brain is interrupted, the cells in that area die and the function of the area is lost. A massive stroke can cause a one-sided paralysis (hemiplegia) and sensory loss on the side of the body opposite the hemisphere damaged by the stroke.
C. Brain Diseases
Epilepsy is a broad term for a variety of brain disorders characterized by seizures, or convulsions. Epilepsy can result from a direct injury to the brain at birth or from a metabolic disturbance in the brain at any time later in life.
Some brain diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson disease, are progressive, becoming worse over time. Multiple sclerosis damages the myelin sheath around axons in the brain and spinal cord. As a result, the affected axons cannot transmit nerve impulses properly. Parkinson disease destroys the cells of the substantia nigra in the midbrain, resulting in a deficiency in the neurotransmitter dopamine that affects motor functions.
Cerebral palsy is a broad term for brain damage sustained close to birth that permanently affects motor function. The damage may take place either in the developing fetus, during birth, or just after birth and is the result of the faulty development or breaking down of motor pathways. Cerebral palsy is nonprogressive—that is, it does not worsen with time.
A bacterial infection in the cerebrum (see Encephalitis) or in the coverings of the brain (see Meningitis), swelling of the brain (see Edema), or an abnormal growth of healthy brain tissue (see Tumor) can all cause an increase in intracranial pressure and result in serious damage to the brain.
Scientists are finding that certain brain chemical imbalances are associated with mental illness such as schizophrenia and depression. Such findings have changed scientific understanding of mental health and have resulted in new treatments that chemically correct these imbalances.
During childhood development, the brain is particularly susceptible to damage because of the rapid growth and reorganization of nerve connections. Problems that originate in the immature brain can appear as epilepsy or other brain-function problems in adulthood.
Several neurological problems are common in aging. Alzheimer's disease damages many areas of the brain, including the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. The brain tissue of people with Alzheimer's disease shows characteristic patterns of damaged neurons, known as plaques and tangles. Alzheimer's disease produces a progressive dementia (see Senile Dementia), characterized by symptoms such as failing attention and memory, loss of mathematical ability, irritability, and poor orientation in space and time.
V. BRAIN IMAGING
Several commonly used diagnostic methods give images of the brain without invading the skull. Some portray anatomy—that is, the structure of the brain—whereas others measure brain function. Two or more methods may be used to complement each other, together providing a more complete picture than would be possible by one method alone.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), introduced in the early 1980s, beams high-frequency radio waves into the brain in a highly magnetized field that causes the protons that form the nuclei of hydrogen atoms in the brain to reemit the radio waves. The reemitted radio waves are analyzed by computer to create thin cross-sectional images of the brain. MRI provides the most detailed images of the brain and is safer than imaging methods that use X rays. However, MRI is a lengthy process and also cannot be used with people who have pacemakers or metal implants, both of which are adversely affected by the magnetic field.
Computed tomography (CT), also known as CT scans, developed in the early 1970s. This imaging method X-rays the brain from many different angles, feeding the information into a computer that produces a series of cross-sectional images. CT is particularly useful for diagnosing blood clots and brain tumors. It is a much quicker process than magnetic resonance imaging and is therefore advantageous in certain situations—for example, with people who are extremely ill.
Changes in brain function due to brain disorders can be visualized in several ways. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy measures the concentration of specific chemical compounds in the brain that may change during specific behaviors. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) maps changes in oxygen concentration that correspond to nerve cell activity.
Positron emission tomography (PET), developed in the mid-1970s, uses computed tomography to visualize radioactive tracers (see Isotopic Tracer), radioactive substances introduced into the brain intravenously or by inhalation. PET can measure such brain functions as cerebral metabolism, blood flow and volume, oxygen use, and the formation of neurotransmitters. Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), developed in the 1950s and 1960s, uses radioactive tracers to visualize the circulation and volume of blood in the brain.
Brain-imaging studies have provided new insights into sensory, motor, language, and memory processes, as well as brain disorders such as epilepsy; cerebrovascular disease; Alzheimer's, Parkinson, and Huntington's diseases (see Chorea); and various mental disorders, such as schizophrenia.
VI. EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN
In lower vertebrates, such as fish and reptiles, the brain is often tubular and bears a striking resemblance to the early embryonic stages of the brains of more highly evolved animals. In all vertebrates, the brain is divided into three regions: the forebrain (prosencephalon), the midbrain (mesencephalon), and the hindbrain (rhombencephalon). These three regions further subdivide into different structures, systems, nuclei, and layers.
The more highly evolved the animal, the more complex is the brain structure. Human beings have the most complex brains of all animals. Evolutionary forces have also resulted in a progressive increase in the size of the brain. In vertebrates lower than mammals, the brain is small. In meat-eating animals, particularly primates, the brain increases dramatically in size.
The cerebrum and cerebellum of higher mammals are highly convoluted in order to fit the most gray matter surface within the confines of the cranium. Such highly convoluted brains are called gyrencephalic. Many lower mammals have a smooth, or lissencephalic (“smooth head”), cortical surface.
There is also evidence of evolutionary adaption of the brain. For example, many birds depend on an advanced visual system to identify food at great distances while in flight. Consequently, their optic lobes and cerebellum are well developed, giving them keen sight and outstanding motor coordination in flight. Rodents, on the other hand, as nocturnal animals, do not have a well-developed visual system. Instead, they rely more heavily on other sensory systems, such as a highly developed sense of smell and facial whiskers.
VII. RECENT RESEARCH
INTERVIEWS
Encarta Interview: Steven Rose
British neurobiologist Steven Rose, professor of biology and director of the Brain and Behavior Research Group at The Open University in the United Kingdom, is a leading researcher into the nature of memory and a well-known science commentator.
Scientific understanding of the brain was dramatically changed in late 1998 when two independent discoveries revealed that brain cells can regenerate and that the fetal human brain contains master cells, known as neural stem cells, which can grow into any type of brain cell. Previously, scientists believed human brain cells could never regenerate themselves, although earlier studies of rodents, fish, reptiles, and birds had demonstrated that brain cell regeneration occurred in these animals. The new findings gave medical researchers hope that many brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson, could one day be cured, either by finding new drugs that encourage cell regeneration, or through brain cell transplants made possible by stem cell research.
In 2006 researchers reported the first computer interface device that can directly link a human brain to a computer. The BrainGate Neural Interface System allowed a paralyzed man to perform tasks simply by imagining the movements, including using a computer and manipulating robotic limbs. A sensor implanted in the man’s brain detected electrical activity from his motor cortex. An external processor then converted the signals into computerized form. The discovery that the brain signals that originally controlled a limb remain available and usable years after a spinal cord injury is a breakthrough. This pioneering neuroprosthetic system is seen as a first step toward computer interfaces with the brain that could bypass spinal cord injuries or disease-damaged nerves to reactivate paralyzed limbs.
The Human Genome Project also helped shed new light on the brain. When it was completed in 2003, scientists realized that about half of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 genes that make up human beings are devoted to the development, function, and structure of the brain.
Medical researchers also continue to investigate the effect of stress on the human brain and its influence on the human immune system. For example, stressful events can activate the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system and divert blood from the internal organs and skin to the brain and muscles. The stress response also affects the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, which regulate hormones, particularly the stress hormone cortisol. A better understanding of the brain-body connection may help medical researchers devise treatments for stress-related disorders.
Finally, recent research in brain function suggests that there may be sexual differences in both brain anatomy and brain function. One study indicated that men and women may use their brains differently while thinking. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe which parts of the brain were activated as groups of men and women tried to determine whether sets of nonsense words rhymed. Men used only Broca's area in this task, whereas women used Broca's area plus an area on the right side of the brain.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Although extensive research has been conducted on the brain’s role in cognition and memory, scientists have only recently begun to study the link between memory and emotions, particularly emotions such as fear. In this 1994 article for Scientific American, Joseph E. LeDoux explains what he and his fellow researchers have discovered about how animals learn fear and about how this understanding may help treat human patients with certain types of mental disorders.
Emotion, Memory and the Brain
The neural routes underlying the formation of memories about primitive emotional experiences, such as fear, have been traced
By Joseph E. LeDoux
Despite millennia of preoccupation with every facet of human emotion, we are still far from explaining in a rigorous physiological sense this part of our mental experience. Neuroscientists have, in modern times, been especially concerned with the neural basis of such cognitive processes as perception and memory. They have for the most part ignored the brain's role in emotion. Yet in recent years, interest in this mysterious mental terrain has surged. Catalyzed by breakthroughs in understanding the neural basis of cognition and by an increasingly sophisticated knowledge of the anatomical organization and physiology of the brain, investigators have begun to tackle the problem of emotion.
One quite rewarding area of research has been the inquiry into the relation between memory and emotion. Much of this examination has involved studies of one particular emotion—fear—and the manner in which specific events or stimuli come, through individual learning experiences, to evoke this state. Scientists, myself included, have been able to determine the way in which the brain shapes how we form memories about this basic, but significant, emotional event. We call this process 'emotional memory.'
By uncovering the neural pathways through which a situation causes a creature to learn about fear, we hope to elucidate the general mechanisms of this form of memory. Because many human mental disorders—including anxiety, phobia, post-traumatic stress syndrome and panic attack—involve malfunctions in the brain's ability to control fear, studies of the neural basis of this emotion may help us further understand and treat these disturbances.
Most of our knowledge about how the brain links memory and emotion has been gleaned through the study of so-called classical fear conditioning. In this process the subject, usually a rat, hears a noise or sees a flashing light that is paired with a brief, mild electric shock to its feet. After a few such experiences, the rat responds automatically to the sound or light, even in the absence of the shock. Its reactions are typical to any threatening situation: the animal freezes, its blood pressure and heart rate increase, and it startles easily. In the language of such experiments, the noise or flash is a conditioned stimulus, the foot shock is an unconditioned stimulus, and the rat's reaction is a conditioned response, which consists of readily measured behavioral and physiological changes.
Conditioning of this kind happens quickly in rats—indeed, it takes place as rapidly as it does in humans. A single pairing of the shock to the sound or sight can bring on the conditioned effect. Once established, the fearful reaction is relatively permanent. If the noise or light is administered many times without an accompanying electric shock, the rat's response diminishes. This change is called extinction. But considerable evidence suggests that this behavioral alteration is the result of the brain's controlling the fear response rather than the elimination of the emotional memory. For example, an apparently extinguished fear response can recover spontaneously or can be reinstated by an irrelevant stressful experience. Similarly, stress can cause the reappearance of phobias in people who have been successfully treated. This resurrection demonstrates that the emotional memory underlying the phobia was rendered dormant rather than erased by treatment.
Fear and Emotional Memory
Fear conditioning has proved an ideal starting point for studies of emotional memory for several reasons. First, it occurs in nearly every animal group in which it has been examined: fruit flies, snails, birds, lizards, fish, rabbits, rats, monkeys and people. Although no one claims that the mechanisms are precisely the same in all these creatures, it seems clear from studies to date that the pathways are very similar in mammals and possibly in all vertebrates. We therefore are confident in believing that many of the findings in animals apply to humans. In addition, the kinds of stimuli most commonly used in this type of conditioning are not signals that rats—or humans, for that matter—encounter in their daily lives. The novelty and irrelevance of these lights and sounds help to ensure that the animals have not already developed strong emotional reactions to them. So researchers are clearly observing learning and memory at work. At the same time, such cues do not require complicated cognitive processing from the brain. Consequently, the stimuli permit us to study emotional mechanisms relatively directly. Finally, our extensive knowledge of the neural pathways involved in processing acoustic and visual information serves as an excellent starting point for examining the neurological foundations of fear elicited by such stimuli.
My work has focused on the cerebral roots of learning fear, specifically fear that has been induced in the rat by associating sounds with foot shock. As do most other investigators in the field, I assume that fear conditioning occurs because the shock modifies the way in which neurons in certain important regions of the brain interpret the sound stimulus. These critical neurons are thought to be located in the neural pathway through which the sound elicits the conditioned response.
During the past 10 years, researchers in my laboratory, as well as in others, have identified major components of this system. Our study began at Cornell University Medical College, where I worked several years ago, when my colleagues and I asked a simple question: Is the auditory cortex required for auditory fear conditioning?
In the auditory pathway, as in other sensory systems, the cortex is the highest level of processing; it is the culmination of a sequence of neural steps that starts with the peripheral sensory receptors, located, in this case, in the ear. If lesions in (or surgical removal of) parts of the auditory cortex interfered with fear conditioning, we could conclude that the region is indeed necessary for this activity. We could also deduce that the next step in the conditioning pathway would be an output from the auditory cortex. But our lesion experiments in rats confirmed what a series of other studies had already suggested: the auditory cortex is not needed in order to learn many things about simple acoustic stimuli.
We then went on to make lesions in the auditory thalamus and the auditory midbrain, sites lying immediately below the auditory cortex. Both these areas process auditory signals: the midbrain provides the major input to the thalamus; the thalamus supplies the major input to the cortex. Lesions in both regions completely eliminated the rat's susceptibility to conditioning. This discovery suggested that a sound stimulus is transmitted through the auditory system to the level of the auditory thalamus but that it does not have to reach the cortex for fear conditioning to occur.
This possibility was somewhat puzzling. We knew that the primary nerve fibers that carry signals from the auditory thalamus extend to the auditory cortex. So David A. Ruggiero, Donald J. Reis and I looked again and found that, in fact, cells in some regions of the auditory thalamus also give rise to fibers that reach several subcortical locations. Could these neural projections be the connections through which the stimulus elicits the response we identify with fear? We tested this hypothesis by making lesions in each one of the subcortical regions with which these fibers connect. The damage had an effect in only one area: the amygdala.
Filling in the Picture
That observation suddenly created a place for our findings in an already accepted picture of emotional processing. For a long time, the amygdala has been considered an important brain region in various forms of emotional behavior. In 1979 Bruce S. Kapp and his colleagues at the University of Vermont reported that lesions in the amygdala's central nucleus interfered with a rabbit's conditioned heart rate response once the animal had been given a shock paired with a sound. The central nucleus connects with areas in the brain stem involved in the control of heart rate, respiration and vasodilation. Kapp's work suggested that the central nucleus was a crucial part of the system through which autonomic conditioned responses are expressed.
In a similar vein, we found that lesions of this nucleus prevented a rat's blood pressure from rising and limited its ability to freeze in the presence of a fearcausing stimulus. We also demonstrated, in turn, that lesions of areas to which the central nucleus connects eliminated one or the other of the two responses. Michael Davis and his associates at Yale University determined that lesions of the central nucleus, as well as lesions of another brain stem area to which the central nucleus projects, diminished yet another conditioned response: the increased startle reaction that occurs when an animal is afraid.
The findings from various laboratories studying different species and measuring fear in different ways all implicated the central nucleus as a pivotal component of fear-conditioning circuitry. It provides connections to the various brain stem areas involved in the control of a spectrum of responses.
Despite our deeper understanding of this site in the amygdala, many details of the pathway remained hidden. Does sound, for example, reach the central nucleus directly from the auditory thalamus? We found that it does not. The central nucleus receives projections from thalamic areas next to, but not in, the auditory part of the thalamus. Indeed, an entirely different area of the amygdala, the lateral nucleus, receives inputs from the auditory thalamus. Lesions of the lateral nucleus prevented fear conditioning. Because this site gets information directly from the sensory system, we have come to think of it as the sensory interface of the amygdala in fear conditioning. In contrast, the central nucleus appears to be the interface with the systems that control responses.
Mapping the Mechanism
These findings seemed to place us on the threshold of being able to map the entire stimulus response pathway. But we still did not know how information received by the lateral nucleus arrived at the central nucleus. Earlier studies had suggested that the lateral nucleus projects directly to the central nucleus, but the connections were fairly sparse. Working with monkeys, David Amaral and Asla Pitkanen of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego demonstrated that the lateral nucleus extends directly to an adjacent site, called the basal or basolateral nucleus, which, in turn, projects to the central nucleus.
Collaborating with Lisa Stefanacci and other members of the Salk team, Claudia R. Farb and C. Genevieve Go in my laboratory at New York University found the same connections in the rat. We then showed that these connections form synaptic contacts—in other words, they communicate directly, neuron to neuron. Such contacts indicate that information reaching the lateral nucleus can influence the central nucleus via the basolateral nucleus. The lateral nucleus can also influence the central nucleus by way of the accessory basal or basomedial nucleus. Clearly, ample opportunities exist for the lateral nucleus to communicate with the central nucleus once a stimulus has been received.
The emotional significance of such a stimulus is determined not only by the sound itself but by the environment in which it occurs. Rats must therefore learn not only that a sound or visual cue is dangerous, but under what conditions it is so. Russell G. Phillips and I examined the response of rats to the chamber, or context, in which they had been conditioned. We found that lesions of the amygdala interfered with the animals' response to both the tone and the chamber. But lesions of the hippocampus—a region of the brain involved in declarative memory—interfered only with response to the chamber, not the tone. (Declarative memory involves explicit, consciously accessible information, as well as spatial memory.) At about the same time, Michael S. Fanselow and Jeansok J. Kim of the University of California at Los Angeles discovered that hippocampal lesions made after fear conditioning had taken place also prevented the expression of responses to the surroundings.
These findings were consistent with the generally accepted view that the hippocampus plays an important role in processing complex information, such as details about the spatial environment where activity is taking place. Phillips and I also demonstrated that the subiculum, a region of the hippocampus that projects to other areas of the brain, communicated with the lateral nucleus of the amygdala. This connection suggests that contextual information may acquire emotional significance in the same way that other events do—via transmission to the lateral nucleus.
Although our experiments had identified a subcortical sensory pathway that gave rise to fear conditioning, we did not dismiss the importance of the cortex. The interaction of subcortical and cortical mechanisms in emotion remains a hotly debated topic. Some researchers believe cognition is a vital precursor to emotional experience; others think that cognition—which is presumably a cortical function—is necessary to initiate emotion or that emotional processing is a type of cognitive processing. Still others question whether cognition is necessary for emotional processing.
It became apparent to us that the auditory cortex is involved in, though not crucial to, establishing the fear response, at least when simple auditory stimuli are applied. Norman M. Weinberger and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine have performed elegant studies showing that neurons in the auditory cortex undergo specific physiological changes in their reaction to sounds as a result of conditioning. This finding indicates that the cortex is establishing its own record of the event.
Experiments by Lizabeth M. Romanski in my laboratory have determined that in the absence of the auditory cortex, rats can learn to respond fearfully to a single tone. If, however, projections from the thalamus to the amygdala are removed, projections from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the amygdala are sufficient. Romanski went on to establish that the lateral nucleus can receive input from both the thalamus and the cortex. Her work in the rat complements earlier research in primates.
Once we had a clear understanding of the mechanism through which fear conditioning is learned, we attempted to find out how emotional memories are established and stored on a molecular level. Farb and I showed that the excitatory amino acid transmitter glutamate is present in the thalamic cells that reach the lateral nucleus. Together with Chiye J. Aoki, we showed that it is also present at synapses in the lateral nucleus. Because glutamate transmission is implicated in memory formation, we seemed to be on the right track.
Long-Term Potentiation
Glutamate has been observed in a process called long-term potentiation, or LTP, that has emerged as a model for the creation of memories. This process, which is most frequently studied in the hippocampus, involves a change in the efficiency of synaptic transmission along a neural pathway—in other words, signals travel more readily along this pathway once LTP has taken place. The mechanism seems to involve glutamate transmission and a class of postsynaptic excitatory amino acid receptors known as NMDA receptors.
Various studies have found LTP in the fear-conditioning pathway. Marie-Christine Clugnet and I noted that LTP could be induced in the thalamo-amygdala pathway. Thomas H. Brown and Paul Chapman and their colleagues at Yale discovered LTP in a cortical projection to the amygdala. Other researchers, including Davis and Fanselow, have been able to block fear conditioning by blocking NMDA receptors in the amygdala. And Michael T. Rogan in my laboratory found that the processing of sounds by the thalamo-amygdala pathway is amplified after LTP has been induced. The fact that LTP can be demonstrated in a conditioning pathway offers new hope for understanding how LTP might relate to emotional memory.
In addition, recent studies by Fabio Bordi, also in my laboratory, have suggested hypotheses about what could be going on in the neurons of the lateral nucleus during learning. Bordi monitored the electrical state of individual neurons in this area when a rat was listening to the sound and receiving the shock. He and Romanski found that essentially every cell responding to the auditory stimuli also responded to the shock. The basic ingredient of conditioning is thus present in the lateral nucleus.
Bordi was able to divide the acoustically stimulated cells into two classes: habituating and consistently responsive. Habituating cells eventually stopped responding to the repeated sound, suggesting that they might serve to detect any sound that was unusual or different. They could permit the amygdala to ignore a stimulus once it became familiar. Sound and shock pairing at these cells might reduce habituation, thereby allowing the cells to respond to, rather than ignore, significant stimuli.
The consistently responsive cells had high-intensity thresholds: only loud sounds could activate them. That finding is interesting because of the role loudness plays in judging distance. Nearby sources of sound are presumably more dangerous than those that are far away. Sound coupled with shock might act on these cells to lower their threshold, increasing the cells' sensitivity to the same stimulus. Consistently responsive cells were also broadly tuned. The joining of a sound and a shock could make the cells responsive to a narrower range of frequencies, or it could shift the tuning toward the frequency of the stimulus. In fact, Weinberger has recently shown that cells in the auditory system do alter their tuning to approximate the conditioned stimulus. Bordi and I have detected this effect in lateral nucleus cells as well.
The apparent permanence of these memories raises an important clinical question: Can emotional learning be eliminated, and, if not, how can it be toned down? As noted earlier, it is actually quite difficult to get rid of emotional memories, and at best we can hope only to keep them under wraps. Studies by Maria A. Morgan in my laboratory have begun to illuminate how the brain regulates emotional expressions. Morgan has shown that when part of the prefrontal cortex is damaged, emotional memory is very hard to extinguish. This discovery indicates that the prefrontal areas—possibly by way of the amygdala—normally control expression of emotional memory and prevent emotional responses once they are no longer useful. A similar conclusion was proposed by Edmund T. Rolls and his colleagues at the University of Oxford during studies of primates. The researchers studied the electrical activity of neurons in the frontal cortex of the animals.
Functional variation in the pathway between this region of the cortex and the amygdala may make it more difficult for some people to change their emotional behavior. Davis and his colleagues have found that blocking NMDA receptors in the amygdala interferes with extinction. Those results hint that extinction is an active learning process. At the same time, such learning could be situated in connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. More experiments should disclose the answer.
Placing a basic emotional memory process in the amygdalic pathway yields obvious benefits. The amygdala is a critical site of learning because of its central location between input and output stations. Each route that leads to the amygdala—sensory thalamus, sensory cortex and hippocampus—delivers unique information to the organ. Pathways originating in the sensory thalamus provide only a crude perception of the external world, but because they involve only one neural link, they are quite fast. In contrast, pathways from the cortex offer detailed and accurate representations, allowing us to recognize an object by sight or sound. But these pathways, which run from the thalamus to the sensory cortex to the amygdala, involve several neural links. And each link in the chain adds time.
Conserving time may be the reason there are two routes—one cortical and one subcortical—for emotional learning. Animals, and humans, need a quick-and-dirty reaction mechanism. The thalamus activates the amygdala at about the same time as it activates the cortex. The arrangement may enable emotional responses to begin in the amygdala before we completely recognize what it is we are reacting to or what we are feeling.
The thalamic pathway may be particularly useful in situations requiring a rapid response. Failing to respond to danger is more costly than responding inappropriately to a benign stimulus. For instance, the sound of rustling leaves is enough to alert us when we are walking in the woods without our having first to identify what is causing the sound. Similarly, the sight of a slender curved shape lying flat on the path ahead of us is sufficient to elicit defensive fear responses. We do not need to go through a detailed analysis of whether or not what we are seeing is a snake. Nor do we need to think about the fact that snakes are reptiles and that their skins can be used to make belts and boots. All these details are irrelevant and, in fact, detrimental to an efficient, speedy and potentially lifesaving reaction. The brain simply needs to be able to store primitive cues and detect them. Later, coordination of this basic information with the cortex permits verification (yes, this is a snake) or brings the response (screaming, sprinting) to a stop.
Storing Emotional Memory
Although the amygdala stores primitive information, we should not consider it the only learning center. The establishment of memories is a function of the entire network, not just of one component. The amygdala is certainly crucial, but we must not lose sight of the fact that its functions exist only by virtue of the system to which it belongs.
Memory is generally thought to be the process by which we bring back to mind some earlier conscious experience. The original learning and the remembering, in this case, are both conscious events. Workers have determined that declarative memory is mediated by the hippocampus and the cortex. But removal of the hippocampus has little effect on fear conditioning—except conditioning to context.
In contrast, emotional learning that comes about through fear conditioning is not declarative learning. Rather it is mediated by a different system, which in all likelihood operates independently of our conscious awareness. Emotional information may be stored within declarative memory, but it is kept there as a cold declarative fact. For example, if a person is injured in an automobile accident in which the horn gets stuck in the on position, he or she may later have a reaction when hearing the blare of car horns. The person may remember the details of the accident, such as where and when it occurred, who else was involved and how awful it was. These are declarative memories that are dependent on the hippocampus. The individual may also become tense, anxious and depressed, as the emotional memory is reactivated through the amygdalic system. The declarative system has stored the emotional content of the experience, but it has done so as a fact.
Emotional and declarative memories are stored and retrieved in parallel, and their activities are joined seamlessly in our conscious experience. That does not mean that we have direct conscious access to our emotional memory; it means instead that we have access to the consequences—such as the way we behave, the way our bodies feel. These consequences combine with current declarative memory to form a new declarative memory. Emotion is not just unconscious memory: it exerts a powerful influence on declarative memory and other thought processes. As James L. McGaugh and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine have convincingly shown, the amygdala plays an essential part in modulating the storage and strength of memories.
The distinction between declarative memory and emotional memory is an important one. W. J. Jacobs of the University of British Columbia and Lynn Nadel of the University of Arizona have argued that we are unable to remember traumatic events that take place early in life because the hippocampus has not yet matured to the point of forming consciously accessible memories. The emotional memory system, which may develop earlier, clearly forms and stores its unconscious memories of these events. And for this reason, the trauma may affect mental and behavioral functions in later life, albeit through processes that remain inaccessible to consciousness.
Because pairing a tone and a shock can bring about conditioned responses in animals throughout the phyla, it is clear that fear conditioning cannot be dependent on consciousness. Fruit flies and snails, for example, are not creatures known for their conscious mental processes. My way of interpreting this phenomenon is to consider fear a subjective state of awareness brought about when brain systems react to danger. Only if the organism possesses a sufficiently advanced neural mechanism does conscious fear accompany bodily response. This is not to say that only humans experience fear but, rather, that consciousness is a prerequisite to subjective emotional states.
Thus, emotions or feelings are conscious products of unconscious processes. It is crucial to remember that the subjective experiences we call feelings are not the primary business of the system that generates them. Emotional experiences are the result of triggering systems of behavioral adaptation that have been preserved by evolution. Subjective experience of any variety is challenging turf for scientists. We have, however, gone a long way toward understanding the neural system that underlies fear responses, and this same system may in fact give rise to subjective feelings of fear. If so, studies of the neural control of emotional responses may hold the key to understanding subjective emotion as well.
About the author: Joseph E. LeDoux is interested in the neural foundation of memory and emotion. He studies the anatomy, physiology and behavioral organization of these aspects of mental functioning. LeDoux, the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University, is the recipient of two National Institute of Mental Health distinctions: a Merit Award and a Research Scientist Development Award. He has also received an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association.
Source: Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 1994 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Quiet Miracles of the Brain:
This article taken from National Geographic discusses the functions of the brain, and the new medical techniques that help the brain recover from serious injury and disease.
Quiet Miracles of the BRAIN
By Joel L. Swerdlow
Aristotle believed that the center for thought lies in the heart and that the brain helps cool the body. Drowsy people hang their heads, he said, because brain-created heaviness forces the head downward. We laugh now, but many experts agreed with Aristotle as recently as the late 19th century. Indeed, we still know relatively little about the three pounds of flesh that makes us human.
This is not surprising given that the human brain, with its many billions of cells, is the most complex object in the known universe. But we have learned more in the past ten years than in all previous history, thanks to technologies that allow researchers to see inside living brains and examine brain functions at the subcellular level.
That we have entered an era of extraordinary discovery becomes clear moments after I ring the doorbell of eight-year-old Matthew Simpson's home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The scene is a Hollywood version of how childhood is supposed to be: Bikes on the driveway, a green lawn, and next-door neighbors playing basketball.
Matt stands beside his mother as we chat on the porch. He can see that I am feeling the New Mexico heat. “Would you like a glass of water?” he asks. It is the last day of second grade, and Matt is proud of his report card. It shows respectable grades, good behavior, and steady improvement. Two years ago surgeons removed nearly half of Matt's brain.
Matt's first three years were textbook normal. Just before his fourth birthday, he began to experience seizures—electrical misfirings that impede brain functions. Medicines did nothing as seizures threatened to turn fatal. The eventual diagnosis: Rasmussen's encephalitis, a rare and incurable condition of unknown origin.
Desperation brought his parents, Jim and Valerie Simpson, to Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Carson recommended a hemispherectomy, removing the left hemisphere of Matt's brain. Matt would lose half his cortex, tightly packed folds that handle thought processes and most of what makes us human. The empty area of the skull, Carson explained, would fill with cerebrospinal fluid at about a teaspoon every five minutes and would remain filled.
The operation could lead to crippling, coma, death, or recovery. Carson would not guess at odds. Nor would he say how much of Matt would remain with half his cortex gone.
Although hemispherectomies were performed in the 1940s, few patients lived. Pediatric neurosurgeons revitalized the procedure in the mid-1980s, because of advances in brain scans and in ability to combat bleeding.
Several dozen hemispherectomies are performed each year now in the United States, usually as treatment for Rasmussen's encephalitis and forms of epilepsy that destroy the cortex but do not cross the groove separating left and right hemispheres. Patients can live because neither the disease nor the operation touches areas that control basic functions: the cerebellum, which coordinates movement; the diencephalon, which facilitates emotions and regulates body functions; and the brain stem, which maintains breathing, heart rate, and other life-support systems.
As Matt began to suffer worsening seizures, sometimes every three minutes, the Simpsons had no choice.
Matt's parents and half sisters, 16-year-old Stacy and 13-year-old Jamie, show me a scan of Matt's brain. I see the outline of a skull. One side has shapes in white, gray, and black. The other is all black, entirely filled with fluid.
The operation left a scar that runs along one ear and disappears under his hair. But his face has no lopsidedness. The only visible effects of the operation are a slight limp and limited use of his right arm and hand. He also has no right peripheral vision in either eye.
Matt and his mother drive out on errands. “I see a sailing ship and a huge elephant,” he says, looking at shapes in clouds. She discusses details with him and asks if he sees anything else. Matt describes a clown and a frog.
I appreciate such brain-stimulating games when I join his weekly session of speech and language therapy. One typical activity is word games. Therapist Joan Harden places cards in front of him. Matt turns one over. It says “fast things.” He must now name as many fast things as he can in 20 seconds. “Car ... truck ... train ... plane,” he says. The next card says “soft things.” Matt says “Butter ... the middle of bread” and stops. A child his age should name from six to eight things each time. Matt names only four and two. Is this because he has half a brain or because he suffered seizures between ages 3 y and 6 y? No one knows.
In the past two months Matt has made nine months' progress in language use. “In the improvement he has made it appears he is fostering and accelerating the growth of dendrites, threadlike extensions that grow out of neurons, the specialized cells of the nervous system,” Harden explains. “The neurons seem to be making better connections.”
More connections among the brain's estimated hundred billion neurons mean a better functioning brain. Connections come from inherited growth patterns and in response to stimuli, including internal stimuli like imagined sensations. The body receives information at the “periphery”—the neuroscientists' chauvinistic word for everything that is not the brain—and encodes it as nerve impulses. When these electrical impulses reach the brain, they trigger the release of messenger chemicals such as glutamate, which in turn induce electrical impulses as they travel from one neuron to another. This electrochemical process, the basis of brain communication, sometimes stimulates growth of new dendrites. Thus rats raised in cages full of toys have more brain mass—probably from more dendrites—than do rats in empty cages.
The brains of infants suffering from some forms of mental retardation have fewer dendrites than do the brains of healthy babies. Brain-imaging studies conducted by Harry T. Chugani, a pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, suggest that dendrite production rises rapidly after birth and remains at a peak level from about age four to age ten. In fact, during these years a child's brain has many more connections than does an adult's and uses twice as much energy.
Until recently, experts believed that genes program most dendrite growth. People like Matt demonstrate that the brain has unexpected flexibility—what scientists call plasticity. This plasticity promises to redefine basic concepts. The left side of the brain of a right-handed person—precisely what was cut out of Matt—specializes in handling music, poetry, and mathematics. Yet Matt enjoys piano lessons, and math is his strongest subject in school. Somehow, knowledge and capability traveled from one side of his brain to the other.
Such transfers seem to defy biology. Does an undiscovered conduit exist, or does each side have dormant capacity to assume functions of the other? The ability to transfer is highest before adolescence, during the years of peak dendrite growth. But transfer, albeit limited and slow, also occurs when strokes kill portions of an adult brain.
Other evidence of transfer comes after amputations. Every part of the body is connected to the cortex. Touching something with your left hand, for example, activates a particular part of your right cortex, and touching something with your right hand stimulates a mirror-image portion of your left cortex. Next to these sections of the cortex, for reasons no one understands, are areas connected to the nostrils. After his hand was amputated, one man reported tingling in his missing pinky when researchers dripped warm water under his nostrils. The part of his cortex connected to his nostrils had seized areas of the cortex that had received signals from the now missing fingers. Likewise, brain scans of Braille readers show that their reading fingers stimulate more cortical area than do fingers of sighted people. Presumably, extra use of these fingers prompts expansion into neighboring cortical territory.
The Simpson family says that Matt's personality never changed through seizures and surgery—an observation made by most families whose children have had hemispherectomies. “He started as a nice, caring child and he stayed a nice, caring child,” Valerie says. For me, the best moment comes one evening while Matt is drawing with crayons and the adults are talking. Matt interrupts us. Jim asks him to stop. Interruptions continue. Jim warns Matt he will be punished. Matt persists. “Why are you smiling?” Jim asks me.
“Because he acts like a normal eight-year-old,” I reply.
“He is a normal eight-year-old,” says Jim.
Many people learned in school that we use only 10 percent of our brains, a belief that may have been based on psychologist William James's assertion in 1910 that we use “only a small part” of our mental powers. People like Matt certainly indicate that much of the brain is redundant. I can imagine Matt telling his dates ten years from now, “You won't believe this, but I have half a brain.”
Matt's resiliency is dramatic, yet no more so than a common occurrence: the development of new human brains. I look into a microscope at an eight-cell human pre-embryo, the product of laboratory, or in vitro, fertilization. The egg and sperm were taken from a husband and wife whose family history includes a fatal genetic disease. If scientists at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago determine that this gene is not present, they will implant the pre-embryo into the mother.
The pre-embryo resembles a transparent bubble floating in space. Although I feel like a voyeur, I cannot stop looking through the microscope. Each cell is rounded, the cell walls are thick lines, and dark smudges are cell nuclei—exactly what I expect. But why does each of the eight cells look exactly the same? Some will grow into the brain, others into the heart and skin. Maybe the microscope is not strong enough to reveal differences.
“They are the same,” geneticist Yury Verlinsky explains. “From each of these cells, every cell in the body will grow. The differentiation begins once the cells have divided into about a hundred, about three days after the egg is fertilized. No one knows how it happens. There is no 'master builder' cell.”
During early pregnancy, neurons can grow at a rate of 250,000 a minute. Perhaps half die before a baby is born. This “pruning down” may eliminate flawed neural connections. Gerald Edelman, a neurobiologist at the Neuroscience Institute in La Jolla, California, sees a tropical rain forest in which “neural Darwinism” selects the fittest neurons.
Whatever triggers brain development, it is the most sensitive part of fetal growth. Vitamin deficiency, maternal smoking, or prenatal exposure to alcohol, chemicals, or too much heat may prevent neural development or cause damage to neurons.
Women who have influenza while pregnant, some studies suggest, are more likely to have children who develop schizophrenia, as are women who suffer severe malnutrition during pregnancy. Other evidence, like family histories, indicates that inherited genetic malfunctions contribute to schizophrenia.
Advancing knowledge about the role of the brain's physical structure in mental illness should change our perceptions about such diseases. Including depression and manic depression, mental illnesses afflict more than 20 percent of all Americans.
“That's the frontal cortex of Steven Elmore, a 33-year-old schizophrenic,” says Dan Weinberger, a neurologist and psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health, as he flips an image onto his computer. We are in the den of his home in Washington, D. C. Weinberger flips an image from Steve's identical twin, David—who is not schizophrenic—next to the first image. “Brains normally differ more from one another than do fingerprints,” Weinberger says. “But these brains are genetically identical and should look the same. They don't.”
The differences between Steve's and his brother's are clear. Steve's has less cortex and larger fluid-bearing ventricles. “The part of the cortex he's missing,” Weinberger says, “serves as perhaps the most evolved part of the human brain. It performs complicated tasks such as thinking organized thoughts. This might help explain why paranoid delusions and hallucinations are characteristic of schizophrenia.”
Weinberger clicks further into both brains. The images also show that Steve's has a smaller hippocampus. The hippocampus, from Greek for “seahorse” because of its shape, facilitates memory storage. Such an abnormality may be why some schizophrenics have memory problems.
“The loss of brain tissue does not worsen with time, and it does not improve with medication,” Weinberger says. “It may be there from birth, and it may be partly the product of genes that make a person vulnerable. It's hard to know what's really going on since schizophrenia doesn't usually manifest until late adolescence.”
Writing in the fourth century B.C., Hippocrates said that “madness” comes from too much “moistness” in the brain—exactly what Weinberger has just shown me. For Hippocrates, this was a lucky guess based on the belief that four “humors”—earth, fire, air, and water—control health.
As is common when a scientific venture is in its infancy, discoveries raise more questions than they answer.
“How do genetic characteristics interact with environmental influences?” Weinberger asks me. “Why doesn't schizophrenia appear sooner? Can we devise a way to treat patients before symptoms appear?”
Western medicine used to blame schizophrenia on upbringing or the patients' self-indulgence. “Now at least we know it has physical aspects,” Weinberger says. “The same is true of manic depression and many other so-called mental illnesses.”
Such insights have led to drugs that affect brain chemistry. Key to many of these drugs is dopamine, a naturally occurring chemical in the body that responds to external and internal stimuli by saying to neurons, “Attention must be paid.” Neurons have at least eight different types of receptors for dopamine; each absorbs a different message. Restricting the actions of dopamine reduces schizophrenic symptoms.
This physical aspect of schizophrenia should prompt changes in our attitudes—many people still see mental illness as a stigma—and in insurance policies that grant less coverage for mental illness.
Whatever the cause, about one in every hundred Americans—including as many as one-third of homeless adults—have schizophrenia. At a busy corner I see telltale traits: Some homeless people stand alone and look particularly disheveled, strange even among the strange. One woman wears a wire-and-foil hat. “To keep my skull from opening,” she says.
What went wrong for these people? Lack of money and bad luck are likely suspects. About 40 percent of Americans with severe mental illness receive no treatment. “I'd be on the street myself if it weren't for my family, doctors who care, and medicine,” Steve Elmore tells me a few days later when I visit his Indianapolis, Indiana, apartment. He owns his own car, handles his own finances, and works for a mental-health agency that understands a schizophrenic's need to avoid stress.
Steve's apartment has few books, mostly biographies of the Beatles, because Steve can concentrate only long enough to read in short spurts. Shelves of rock-and-roll discs line every wall. “When an episode starts, I lie down and listen to rock,” Steve says. “I feel like a nothing, like I'm falling apart, like I'm not on this planet. My brain gets stuffy, like people are trying to stuff cotton balls in it. I can feel the brain pressing against the skull. If I went off my meds, I'd be weird in about a week.”
Steve asks if I have ever had to work hard at something. “That's how it is,” he says. “The medicines don't do all the work. It's a struggle.” That evening we stay up late. Steve describes how his life changed at 19: anger at noises only he heard, walks through the neighborhood screaming. During childhood, he said, he was a little wilder than his twin but not significantly different. I tell him about a recent study showing that home movies of children who later became schizophrenic reveal jerky body movements when compared with siblings. “Maybe,” Steve says with a smile, “but I was always a better basketball player than my brother.”
Steve still hears voices. “Have they been talking now?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “I told them you manage my rock band.” I take out an empty pad and ask him to write what he hears as our conversation proceeds. Soon, “Jerk,””Shut up!””You're a creep,””Get out of here,” and similar statements fill the page. “Do you realize that no one is saying those things?” I ask. He shakes his head, exasperated. “Maybe not,” he says, “but I know the voices are likely real.”
Later that night he takes out a plastic pillbox and swallows extra Stelazine, a drug that blocks binding of dopamine to receptors and helps silence the voices. Treatment of his schizophrenia as a physical illness fits in with a larger pattern: Scientists increasingly argue that everything we experience can be reduced to a physical component. These “reductionists” are the ultimate cartographers: Everything, they say, exists at a particular point on the brain map.
Some reductionists stake out an extreme position. Francis Crick, who along with two colleagues won the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine for deciphering the DNA code that defines genes, says that “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells.”
The uniquely human “consciousness”—variously defined as language, introspection, self-awareness, and abstract thinking—eludes scientific measurement. Albert Einstein conceived of the theory of general relativity after imagining a person taking a ride in a box through space. Yet postmortem study of Einstein's brain has indicated nothing that explains how he used such visualizations to devise abstract theories.
And who will map the mixture of myth, morality, faith, pain, and joy that make up our spiritual geography? “We will never find a satisfactory mechanistic explanation” for such phenomena, said Lewis Thomas, the late physician and biologist who wrote best-sellers such as The Lives of a Cell. Is this because measurements are too crude or because scientists are trying to measure the immeasurable?
Examining animals suggests a relationship between brain size and intelligence. Human brain size leveled off about 100,000 years ago, perhaps limited by what can fit through the female pelvis—the brain is approximately one-quarter its final size at birth; the rest of the body is one-twentieth. But among humans, no size-intelligence relationship exists.
“Bigger is not necessarily better,” Stephen Kosslyn, a Harvard University psychologist who studies how the mind creates mental images, explains to me. “Bigger could be worse because it impedes rapid communication between neurons within the brain.”
But the size of a certain brain part might be crucial. How did Michelangelo see, Shakespeare feel, and Mozart hear? One study reveals that the planum temporale in the left hemisphere, a part of the brain associated with auditory processing, is larger in musicians than in nonmusicians, and is larger still in musicians with perfect pitch.
Howard Gardner's influential Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences argues that every individual has one or more of seven distinct intelligences—such as spatial, linguistic, and musical. Does each “intelligence” have its own physical manifestation? Gardner resists putting too much faith in physical findings. “Intelligence is a capacity,” he says. “To ask ‘Where in the brain is intelligence?’ is like asking, ‘Where is the voice in the radio?’”
Vincent van Gogh may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, which triggered electrical hyperactivity of the brain. Did it affect works, such as “Starry Night,” noteworthy for their hallucinatory imagery? “Remember not to carry such assertions too far,” says Harry Rand, an art historian and a senior curator at the Smithsonian Institution. “Every artistic genius does not have a brain anomaly, and everyone with a brain anomaly is not a great artist. Art is far more than something that automatically results from a physical characteristic.”
Still, the mapmakers' growing success demands attention. One gene produces an enzyme, monoamine oxidase A, that helps brain cells communicate. Some men inherit an abnormal gene that fails to produce enough monoamine oxidase A. Other neurotransmitters accumulate, and the person—for unknown reasons—becomes violent when faced with stress. If a young boy is known to carry this gene defect, should he receive special treatment? Should family or society impose restrictions upon him? As brain discoveries mount, who will make such decisions?
Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, noted humankind's emergent manipulation of its basic biology in the 1950s and warned in 1961, “For heaven's sake be careful.” The need for care is particularly acute as researchers discover the physical basis for what may define us most as humans, our emotions.
Candace Pert, a former National Institutes of Health pharmacologist who now heads her own research firm, has pioneered much of this work. To explain it, she takes me back to high school biology. “We were all taught that synapses, the distance between two neurons, are crucial,” Pert says. “We now realize there's a communications network that operates via receptors and their ‘informational substances.‘ Communications between cells occur via chemical reactions and transfer of electrochemical energy.
“When trying to find why morphine affects the brain,” she continues, “we found that the brain also relies on neuropeptides, strings of amino acids that float throughout the body and convey information by attaching themselves wherever they find a welcoming receptor. These are extraordinary, because they trigger emotions. During the 1950s, experiments revealed that electrical stimulation of certain areas of the cortex provoked emotions—exactly the areas that are filled with neuropeptides. At least 60 neuropeptides have been discovered so far.”
She pauses and repeats one sentence because she knows it must sink in slowly. “Emotions,” she says, “are neuropeptides attaching to receptors and stimulating an electrical change on neurons.”
We traditionally perceive the brain in terms of prevailing technology. It has been a mechanical water clock, hydraulic pump, telephone switchboard, and liquid-cooled parallel supercomputer. For Pert to describe a communications network therefore makes sense. But I resist. “Joy? Grief? Love? All biochemical?” I ask. She nods, yes.
“All love, for everyone, involves the same peptides?” I ask. Again, she says, “Yes.”
Pert's husband, immunologist-virologist Michael Ruff, joins us for lunch. They began to date while working together at the National Institutes of Health. “Are neuropeptides popping right now because you're next to each other?” I ask.
“Of course,” Pert says, putting one arm around Ruff. He looks away, trying to hide his smile. “When I fell in love with my wife, I gave her my heart, not my neuropeptides,” I tell Pert.
“Neuropeptides are in your heart too,” she says. “Experiments show that the spleen, thymus, bone marrow, lymph glands, and dorsal horn of the spine also produce neuropeptides.” Neuropeptides, she says, even come from the stomach, giving new validity to the expression “gut feeling.”
The mind is not only in the brain, Pert argues. It is also in the flow of neurocommunicators throughout the brain, glands, and immune system.
Some of Pert's theories may be incomplete, but they illustrate—as do the experiences of every researcher and patient I have met—that we must look at ourselves in new ways and accept new truths.
The blood-brain barrier is a typical example. These tightly packed capillaries, located throughout the brain, restrict access, because the brain is sensitive to small fluctuations in bloodborne material. Communications between brain and immune system, however, imply a steady flow of peptides and more openness than experts have believed thus far. Once we accept this possibility, we may better understand the dramatic increase of brain cancer in industrialized countries. Whether the brain is unusually susceptible to carcinogens remains unclear, but carcinogens do seem to cross the blood-brain barrier.
Some new truths are not as new as they seem. The flow of substances between our brain and body seems like a radical idea, but for 4,000 years Chinese medicine has said that control over the brain rests with the liver, heart, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. These organs communicate, according to Chinese medicine, via energy channels that form the basis for treatments such as acupuncture.
Likewise, modern science has just started to examine links between the brain and immune system. Eastern philosophy and the Old Testament, however, have always linked mental processes and health. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” says the Book of Proverbs, “but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
Thus, Pert and colleagues are on old terrain when they demonstrate that immune and brain cells constantly chatter via neuropeptides. Peptides from the brain cause immune cells to proliferate, and some immune cells release peptides that affect brain function. Macrophages, the immune cells that usually reach an invader first, are, in effect, mobile synapses, carrying and releasing neuropeptides throughout the body.
Implications are obvious. Stress, for example, increases susceptibility to disease by compromising the immune system. Thus, participation in support groups—which presumably reduces stress—may increase the longevity of cancer patients and the production of cancer-fighting cells.
A group of men and women with a variety of life-threatening cancers meets weekly in the Cancer Resource and Support Center in Pasadena, between Baltimore and Annapolis, Maryland. Their chairs are circled as they discuss symptoms, pain, and fear. Even such depressing topics evoke laughter. Al Smith, 64, whose colon cancer has spread throughout his body, gets loud roars when he describes the doctor who said he had six months to live. “That was five years ago,” Al says. “My goal is to go to him in five more years and say, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire.’” Donna Seafolk-Kopp, 43, who has ovarian cancer, grabs everyone's attention with “It keeps getting bigger,” and then reveals that she means a party celebrating her upcoming master's degree.
As the meeting adjourns, I notice Hugh McLeod's T-shirt: two fingers about to touch—a reproduction of God giving life to Adam in Michelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. Hugh has thick arms, wide shoulders, a healthy aura. His story: “I'm a 41-year-old retired Air Force officer now working as a consulting engineer. For six years doctors treated me for a fungus infection under my right big toe. When the toe finally split open, they diagnosed 'level III melanoma with a large satellite node.' Four months ago they cut off the toe. They said that blood or lymph could carry the cancer anywhere, and that it is very aggressive and could appear in my brain. The doctors say scans will definitely find the new cancers, and they have no treatments to offer.”
I ask what percentages the doctors gave him. Hugh strokes his beard. Silence. “Why haven't you given in to despair or terror?” I ask. He smiles. “I believe that I am fine and will stay fine,” he says. Hugh then describes two weeks at Getting Well, a behavioral medicine program in Orlando, Florida, designed to help people with the emotional and spiritual aspects of serious illnesses. “I had believed that to have emotions is a sign of weakness and illness,” he says. “I have experienced an awakening that could not have happened without the illness. Whatever I deal with, relationships with my children from my first marriage, the fact that career opportunities have taken me to another city, problems with my current boss, I strive to be honest with myself and others about my feelings. This honesty helps my body protect itself. I have also learned to use mental imaging to produce anticancer chemicals such as killer T cells and interferon. I image two or three times a day.”
Several years ago a friend of mine underwent coronary artery surgery. Every night he visualizes brushes scrubbing his artery walls. He then follows the yellow plaque through his kidney until it is flushed from his body. “I don't talk much about this,” he once told me. “People aren't ready to understand.” My friend emphasizes, as Hugh does, that he images in addition to standard medical care.
Hugh's living room has a dog-eared copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.”He had a zest for life,” Hugh says, opening the book to
• The thin red jellies within you or with-
• in me, the bones and
• the marrow in the bones,
• The exquisite realization of health;
• O I say these are not the parts and po-
• ems of the body only, but of the soul,
• O I say now these are the soul!
Hugh darkens the room, lights two candles, and sits on the sofa. When he takes off his shoes, I see that the end of one sock is empty.
“You use what works best,” he explains. “Some people say they ‘breathe in color.’ I have created a neon bug whacker that goes into my brain.” He puts his feet on the coffee table, punches on a tape recorder and closes his eyes. I sit on the other end of the sofa and close my eyes too.
Music on the tape plays in the background as a soft voice says, “Imagine an opening on top of your head. The light of stars, suns, galaxies, heavens, of love enters your body.” I soon float out with the words.
Is Hugh tapping into some primal ability when the tape tells him to “take a moment to explore all the routes and highways of your brain and mind. You'll find one that has to do with your immune system, and circulation, and so on. Turn the right valves. Turn off those that carry nourishment to the disease.” Or is he calming himself with a harmless exercise? All we know for sure is that he is entering terra incognita.
As I leave, I notice some pills. “What are those?” Hugh hesitates. “Muscle relaxers for my shoulder,” he says. “It's been getting stiffer. I can't move my neck well. It's been going on for about two weeks. I have a scan scheduled for next week.” He sees the look on my face and adds, “I sure hope it's nothing bad.” I call Hugh six months later. He tells me that the shoulder pain was a pulled muscle. “Everything's going well with me,” he says, “but the group lost a couple of people.”
Once, when driving with Hugh, I asked why he so diligently puts on his seat belt. If death creeps within, why worry about an accident? He said he is working hard to live and does not want to crash his head through the windshield.
Hugh is right. Despite increased use of seat belts and helmets, brain injury disables or kills someone in the United States every two and a half minutes. Although the brain is the only organ covered mostly by bone, it floats in a thin cushion of fluid and can bounce against the skull. Even shaking a baby can cause permanent brain damage.
On October 13, 1986, Patsy Cannon was driving her nine-year-old daughter to school when another woman's car collided with them. Only Patsy was hurt. Her seat belt came loose and her head hit the windshield and then the side window.
Patsy awoke several hours after the accident. She felt fine but had severe amnesia. Her amnesia is “retrograde”: She has no difficulty remembering events after the accident but can remember nothing from before. The only visible evidence of injury is a slight indentation along the top of her forehead.
A photograph taken a week before the accident shows Patsy between two other young women. All are laughing. “I apparently was a workaholic in corporate America,” Patsy says. “That person is dead; I am a new person.” Ironically, Matt Simpson lost half his brain and kept his personality. Patsy has all her brain and lost her entire self.
Patsy stayed in Birmingham, Alabama, her hometown, and reinvented herself as an advocate for people with brain injuries. United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Birmingham has hired her to design and direct supported living and employment programs that allow adults with brain injuries to regain control of their lives outside institutions. She invites me to join a group for young adults.
“We took a lickin' and keep on tickin',” one tells me. As they discuss failures and triumphs, I witness the hardest type of courage—not the flash of bravery but the daily resolve not to quit. For my slow-speaking companions, courage is willingness to speak, write a poem, get an apartment, hold your hand to make twitching stop, ride a bicycle, ask a question, laugh, and, most important, let yourself be who you are.
Patsy and I visit the Spain Rehabilitation Center, a not-for-profit facility of the University of Alabama Hospital System. An automobile accident survivor who recently emerged from a two-month coma wears a hospital gown and a baseball cap. Neurons can resprout dendrites throughout life, so hard work and encouragement could restore much of his brain function. But he slumps in a wheelchair, his eyes unmoving. Drops of spittle edge down his chin. “He doesn't respond much,” a nurse says. Patsy kneels. Her lips unleash a stream of chatter, part purring and part pep talk. His mouth moves, but nothing comes out. By shaking his head, he communicates a strong preference for the Auburn University football team over the University of Alabama. He accepts her offer of an alphabet board so he can point to letters, and spells the names of his two children. Patsy does not tell him that the automobile accident killed one of them.
Shortly after one of my visits with Patsy, my nine-year-old son, Aaron, comes home with a bad headache. He had banged his forehead and apparently lost consciousness. He has no outward injuries, but six hours later his headache and dizziness are still getting worse. At the emergency room his name goes on the chalkboard followed by “head injury.” When the doctor says “a concussion, no brain damage,” I hug Aaron—and realize why people I have met on this story hug so often. They know too well how fragile we all are.
For Patsy, fragility means the need to relearn everything. “I learned to speak through tapes and friends,” she says without emotion. “Once a friend told me it was ‘raining cats and dogs,’ and I panicked. I ran to the window expecting to see flying animals.” Four months after the accident she was hospitalized again with bleeding ulcers. “No amount of learning,” she tells me, “could silence the internal screams.”
Relearning love came hardest. “When I saw my nine-year-old daughter, Leah, I felt nothing,” Patsy says. “It could have been any child off the street.” She squints as though trying to see through some fog that separates us, and asks, “How do you explain love to someone who has no memory of love?”
Leah describes her mother's return from the hospital. Patsy and Leah's father were divorced before the accident, and no other adult was around. “Can you cook?” Leah asked. Patsy said “show me” and almost burned the house down. Leah easily convinced her mother that children never do homework and all mothers take their daughters shopping every day after school. “At the mall my mother bought herself dresses with floral patterns,” Leah tells me. “It scared me, because I realized she was a different person. The mother I knew wore only black and blue basic suits.” Before, Patsy hated bananas. Now she loves them. Such changes after head injuries are mysterious but common.
Patsy is still learning about human failings. Walking through a Birmingham park, we encounter statues showing fire hoses knocking down civil rights demonstrators. Across the street is the church where a bomb killed four young girls in 1963. Patsy knows nothing about either event. “A few years ago someone asked if I thought they should hire a ‘colored’ nurse,” Patsy says. “That's when I learned about racism. I said I did not understand the problem. They then told me about colored bathrooms. I still did not understand. I said my home has three colored bathrooms, and I enjoy all three.”
The accident may have biochemically destroyed Patsy's memory. The more likely explanation is that it disrupted connections to the hippocampus, which seems to play a crucial role in the long-term storage of information. Different aspects of memory reside in various parts of the brain, images in one place, for example, and emotions in another. People like Patsy help researchers map this geography. When shown a picture of a rhinoceros, one stroke victim, for example, says, “Enormous, weighs over one ton, lives in Africa.” But he cannot say what it is. When asked what “rhinoceros” means, he responds “animal.”
These various memory centers cannot function unless connected to the hippocampus. This means the old Patsy may still be inside but unable to assert herself.
Do pieces of old Patsy appear in dreams? “No,” Patsy says, “and I don't worry about her. I'm happy with the person I am now.”
No one knows what memories are. Several decades ago, scientists looked for what they called the “grandmother neuron.” Then they concluded that one neuron holds grandmother's face, another her smell, and still another the sound of her voice. Now they think she is in none of these places. Memory of grandmother's face, they say, probably does not reside in a particular neuron. It exists in the changed connections between different sets of neural networks. Why do we remember some things and forget others? “Memory is not a video camera or a tape recorder,” says Ulric Neisser, an Emory University psychologist. “There is no ‘total recall.’ All memories, even very vivid ones, are more or less accurate reconstructions. Unusual experiences tend to be remembered better, because they are less confusable with other events. But even they often change to fit what we later believe must have happened.”
Smell and taste are associated with many memories, because neural pathways link them directly to the hippocampus. You smell a perfume and flash back to a high school date. Novelist Marcel Proust once tasted a madeleine—a little butter cake—and was swept away by memories that resulted in the eight-volume Remembrance of Things Past.
“I fail to see why a chap needs 30 pages to describe how he tosses and turns in bed before falling asleep,” one publisher's rejection letter said. But Proust's work is a literary classic. “After the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered,” he writes, “taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest.”
Most of us fear losing memory. We know the name of a famous artist but can say only “the guy who went to Tahiti.” Then we think, “I'm getting old.”
Not necessarily. Neurons die every day, starting from the day we are born. “Even though many types of human cells—for example, the skin, liver, immune system, and stomach lining—renew themselves, the body never replaces neurons,” says Pasko Rakic, a Yale University neurobiologist. “New neurons would have none of your memory. They would be another person, with a different life history. Some songbirds develop new neurons in adulthood but must relearn parts of the same songs every spring.”
As brain research progresses, however, the no-new-neurons assertion cannot be made with absolute certainty. Evidence indicates that our brains may contain “progenitor cells” that could become neurons if exposed to growth-stimulating hormones. Would they perform only tasks that require new learning? No one knows.
Neural loss is continuous as we age. Older people, however, retain capacity to generate new connections and to keep old ones via mental activity. Major memory loss with age usually indicates illness or injury. My uncle's mind remained clear until his mid-70s, when he suffered small strokes during heart surgery. He began to confuse words. A “lid” instead of a “cork” sealed bottles of wine. Simple addition frustrated him, and he no longer knew the rules of chess.
The most common known cause of severe memory loss, or dementia, is Alzheimer's disease—brain lesions first identified by German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906. It strikes between 5 and 10 percent of all people over 65 and one-quarter to one-half of those over 85.
Genetic mutation is a suspect but accounts for only 10 percent of all cases. “Early-onset” Alzheimer's, which begins around 40 or 50, runs in some families. Some Alzheimer's in older people is associated with defects in another gene that makes a protein, apolipoprotein E, that ferries cholesterol in the bloodstream and helps regenerate nerve cells. No one yet knows how it relates to neural tangles and nerve cell death.
Environment may also be significant. Studies of identical twins where one develops Alzheimer's and the other does not provide additional proof that Alzheimer's is a disease and not just the inevitable consequence of aging. Whether genetic or environmental, among primary biological suspects are tau, a protein that may play a part in forming tangles that choke neurons, and amyloid, a protein that sticks to neurons like glue. Amyloid accumulates when neurons, for unknown reasons, begin to generate more than the brain can flush out, forming plaques.
No effective treatment exists, although Allen D. Roses, a neurologist who heads the Duke University research team that discovered a gene associated with Alzheimer's, says, “In 10 or 15 years we hope to have a safe medication that a 50-year-old could take every day to prevent Alzheimer's.”
If they live long enough, Alzheimer's victims forget how to chew food. Until then, the disease slowly steals the tissue that defines them. A diseased heart can be replaced with another, and life goes on, but our brains, filled with ever shifting collages of memory, define us. “It is,” says one minister who works with people who have Alzheimer's, “almost as though the soul of the person changes.”
I stand in the back of the room at a day-care program run by the Greater Palm Beach, Florida, chapter of the Alzheimer's Association. The room is sunny with comfortable chairs. Approximately 20 patients listen as a volunteer reads to them from the morning newspaper. Nothing outward indicates illness, except that they wear name tags and keep looking at their own.
“We try to provide mental stimulation,” Mark Cornett of the Alzheimer's Association whispers. I show him a recent newspaper story. An 84-year-old man, exhausted from caring for his Alzheimer's-afflicted wife, killed her and himself. “Maybe people feel as if they're losing whatever makes them human,” I say.
Mark shakes his head. “Look around,” he says. “There's a lot of happiness left.”
The patients do not remember their spouses or children but know the names of state capitals and other information they learned at a young age. Long-term memory is the last to go. Likewise, the brain may encode music in areas that resist Alzheimer's. Everyone joins hands and sings “I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” A man taps my shoulder. “Have you seen my letter?” he asks, holding it out.
Dear Dave,
You are in a day-care center. There
are many people there who are your
friends and will take good care of you.
Please cooperate with everyone, and
you will have a pleasant day.
I will pick you up at 3 o'clock.
Jeannette
I am going full blast with “when the moon hits your eye” when Dave asks again, “Have you seen my letter?” The moment a conversation ends he has no memory of it.
What impresses me most is the dignity people retain. My lunch partner wears a suit and has a neatly trimmed mustache. His expressions suggest a successful business deal. He sounds earnest and sincere, but his sentences are incomprehensible. “It gets 20 to 40 percent just for them to get what they want. They will do the same things as they gave. Then nothing comes out of them.” He touches the window. “If you feel this,” he says, “then you get the idea. Boy, do I get it.”
I comfort myself by thinking that such people forget their own deterioration. But Alzheimer's is unforgiving: It allows enough awareness to torment its victims. One man bangs his head on a table. His wife watches, love on her face. She tells me about courtship, raising children, running a business, and then, this. “We're talking about you,” I say to him. “Do you know that?”
“Of course,” he says, still banging.
“Your wife looks like she wants to give you a big smooch.”
He smiles at her and says, “I know.” Then he asks her, “What's happening to me?”
I have been seeing quiet miracles: the brain itself, growing medical mastery of it, and, perhaps the greatest, the power of courage and of love. All form the foundation for the new era we are entering.
New clinical treatments will emerge amid dissolving distinctions between “physical” and “mental.” Mapmakers will redefine inner geography, forcing us to reexamine how we perceive ourselves and raise our children. At the same time, our brain maps will constantly change as new discoveries challenge old truths.
The brain's marvelous adaptability, especially during childhood, is firmly established. This adaptability, coupled with the brain's immeasurable potential, encourages faith in dreams—no matter what our age or life circumstance.
Valerie Simpson calls with an update on Matt. He is doing well in third grade—lots of B's and some A's. He gets along well with other children and is happy.
Matt can use his right arm better. He still limps, but less. Brain scans show that control over his right arm and leg has settled into the cortical area that controls his left arm and leg—the brain seems to have a strong sense of consistency. He is enjoying school, but there are those who insist that he will never do as well as his contemporaries. They make Valerie angry. “Who's to define the sky for Matthew?” she asks.
Who's to define the sky for any of us?
Source: National Geographic, June 1995.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Scientists do not completely understand how memory is stored in the human brain. Some researchers believe that short-term and long-term memories reside in separate regions of the brain. In this August 1997 Scientific American article, staff writer Tim Beardsley summarizes the results of studies that have sought to discover which areas of the brain are involved in short-term memory and how that memory is organized.
The Machinery of Thought
By Tim Beardsley
In a darkened basement laboratory on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., volunteers earn $100 by lying for two hours with their head inside a huge magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine while they gaze at a screen reflected in a mirror. The screen periodically displays black-and-white pictures: some are faces, others scrambled blocks of light and shade. When a face appears on the screen, the subject signals by pressing buttons whether the face is a new one or the same as one that was shown a few seconds earlier as a 'target' to be remembered.
As the test proceeds, the MRI machine bombards the volunteer's brain with radio-frequency waves that excite hydrogen atoms in the bloodstream, causing the atoms to emit signals of their own. Later, the machine transforms the resulting electromagnetic cacophony into color-coded maps of oxygen consumption levels throughout the subject's brain. Because increased oxygen consumption results from heightened neural activity, researchers can analyze these brain maps to learn what parts of the brain work hardest when a person recognizes a face.
With experiments such as these, researchers are beginning to fathom the neural processes underlying 'working memory'—the limited, short-term store of currently relevant information that we draw on when we comprehend a sentence, follow a previously decided plan of action or remember a telephone number. When we bring to mind the name of Russia's president, for instance, that information is temporarily copied from long-term memory into working memory.
Psychological studies have demonstrated that working memory is fundamental to the human ability to reason and make judgments that rely on remembered contextual information. There are compelling humanitarian reasons for understanding working memory. Schizophrenia, one of the most devastating mental illnesses, is believed to be caused in part by a defect of this system. Studies of the molecular basis of working memory 'have implications for drug treatment in mental illness,' says Patricia Goldman-Rakic of Yale University, one of the most prominent investigators of working memory.
An intensive research effort has started to produce detailed information about the areas of the brain involved when we engage this vital intellectual faculty and is illuminating the patterns of neural activity that allow it to operate. The important role of specific brain chemicals in working memory is also becoming clear. Yet for all the progress, researchers have still to agree on how working memory is controlled and organized.
From Electrodes to Fast MRI
The prototypical test for working memory involves what is called delayed choice. An animal or a person signals where some specific cue was previously seen, before an imposed period of waiting. Thus, a monkey might be given a choice of two jars in separate positions and be rewarded for pointing to the one in which it previously saw food placed.
The task provides no clue to the correct response at the time of testing, so the monkey must rely on its recollection of the correct location. A related challenge rewards an animal for remembering which of several images it saw presented initially as a target. The NIH volunteers who were recalling faces were engaged in a variant of this test.
Technological advances have greatly enhanced researchers' ability to probe the neural underpinnings of such capacities. Investigators began studying cerebral activity in working memory some 40 years ago by inserting electrodes into individual neurons within the brains of monkeys. This method has its limits, however. Although monkey brains have clear anatomical similarities to human brains, the animals' behavior is vastly simpler, making detailed comparisons with human thinking problematic. Lacking language, the animals must be patiently trained over a period of weeks to master tasks that a person would pick up in a minute.
Electrode-recording techniques are also ethically unacceptable for use on people. Researchers try to learn which parts of our species' brain do what by studying the effects of damage caused by injury, disease or therapeutic surgery. Yet patients have different medical histories—and their brains vary in exact shape—so interpreting this clinical data is tricky at best.
Earlier this decade, positron emission tomography, or PET scanning, made enormous strides by showing which parts of the human brain are busiest when performing different tasks, such as hearing words or speaking. But PET requires exposing the human subjects to radioactive tracers, and to keep radiation doses within acceptable levels, researchers have to use techniques that can resolve brain areas only about a centimeter apart. Also, during a delayed-choice task, PET scans are too slow to distinguish between the neural activity pattern of a target being held in mind and the pattern that follows a few seconds later when the target is recognized.
The new technique used at NIH and elsewhere, called functional MRI, can resolve the position of active neurons to about two millimeters and is fast enough to study activity before and after the brain recognizes a cue on a screen. The rapidly improving technique has over the past two years become the state of the art for functional brain imaging.
Monkey Puzzle
Experiments involving electrodes implanted in monkeys still provide crucial information, however, because they reveal in fine detail and on a millisecond-by-millisecond timetable what happens as these primates respond to cues and rewards. When animals perform such feats of working memory, several brain regions can play a role, but as Joach’n M. Fuster of the University of California at Los Angeles showed in the 1970s, one area that is always involved is the prefrontal cortex.
The prefrontal cortex is a layer of tissue that lies just behind the forehead. With neural connections to almost all the areas of the brain that process sensory information, it is well situated to maintain a flexible store of information relevant to any task at hand. It is also the part of the brain that has grown the most in humans, as compared with monkeys. Monkeys missing some parts of their prefrontal cortex preserve their long-term memory but perform miserably on delayed-choice tests. Humans similarly afflicted suffer a reduced attention span and ability to plan.
Fuster and, separately, Kisou Kubota and Hiroaki Niki of the Kyoto Primate Center made electrical recordings from a variety of neurons in the monkey prefrontal cortex, including some that apparently were active only while the animals were holding information in working memory. Subsequently, Goldman-Rakic and her colleagues have explored working memory in monkeys with more sophisticated tests. They established that prefrontal neural activity during a delayed-choice task indeed corresponds well to the functioning of working memory.
Goldman-Rakic and her associate Graham Williams have taken the analysis all the way to the subcellular level, showing that receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine pivotally influence the responsiveness of cells in the prefrontal cortex and their actions in working memory. 'There is no other example I know' of research that spans the gulf between behavior and subcellular function, Goldman-Rakic notes. She and her colleagues have recently shown that administering antischizophrenic drugs to monkeys for six months leads to specific changes in the numbers of two different types of dopamine receptors in that region, further evidence that schizophrenia—or its treatment—alters normal function there.
Research by other scientists supports the view that the prefrontal cortex could sustain working memory. Robert Desimone of the National Institute of Mental Health, along with Earl K. Miller, Cynthia Erickson and others, has discovered in the monkey's prefrontal cortex neurons that fire at different rates during the delayed-choice task, depending on the target the animal saw previously. Neurons in other parts of the brain generally 'forget' the target when a distracting stimulus appears—their rate of firing changes. Prefrontal neurons detected by Desimone and his colleagues, in contrast, maintain their rate of activity during a delayed-choice task even after the animal is presented with irrelevant, distracting stimuli.
Activity in some prefrontal neurons, then, appears to embody directly the temporary working memory of the appearance of a target the animal is seeking. Other researchers have found prefrontal neurons that seem to maintain locations in working memory: Giuseppe Di Pellegrino of the University of Bologna and Steven Wise of the National Institute of Mental Health have found prefrontal neurons that are busiest when an animal has to remember where it saw a cue. Stimuli fail to excite the same frenzy unless they are in the location that is the current target for the task.
Neurons in the prefrontal cortex could thus apparently control how animals respond in a delayed-choice task. Fuster, one of the pioneers in the field, says the prefrontal cortex 'serves the overarching function of the temporal organization of behavior' by driving networks that maintain currently important information in an active state. And neurons in the prefrontal cortex might exert their influence in more subtle ways, too.
Besides controlling directly the responses in delayed-choice tests, Desimone believes, the prefrontal cortex might tune the visual and possibly other perceptual systems to the task at hand. 'What's loaded into working memory goes back to sensory processing,' he suggests. Hundreds of experiments with both animals and people have shown that organisms are far more likely to perceive and react to cues relevant to their current needs than to irrelevant stimuli. This effect explains why we are more likely to notice the aroma wafting from a neighbor's grill when we are hungry than just after eating. If Desimone is right, the prefrontal cortex could be responsible for focusing an animal's attention and thus possibly steering awareness.
Imaging studies with PET and functional MRI corroborate the evidence from brain injuries that the human prefrontal cortex, like that of monkeys, is central to working memory. Several research groups have now imaged activity in the prefrontal cortex when people remember things from moment to moment. Different tasks may also require various other brain regions closer to the back of the head, but for primates in general, the prefrontal cortex always seems to be busy when target information is kept 'in mind.'
The Devil in the Details
Having shown that the prefrontal cortex is crucial to working memory, investigators naturally want to understand its internal structure. Goldman-Rakic and her associates at Yale have found evidence that when an animal retains information about a spatial location, the prefrontal activity is confined to a specific subregion. A separate area below it is most active when an animal is remembering the appearance of an object. These findings, together with observations of the anatomy of neural pathways, led Goldman-Rakic to propose that the prefrontal cortex is organized into regions that temporarily store information about different sensory domains: one for the domain of spatial cues, one for cues relating to an object's appearance and perhaps others for various types of cues.
There are, moreover, some indications that the human prefrontal cortex may be organized along similar domain-specific lines. A PET study reported last year by Susan M. Courtney, Leslie G. Ungerleider and their colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health found that in humans, as in the monkeys studied earlier by Goldman-Rakic, certain brain areas are especially active during exercises that challenge working memory for visual details and for locations. Moreover, the most active brain regions lie in similar relative positions in both species.
Goldman-Rakic's proposal about the organization of the prefrontal cortex argues against the standard view of the various components of working memory. The British psychologist Alan Baddely proposed in 1974 that working memory has a hierarchical structure, in which an 'executive system' in the prefrontal cortex allocates processing resources to separate 'slave' buffers for verbal and spatial information. The memory buffers were supposed to be well behind the prefrontal cortex. But Goldman-Rakic is unconvinced that the brain's executive processes are confined to any particular location. Moreover, in the traditional model, memories organized by domain would lie somewhere behind the prefrontal cortex, not within it.
The high-speed imaging capability of functional MRI is now able to help resolve the question. A study that Courtney and Ungerleider and their colleagues published in April in Nature pinpoints the part of the brain that is liveliest while working memory holds an image of a face. That region—the middle part of the prefrontal cortex—has been fingered as the crux of working memory in a variety of studies.
Yet the face-recognition task Courtney and company used does not involve any obviously executive functions, Ungerleider notes. Their findings thus contradict the view that only executive functions reside within the prefrontal cortex, but they do fit with Goldman-Rakic's scheme. Similarly, Jonathan D. Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University and his co-workers found a region of the prefrontal cortex partly overlapping the one identified by Courtney that is active while subjects remember letters seen in a sequence. The more the subjects had to remember in the Cohen experiment, the more active their prefrontal regions. So Cohen's result also suggests that working memories are actually stored, in part, in the prefrontal cortex. Domain-specific organization 'is the dominant view' of the prefrontal cortex, Wise says.
Wise himself does not subscribe to that dominant view, however. He points, for example, to a study reported in Science in May by Miller and his associates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers recorded from neurons in the prefrontal cortex of monkeys while they solved delayed-choice tasks that required them to remember information about both the appearance and spatial locations of objects. Over half the neurons from which Miller recorded were sensitive to both attributes, a result not expected if domain-specific organization prevails. 'It argues against Goldman-Rakic's view that identity and location are processed in different parts of the prefrontal cortex,' Miller says.
Goldman-Rakic responds that she and her colleagues have recently found hundreds of cells in part of the prefrontal cortex that respond selectively even in untrained animals to objects or faces—further evidence, she asserts, that the information in that area is organized in part by sensory domain. 'We do feel the evidence is overwhelming that the functions of neurons in the prefrontal cortex are dictated in large part by the neurons' sensory inputs,' she says. Moreover, Goldman-Rakic believes technical problems cast doubt on Miller's experiment. She maintains the targets he used were too close to the center of the visual field, which could produce spurious firings.
Keeping Self-Control
Michael Petrides of McGill University, another leading figure in the field, has mounted a different challenge to the standard view. Petrides's studies point to two distinct levels of processing, both within the prefrontal cortex. In his view the levels are distinguished primarily not by whether they maintain information about place or objects, as Goldman-Rakic holds, but rather by the abstractness of the processing they perform. The lower level in the hierarchy—physically lower in the brain as well as conceptually lower—retrieves data from long-term memory storage elsewhere. The higher 'dorsolateral' level, in contrast, monitors the brain's processes and enables it to keep track of multiple events. This higher monitoring level is called on when subjects are asked, for example, to articulate a random list of each number from 1 to 10, with no repetition: a subject has to remember each digit already chosen.
Petrides finds that both humans and monkeys with lesions in the dorsolateral part of the prefrontal cortex are crippled in their ability to monitor their own mental processes: they perform badly on special tests he has devised that require subjects to remember their earlier responses during the test. He also cites PET studies of healthy humans that find heightened activity in the same region when subjects are performing the tasks he uses. The finding is the same whether the tasks involve spatial cues or not. 'The material does not seem to matter—the process is crucial,' Petrides says.
Other researchers have found evidence to support the notion that the higher parts of the prefrontal cortex are key for self-monitoring. In an experiment by Mark D'Esposito and his associates at the University of Pennsylvania, volunteers performed either one or both of two tasks that, separately, did not require working memory. One task required subjects to say which words in a list read aloud were the names of vegetables, whereas the other asked them to match a feature of a geometric figure seen in different orientations. Functional MRI showed that the dorsoventral prefrontal cortex became active only when subjects attempted both tasks simultaneously. And in April at a meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, D'Esposito presented a meta-analysis of 25 different neuroimaging studies. The analysis supported Petrides's general notion that tasks involving more computation involve higher regions of the prefrontal cortex. 'It was amazing that this came out,' D'Esposito says.
D'Esposito's analysis also confirmed earlier indications that humans, far more than monkeys, represent different types of information in different halves of the brain. The meta-analysis did not, however, detect the upper/lower distinction between spatial and object working memory that Goldman-Rakic espouses.
Asymmetry of the human hemispheres is becoming apparent to other researchers as well. John D. E. Gabrieli and his colleagues at Stanford University have used functional MRI to study the brains of volunteers who were solving pictorial puzzles such as those often found on intelligence tests. The puzzles were of three types. One group was trivial, requiring the subject simply to select a symbol identical to a sample. A second group was a little harder: people had to select a figure with a combination of features that was absent from an array of sample figures. The third group contained more taxing problems that required analytical reasoning.
Gabrieli's study sheds some light on the debate over the organization of the prefrontal cortex. When volunteers pondered the intermediate class of tasks, which most resembled the tasks other investigators have used when studying working memory, the right side of the higher part of the prefrontal cortex was prominently active. Moreover, the activity was in areas that other researchers have found to be used when cues about spatial location are stored. This result fits Goldman-Rakic's idea that working memory for spatial location is stored in the higher regions of the prefrontal cortex, because these intermediate tasks all demanded that subjects visualize features in different locations.
When the volunteers in Gabrieli's experiment worked on the hard problems, however, the prefrontal cortices of the subjects became even more active, on the left as well as the right side. The added complexity produced a pattern of activation like that Petrides has found during his tests of self-monitoring.
Gabrieli's data thus provide some support for Petrides's theory of a higher executive level in the prefrontal cortex, as well as for Goldman-Rakic's view that domain-specific regions exist there. 'There are definitely domain-specific places,' Gabrieli says. 'And there are others that rise above that.' In other words, both sides in the debate over domain-specific organization of the prefrontal cortex may have a point. Yet in June, Matthew F. S. Rushworth of the University of Oxford and his colleagues reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that monkeys with large lesions in their lower prefrontal cortex could still perform well on delayed-choice tests. The finding casts new doubt on the theory that object working memory resides there and seems to support Petrides.
It may take years before the outstanding questions about the prefrontal cortex are settled and the operation of the brain's executive functions are pinned down to everyone's satisfaction. 'If you put a theory out, people will attack it,' Goldman-Rakic muses. 'Everyone is contributing.' And the modus operandi of the brain's decision-making apparatus is slowly becoming visible. 'We are getting,' Goldman-Rakic observes, 'to the point where we can understand the cellular basis of cognition.'
Source: Reprinted with permission. Copyright © August 1997 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.
Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Never Insult a real religion man (Holy):
In accordance to what I have gone through & wrote in this CD, studying the religions history, studying those behind the shadows, studying what kind of many people in life & their believes (action reaction) & (causes caused by causalities that each cause has a variety of causes), studying peace & war history, studying movies & learning from. I reached to a definite conclusion, that there should not be any war between religions & those who causes such corruptions having lack of information about God even & Satan been plying with their brains.
Christianity to be respected by all religions & is a must. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is not only a profit but also is an angel. Soul definition is there in all religions & those who believe in any religion suppose to respect souls. God the one who created Jesus from mother called marry without the influence of a father but by a holy spirit.
This Jesus was there & yet to come as it is written. This Jesus belongs to all mankind.
Once a lady came to Jesus they told him that she's prostitution a hour! She kneeled before Jesus & cried deeply with so many tears over his feet's. She started to wipe her tears with her hair. Jesus said, stand lady, God just blessed you & forgiven, go & sin no more. They said, who is he to speak on behalf God?
The question is, her sins were forgiven & she became without any sins. Was that a blessing or a punishment to her? What do you think! This is the answer.
God is angry guys. This Earth of ours turned 11 times since the year of 2000, I was there at that time as I am now. Suffering from satellites that plays with my brain, entire body & destiny other than people brains & their talk Bla Bla Bla. Trying to find my way in life just like any of you.
Be aware from the unknown. Be good to your souls for God to remain.
Thank you & God bless.
By: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski.
Satellite scans the indoor human brain & they broadcast in Satellite TV Channels & Radio on the spot of what comes to the indoor human brain & sound matching mixing along with char’s effect to use eyes & mouths of actors & actresses or singers on screen to fool around with human soul.And later on in News Papers as well!
Using block on the brain where ever goes & misusing their secret weapon of NASA Package “Rain Brain Scan, dynamic eyes & tele-transport” zoom with rays & waves from above space sky acting as God’s & involving the surrounding people by tele-transport “input-output data from brain to brains using our skulls & minds to start wondering to start bla bla about each others to create corruptions & to act as God’s as well”.
They can trap us all & they are in command. Who are they? They are Satellites Net Works. Umbrella of what? In whose law they to do this?
Where is the truth? It is around the globe “world wide” as if war of extermination of all populations of all nations.
I call them Satanic Net Works to scan our pasts, present & our destiny in life. People to scan on people brains as if living in electro magnetic field! God to help us all. They made us to live in fake life. Assuming electronic bomb or some virus of different types in all times took over our brains & bodies. What a slavery time for us to live in it in the 21st century!
حقل التنويم المغنطيسى بواسطة الأقمار الصناعيه لعمل الشغب بين المواطنين وأخذ الأسرار من العقول الإنسانيه وبثها على الهواء مباشره لأى منطقه كانت ومشاركتها مع أقمر صناعيه أخرى وحتى فى داخل بيوت الناس. وكلهم مع سبق الإصرار والترصد. إنه لفعل الشيطان. فايروس الشيطان. سياسة تطفيش وقتل متعمد. أى رب؟ أى دين؟ أى قانون وأى سلام فى مجتمع متعدد الأصول الوراثيه المتجنسه ومختلف الجنسيات الساكنه بالمجتمع بعقول متشابكه بالشعور الذهنى ومداخلات الأصوات؟ (لعبه الشيطان والشياطين) فرأس الحكمه مخافة الشيطان والشياطين ومحبة الله. وكأننا مقيدون بخيوط الشيطان والشياطين ولا فرق بين عربى وعجمى إلا بالتقوى فهل الإنسان مخير ولا مسير؟ أرواح الناس مش لعبه بدول العالم أجمع. هذا هو الخطر الحقيقى العالمى لكل المسكونه. فعقل الإنسان وقلب الإنسان بهما كهرباء. فلماذا زياده الكهرباء فى جسم الإنسان وتخويفه من الموت دائما؟ فهذا هو الإرهاب.
عالم الشيطان والإجرام والتكبر على رب العباد وزراعه الخوف المستمر (التشرد والتشريد).
حرب الإباده والتشكك والتشكيك. أين هو الإنسان أغلى ما نملك؟ وأنتم ماذا وكلنا عائلات؟
الخارى والقارىء واحد وطعه قايمه ومفاخره وعلى إيش يا حسره لا وخاوى كمان.
أهلا وسهلا بكم فى الأردن وأنستم وشرفتم كلكم. الأردن أولا وكلنا الأردن.
شبكات الأقمار الصناعيه التجسسيه هى الفيروسات العالميه. نزرع الحب واالسلام ويزرعوا فينا الخوف الدائم على طول بسجن منزلى (بعقر داره) ومن ثم (زنجا زنجا, دار دار, بيت, بيت) مع تعذيب نفسى وجسدى ووجدانى وروحى مبرح بأى حق بأى قانون بإستعمار الروح البشريه وإستغلالها. كل العقول فى خلاط! ماذا يبقى بعد الخلط؟ وكم خلاط؟ وكل عقل يهوس فينا فلماذا الملامه حتى ونحن فى بيوتنا وتعذيبنا من خلال التلفزيون؟ كل هذا ليه وحياة الإنسان قصيره. وما ذنبى أنا بهذ كله؟ كلها كفر بكفر وأين إحترام الله والأديان وقانون الخلق والخالق؟ فهذا أسوء الحروب بتاريخ البشريه. فالأسى ما بتنسى. ذكريات عذاب بتاريخ العقل المتواصل (عذاب متواصل حين التذكر). فهذا الخوف ذكرى متواصله بعقل الإنسان. أما من ناحيه التلفزيون فلماذ نصدق ما نراه أو نسمعه عندما يكون متصل ببرامج إلكترونيه وأصوات مستفزه لأهل البيت مع مساعده أقمار صناعيه تجسسيه مشتركه مستفزه شيطانيه تدخل فى عقل الإنسان وأخذ الذكريات؟ بتعذيب الإنسان بعذاب القبر وسكرات الموت وإختلال توازن العقل والأذن الوسطى. شياطين كانوا أو ألاهات مصيرهم نار جهنم. فخ بعد فخ! على طول كمان! أين الوطن والإنتماء؟ وكله هات وهات! كلها خراب بيوت بخراب. فأين الثقه بين الناس وعوائلهم؟ فهذا هو العار الذى سجل بالتاريخ. إستفزاز الروح الإنسانيه! ده يبقى أيه يا عرب؟ إبر تخديريه وعلى طول! وما دخلى أنا بالملك أوالملكه أو الحكومه أو الوزراء أو الشعب؟ لا أحب مشاركه أفكارى! وكلهم بعقولهم يستعملون الحاسه االسادسه وغير الهوس الذى به يشاركون أفكارى غير المسبات والكلام الغير لائق عنى وعن الأردن وكل شىء فيها بالهمس المتواصل والممحنه الجنسيه عن طريق الفكر وإستعمال الصفن بعقلى ومكانى وبمبدأى بحياتى وكلهم ألاهات. اللعبه مكشوفه عالميا.
إيمانى بربى وبالسلام العالمى.
Today Tuesday, June 24, 2014 getting up from fully tensioned sleep by the surrounding voices from the neighbors with less pain in the head after being targeted by some stroke or strike to my brain during sleep. I felted & it hurt me much just like burning the fuses in the brain by huge electric choke. Butchers still damaging my brain & with threatening whispers. Still wondering why they did this. It is a terror activity. Killing or trying to kill people during their sleep, just because thinking or dreaming or remembering. Autohypnosis, hypnosis, hypnotism by electro magnetic radiation field combining brains even to share with mine. All are guilty in this case. This is a terror activities all times (SATAN VIRUS) & many times same tries to my head & heart. Still I'm having pain in the brain. Still hearing voices from previous relationships & some might be recorded voices. How should I know? They bring me to think about them. Who is judging & punishing a human brain? The question is did they all got hurt as me last night at almost 1:00 am? What did I do to get it last night? This is fear at home. Where is home land once all bringing me to full tension all times while & at home alone? This is Satanic & Satan work from above Electronic Harassment & from surrounding brains. Memories remains or wanting to delete my memories or formatting it by doing so (Boom Boom Sounds even in neighborhoods every day!). They create fear to brains, hearts & then to entire body. Who is gaining? They creating hopeless life as if there is no tomorrow to live for. Sky Nets & Surrounding Brain Nets is the virus. All of it is traps. What I got to do with any of King or Queen or Government or Ministers or people? I don’t like brain sharing or brain connections or whispers! I like to live my normal life. Once all creating this! Life of Harassment. What I got to do with them or with any of it? Judging my brain! Go to hell all of you, creating me what? What on-off , comes & goes radiation from above! Strokes & strikes! For what? Hitting my head while sleeping! Fuck you.
Welcome to Jordan.
One thing left to speak about, Those who dies by such Electronic Harassment from above satellites & from surrounding whispers & people bla bla what is their Insurance? What Insurance companies can do? Let them think bout. & those death certificates been issued by doctors! Let them think bout. Why they don’t mention the real cause of death about those who died before us once strokes & strikes targeting their heads & hearts?
Till now I have pain in the brain since last two days. Such shocks & whispers can create what?
• شلل نصفي
[n] hemiplegia
• شلل مزدوج
[n] diplegia
• شلل رعاشي
[n] Parkinson, Parkinson's disease
• شلل رباعي
[n] quadriplegia
• شلل الأطفال
[n] polio, poliomyelitis
• شلل أحادي
[n] monoplegia
• الشلل المخي
[n] cerebral palsy
• الشلل السفلي
[n] paraplegia
• شَلَليّ
[adj] paralytic
• مصاب بالشلل
[adj] paralyzed
As well as madness.
• جلطة دمويّة
[n] blood clot
In brains & in hearts! & entire body due to middle ear the compass of the human.
Who is doing this to humanity? Killers, Butchers, beasts & Predators.
Lets say my insurance Amount is 500,000,000 Billions not Millions (Five hundred millions billions) USA$ worth & when I die this amount goes to UN Budget because I believe in God & in peace! Killing me fucking shit terrorists! I also having family, they can do the same. What about you all & your families? Any individual can do the same. Its my life not yours. Whispers still! For how long? Stop sticking to my brain & stick to yours. Later on people wants their rights, revenge & compensations. Would it stop once started? Yes brain suckers, whispers & subjects creators? All of you are guilty. Network of Satanic. Once brain a connection all brains is shit due to electro-magnetic Radiation field & everything is shit. I call it Satan Virus in your brains. Stop focusing on me. I got nothing to do with any brain of yours. Stop hurting me shit brains. Brain Courts on a daily bases! What is God, what is religion, what is law, what is Judge, what is lawyer or advocate in such cases? All are guilty & all are Godless. Like saying life of fake, harassment & jungle with much of traps & trappers. Once I'm connected with many brains from all over, I used to hear that I a native son. A human self respect is a National Security. The whole thing is shiting on you all. Where is a normal life of facts & logic with God, love, trust & peace? Umbrella of what? delusion, fantasy, illusion, phantasm, phantasm Of deadly mafia of virus creators. Creating War, corruptions & much of misunderstandings. Who is under attack? & who has the right to judge a human brain? & I also used to her, yes baby we will build you a nice fortune while I was under attack since the year of 2000. I used to say fuck you killer with cold blood. What I'm afraid of is all are killers. And all learning from my brain. Would any court in this planet agrees with terror activates & terrorists? This umbrella creating no where to go & no where to hide. All in danger & everything in danger. Stop approaching my brain or my location. Shit Apes. Honesty speaking, God remains the greatest the only hope for tomorrow. Understand how to protect your selves & your families from SATAN Work. Where is a normal home land once they are living under this Umbrella of what? Yes Dead Skulls in the Predator movie are we still living in it? Yes courts! & Hollywood movies & many songs from all over explaining it all. They also guilty or victims? What business with Satan work mafias, Zionists, piracy? Nerve system always under attack? For how long? Life time shit Apes? Release me at once before you all lose more than what you can think about.
Approaching to human conscious & Judging? Brain hacking? All of you are thieves & Butchers. Doing this for what brain suckers? Is this a human nature? What I can do? Let go, life like this is waste. Stop bringing me into tension & stop creating fear in me. I did not ask for any fortune. Plus not interested to share with bank accounts that don’t have any owners. (Spam Emails). Stop wasting my time brains. Get lost shit Umbrella. Nice Business? I'm not apart of it. Leave me alone. And I got nothing to do with it shit brains or any of your business. I'm trying to live my life. Yes Gods? Can I live my life or not? Who any among any of you can compensate my loses from a long time shit Satan network & still.
Welcome to Jordan.
ADVICE FOR VICTIMS
Live as normal a life as possible; work, play, socialize, pray. By doing this you partially thwart their monstrous remote control experiments.
Maintain the rage; continue to speak out and write about their crimes especially the hellish mistreatment they force people to endure.
By doing this you defeat their attempts to silence and discredit you.
Speak only to honest, intelligent, courageous people about your own situation; to avoid frustration.
Cope and survive.
Contact the Federation Resistance Global Electronic Harassment Opposition Party see http://www.federationresistance.weebly.com
Today 05 June 2014
I sat in front of my main door with my lap top at 10:00 pm.
Suddenly, I saw some teen age boys in the dark. Passing behind me while I was setting on the stairs indoor within the house property.
I believe they are the same previous gang "been published in face book with some photos of the location" spit over my laptop from behind the wall other than that Muslim scarf girl trying to open my main door late at night.
But this time, they did approach to the end of the street upper me to through big stone on me. Thank to God it missed me. I wonder what type of such children or mother fuckers living in this neighborhood!
Almost 200 grams stone been shot with, the question is what if? What administration in Jordan. One lady did witness & she said they ran into left side when she saw me shouting at them "you sons of gun" without seeing them. All are witnesses while electro magnetic field runs on over our brains.
Now I'm holding this stone in my hand wondering, was it bigger because it hit the wall & then the ground & thinking what Jordan is. Faced much of people brains. Welcome to Jordan what about national security. What God! What law! What religion! With much of people Bla Bla Bla! All are guilty. As if country of Satanists.
I'm living in Al Ashrafia "Shifaa Str. Armenian colony where Muslims & Christians living" with much of Aped brains & behaviors. What type of families! Some good & some bad in a mixer. Who's gaining? This Umbrella of shit creates what? Who is under attack? Well! I can do the same late at night as well; I can through lot of stones all over & cause lot of madness to much people without leaving any proof. Houses are there, windows are there, cars are there, & people with children are there. That’s why all are shit. All are satanic not Gods. Where is fair & just?
I wonder! In Israel those children with there stones fighting Israeli solders as been seen in TV. And most of Arabs were happy to see such a thing! Putting there children to danger! What a mother & what a father they have! All are guilty. Yes Arabs! Can not live without guilt? At all times! Look at Arab countries now, see what is going on in their home land. They are so much happy & their nature is to kill them selves. What a war of extermination. The world wide understands the nature of nationalities. Some restricted & some non restricted.
Stability, facts & logic, law of creation, humanity, human soul, hope for tomorrow, future, satisfaction, love & respect, God & religions, nationalities & holly places as if without meaning. Been advising all times. What a life! All freaks. Can not live peacefully in a shelter due to things like that. This NASA Package is law of what that been used over Jordan & over me? Country of harassments. They got talented! Life is too short to live in anger & in danger. Who is good? & Who is bad? For how long? Nice two logos of Jordan: Jordan 1st & We all are Jordan. All are happy?
Welcome to kingdom of Jordan.
Friday, June 06, 2014
The question is: Whom to trust?
Brains of the surroundings or Satellite of F.B.I - NASA Package: Rain Brain Scan, Dynamic Eyes & Tele-Transport. Plus secrete weapon with wave & rays! Focusing on hearts & heads! Hunting civilians at their locations & taking their secrets to share with others either satellites of other countries or other locations! What type of life Jordan? Lot of mistakes going on & no action taken! All are witnesses even!
What a sheep Jungle life.
الخارى واالقارئ واحد, وطعه قايمه, ومفاخرى ,وعلى ايش يا حسره, لا وخاوا كمان.
What families! What location! What GPRS! What whispers & trackers! What Strokes & strikes! For what once they all are trappers since a long time back? Law above some people only? Not for all? Brains of harassments, TV of harassments, whispers of harassments, satellites of harassments = country of harassments. This is called racialism of origins & souls. Slaves to whom? Godnisim! Hell is waiting to many people. I used to hear whispers say that the King Whishes to examine his own people attitudes. Should I learn from them all? Many people were guessing & lot of Bla Bla Bla. All living my life! What a waste of everything. Creating war in brains! Then people go angry, selfish, Godless & then to everything shit as if all living in a jungle wild life of shit. Ashes to ashes dust to dust. Many people have been saying even in the streets: that’s why we are all dead.
Satanic Networks creating war of extermination & fooling us all. Umbrella of what?
??????????????? Questions never end.
Vampire's world! Satanic Net work from above & on ground! Who is in danger?
Assassins, killers, murderers, maniacs, hell inventors, shit creators, opinions of shit, assumers of endless war, rumors creators, blackmailers & everything evil. Should I take a permission to think? Or to have a shower! Or to dream! Or to sleep! Or to eat! Or what? Whispers for how long? They looked at the small issue & forgot about the big one "Mr. George Bush". All of them infected by Satan Virus acting as Gods.
Why this still going on? & in whose law? Is Jordan a Muslim country? Or a Christian country? Once all are Gods actors & witnesses!
Welcome to Jordan of soul attackers. Had enough Arabs? What a shame to remain in Arab History. What about world wide peace? That also meaningless with Arabs. All are guilty for ever & history remains. Danger situation to all families. All living in a terror activity at all times. Always intension even indoor & thanks to Electro magnetic field radiation from above satellites. Country of what? I got nothing to do with any & still under attack? Country of shit wastage. Anything holly left? Jordan 1st for what? We all Jordan for what? Nice two logos. What a hope once all doing so? Life of SATAN Virus. This what is all about. What left? Only Money & survival in a wonder land. Bob Marley song War "We don’t need no more troubles". Cold war, civil war, shit war! Fuck you all. How about getting in each others assholes shit brains! Nice virus! Shove your heads in your own SATAN Asshole. All of you been creating a country of no where to go no where to hide. A country of no where. Diggers for how long? Go to hell mother fuckers, satanic, sons of hores & daughters of guns. All of you totally guilty as if all in black list to all nations. What a diplomatic relationships. Electronic harassments at all times? Stop using my brain shit administrations. Stop soul punishment. A human soul to be played with! In whose law? Satanic law it is. And teen aged people having fun with it "throughwing & hunting people by stones! Others were hunting people on foot by their cars! What a world wide issue that never ends! All of these years & since 2000 & even before satanic still active, mind disturbance since tat time & up to now. Maybe I need a weapon at all times for a self defines in this type of life of terror activities. All saying the same & all complaining on all. Who did this to me? Go to hell SATAN creating us all death.
وكلهم مع سبق الإصرار والترصد.
I wish the world wide to understand what type of life I'm living & what I'm dealing with or facing. All sharing my brain! For how long? The simplest truth just been said.
Welcome to Jordan of Zigzag ways for living, other Arab countries also been involved. The question is: when this going to stop? Or it is a cold war that lasts for ever with Arab countries? Believe it or not, that is the question. To be or not to be! How to be & how not to be in a jungle life? I know there still satellites above my brain scanning at all times. Action been never taken against those people who harmed me. The question is to whom to report to? Magnetic field for what? Brain sharing for what? To kill our selves? For what? Madness in the air for what? Should we fight for survival? Or should we take a self defines? & how if killings started? As if there is no law in Jordan. God remains the greatest. Hunting our brains mother fuckers! Taking everything & sending trappers! Nice peace & harmony. All wants to be lectured still? Should I say that’s why we all are dead? The question is while I'm living in an Arab world a Muslim world! Is this an Islam Muslim administration? Is it World wide Umbrella cased this? Is it Israel or America work? Or world wide virus? Why me under attack then? NASA Package to be shoved in users Assholes. Because they the ones whose causing us all death. SARS virus "Fear Virus" in many countries. In Jordan all are creating it. People falling sick & shit ones creating more troubles.
Nothing is hygienic in Jordan. Viruses are in everything even in brains & behaviors.
Jordan visitors "foreigners" also realizing this fact due to local people speaking in English complaining. When they go home they speak about Jordan & its people.
Who is judging who once Umbrella of Satellites is there above us all. Is it bad to have a shelter? Or a home land? Or to live in peace? Or to have a self respect? Or to live own soul & brain? All Believing in Satan & not in any God in this neighborhood as if everything is allowed. Even teen age boy with stones. UAE, Kuwait & Jordan Administration with their broadcasting made unforgivable sin & a mistake that lasts for ever combined with other Arab countries. They trapped tem selves by them selves. I been warning them since the day they started with me. Used to say, you all did pick a wrong person to play with. Been warning all & saying what about History & your families. Been so good with all. What did I gain from all of this shit? Life waste. I wish that goes for all, because this what all did create to me, family & others. Satanic net work killing Muslims & Christians. Law of SATAN killing us all. Wanting my past & history! I open all of your pasts & history. I am a human & I have a self respect & I'm free from you all. Brain sharing is a wastage. Yes Arabs! Are you all happy now? Live with it for ever. I'm still alive not dead to be treated as dead person for any of you to keep on updating from my soul, brain, dreams & thinking & yet to be under attack. Damn you all, hurting me so much for so many years. I did not kill any body while all been killing me. Shove your budgets into your assholes shit Satanists. Pigs virus, birds virus, cancers & yet brains electric shocks! & yet positive vibrations to scare me with some voices in my skull to fool others with Radar in their brains & me. A human life goes on total waste & all witnesses. All complains about own brains. Thief's behind my back at all times & waiting to gain. Beasts are many. What a nature of surroundings creating nightmare life to my soul. What a story to tell about. Now what about NASDAQ? Should any trust? Once viruses in our brains even making us feel sick. Doctor's of psychology, Sychology, heart, therapist & mentalist professions are in danger. Or they will be involved by satanic business. Actually with this, all type of doctor professions are in danger too. Nerve system effects entire body. So much danger to all. A full country & it's business in danger. What a cold war creators. What a secrets behind the shadows. Everything is in danger. Everything is so obvious, stop focusing on me. Focus on your own selves. Who is going to solve this major problem?
NASA Package is full of viruses even to our computers & TV broadcasting. Computers as electricity & our brains have also nerve system. Harassment by Micro Oven Rays! Creates what? Bubbles in the ass, weakness in bones & madness in the brain. Soul in a living body suffering for what once no one takes the bright side of it. In all cases all are guilty. I can not trust TV any more due to shit games they played with. News also fake & I also used to say that I hate politics. Yes Red Cross, Yes United Nations, yes God believers, yes all populations, yes higher courts! All of this business! To whom? Now a days, most believing in money not in God due to lot of trappers. To me, I cant find peace any where but with my self fighting for it due to all above mentioned, peace is only with my God. God remains always the greatest. Is that wrong to believe in God? The question is: Whom to trust? Only family. While families attacking families! How is that? How many countries like this? This is extortion, hostage, terror & blackmailing.
Should I be a family man? I used to say, I only wanted to live in a normal life & to be a family man same as any of you. Now it's so obvious to you all. Believe it or not, my peace mission is accomplished, so let me live in peace. Is that much to ask? That goes for all. Why war?
Welcome to Jordan of nice families.
God 1st not any of any of you! Brains or satellites from above. I believe it's time to quit on these two accounts of Face Book of mine by erasing my passwords due to rain brain scan (NASA Package) taking my passwords from my brain while I my self not knowing because I just copy & paste due to satanic network of Arabs. Who is using such package? Goes to hell. Brains in mixers! For what a good budget? I will open another account in order to save those two accounts of mine & so on. I know there are hackers, intruders & virus's players around the globe trying to hide the secrets of facts & logic. They used to play with my Inbox & outbox email of mine while I been emailing my wife. God to curse them all. This electro magnetic field radiation caused by whom? F.B.I package (NASA Package) goes to hell. Arabs still freaking around with my soul & destiny. All are Gods behaviors or Satanist. Home land security my Ass. They all are satanic net works creating terror activities. All brains of what? How many times should I be under attack even from teen age people other than satellites secrete weapon, TV harassments on daily bases, Surroundings Bla Bla & brains whisperings day & night even while I'm dreaming! All are witnesses! For how long should I keep on speaking about God & peace? While others teasing me all times! Caused me hell of a time & still Satellites still approaching me all times! Once all needs shit I give shit. Once there are no humanity, mercy in hearts & minds! Then what will be? Noting but shit. This what I used to say since the year of 2000 to all surroundings & who ever approaches to my brain from above & up to now I'm still saying the same on a daily bases.
All are guilty & all knows that! Welcome to Jordan of what? All brains connected for what? Wanting a civil war? How I'm I suppose to protect my self in a jungle life? My soul been under attack since that time & still? I want to know why all of this shit? No God? Only Satan in Jordan? All of them are infected by a fucking Satan Virus. All are up normal. All of them need a brain wash or maybe it's from their DNA? Their origins!
I been so good all of these years & to all. Why I'm still going in this shit still? & in who's law? & they are insisting still! Face me with them. Then I tell you all they are nothing but wastage & shit. God or Satan to win?!!! For how long in planet of Apes? Should Apes to have any religion? All needs what? A peaceful home land, What about me? This what I been seeking for & since a long time back! I have to keep evidence of their Satan work. All of them needs corruptions. They can not live even in peace.
These two accounts of mine I will not activate any more due to lot of harassments. I will send me a friend request for assurance of their existence & I hope for ever because this is a pure history with evidence for tomorrow.
How can I trust any from any where?
This is how I feel. Am I free from all of this shit or not still? All are what?
Kill me here I am. I'm a good person! A good advisor! Wanting more while killing me? For who long? On a daily bases? Fuck you all. Shame on you all. Did I seek for any fortune? Can I? What are you? I am a human! Not a predator! Yes Pussies, deckies, all of you are ass holes, same feelings while having love or sex. Males or females are the same. What you still seeking for? Examine your own assholes. Stop fucking with human soul.
Bye for now.
By the way, I am a human. Seek:
http://polaskilove.angelfire.com
http://polaskilove2.angelfire.com
They said over internet that Jordan got talented! & later they said Arabs got talented! What this means? Yes Jordan? Movie! Business! Or what? Once all Gods actors! Satanists you all are. That goes for all. Shame to remain. Sorry in advance if I'm going to be bad. Connecting me even with children! For what? I'm not a slave to any of you. Nightmare always! I know what those eyes of mine did see & those ears of mine did hear since the year of 2000 & even before & later on Sep the 11th 2001. Case is closed since the day it started. I don’t belong to Satan work any more treating me as slave & I did not obey to any of their shit since beginning or the day it started. I'm still a child to mighty God. Facts & logic is all about. If any of you fails in what's all about is a shit guilty for life. God law of Just & fair, before your law earthen people. (Stability, satisfaction, good well, peace & God always.) Teach your children Please. American movies teaches you all in your own satellites broad castings Arabs even in their own songs. Who is with & who is against? In God I do Believe for ever. What a secrete weapon from a spaced sky to judge a human brain while thinking or dreaming? Many victims & dead casualties are there! I love you all. My Peace mission is did accomplished & for ever lasting. Believe it or not Shit Satan. Our only hope for living. Trust me. Should I live? Freedom to my soul from my God. Yes Gods of shit. Interfering in my religion! What are you now? Satanic shit net works. Go to hell.
Games of politics interfering in religions! For what? Yes apes? Wanting Banana? All God actors! For what? Shit Satanic networks! God is peace. No peace without God. Yes Satanist's what are your religions? I'm not Jesus. Trust me. Your brains seeking what? What else any of you wants from me? Fighting me! I fight you all. Fucking my soul? Ok. Thank you. Live with it for ever. Gods law of creation all here are breaking!
What we are? Humans, Apes or machines? I love you all my friends, Thank you all & God bless. Don’t miss understand me please. Once you put me into tension always day & night! I will put you all into tension as you all wanted in Jordan as how it is. Once not caring for any type of peace. Sorry for that. In Jordan Satan virus, all been forcing me to it! Civil War behind the shadows as you all wanted & all are witnesses. In whose law? Thank you & God Bless for those how believes in God & peace in advance latest for ever. Good & Bad. Who blames me for my Islam or for my Christianity? Let them to blame Mr. USA Obama then. What an ape planet. This what is going on in Jordan. I have to fight for my believe in all type of all accepts & issues. All has to learn of what they have done. Who's School Queen of Jordan with P.L.O 's organization business creator of what? No peace! Victimizing the victim! Live for ever with it then. History remains. Yes Arabs? All are happy? Then Enjoy. What Investigation once I'm publishing to you all? All are guilty for ever. I Am A Human & not & will never be any virus to any of you as how been assumed. No horoscopes They all are Gods! What doctors? All are satanic with shit evil from now & on.
All did combine them selves to this viruses! I do believe in my freedom for ever, or maybe some wanted still to fuck around with me! Mind your minds & live with God.
Fri, 13th June 2014.
69 Joining 96 separating, this what life isJ. What is a human life once goes on waste? And who is wasting it?
Live as much as can be. Far away from wastage even though much effects life it self & chances & not all chances can be taken. Human life can not complete a million hours still! Why wasting my life with much of shit harassments? Yes hunters! What else wanting? We all are guests to this life. Peace only with God & not with Satellites nor with brain sharing (Satanic net work) or umbrella of what? Two ways in life: Good & bad. I stick with the good one. Stop fooling me. A human self respect is a national security. Wish you all the best. All internet users can be traced by who ever want to. All to be aware from the unknown. Destination unknown. History & memories remains. Stop digging in individual brains, to seek more brains! Stop playing with human souls by autohypnosis, hypnosis, hypnogenesis, hypnotism from above satellites, which goes for all by the field of magnetic radiation. No more whispers & no more electronic harassments. Did they care for any family? To create corruptions among us all! What a secrete weapon from above space. God Bless those who understand.
• طب الأطفال
[n] pediatrics
• طب الأسنان
[n] dental medicine, dentistry
• الطّبّ الأحيائيّ
[n] biomedicine
• طب العيون
[n] ophthalmology
• طب الشيخوخة
[n] geriatrics
• طب الشرج
[n] proctology
• طب الروائح
[n] aromatherapy
• طب الجهاز العصبي
[n] neurology
• طب الأنف والحنجرة
[n] rhinolaryngology
• طب الأمراض النسائية
[n] gynecology
• طب الأمراض المفصلية
[n] rheumatology
• الطب السريري
[n] clinical medicine
• الطب الإشعاعي
[n] radiology
• طب الأنف والأذن والحنجرة
[اسم] طب
[n] Medical otolaryngology, otorhinolaryngology
Has any meaning? Once nerve system is under attack? What a war killing all! & killing all type of business. Heads & hearts is under attack. In who's law? Satan law.
Deaf ear, middle ear, outer ear, inner ear, external ear, sense of hearing. Under attack.
All human body sensors & all systems in it is under attack. In who's law? Satan law.
Rays & waves in human skull & chest & location with some electronic shock tat vibrate the skull & some other parts of the entire body. Interfering in human brain, thoughts & visions as well. Creating mixers of brains! That’s why all are shit. Brain sharing! For what? What a life of harassments & sickness. This also creates SARS Virus "Fear Virus". Humans are under attack by a non visible waves & rays & from some surrounding brains. A full community is under attack. What? For what? For how long? Many years gone on waste already. All are guilty for such life time waste.