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... led a master of the history of brain science since the 1800 s. A little after his time, a Vietnamese physician named Fransod believed he could localize distinctions of character in areas in the brain, if fact in very small and accurate areas in the brain. He believed that if there was a certain trait that you were good at, you would get a lump of some sort that had enlarged that part of your brain. Many people believed that, and soon there were cartoons drawn of people with huge lumps in certain areas of the brain.
As many followers as he may have had, he also had critics. One of those, a certain Pier Florence, didn't at all believe that any higher function could be localized on the cortex of the brain. He took romantic love as an example. The center for that feeling is in the posterior part of the brain, so he took a cat, surgically removed that part of the brain, and after the cat had recovered it was just as aroused and just as willing to mate with the opposite sex.
Thus proving Fransod wrong and leaving a major new found truth about the brain with use. In 1861, Dr. Broker had encountered a patient named "Tan" that had difficulty with language, he could read and write just fine, but he could not say a whole sentence by him self. While studying this patient, Dr. Broker realized that language is localized in the frontal area of the left hemisphere of our brain. Another great scientist was Karl.
He was able to visualize a nerve cell and then explain how it worked. He explained to use for the first time about how exactly a neuron is shaped, the basic parts of it. He also stated that information was passed from one part of a neuron to the other. It is stated that he was able to look at a dead structure through a compound microscope, and then tell about its function. Dr. Nancy Wexel was a doctor that spent most of her life studying Huntington's Disease (HD).
One of her expeditions took her to a town in Venezuela where most of the population suffered from it. She was trying to find a certain trait, or gene, that can be linked to this disease so that the future children of the people living there could be maybe cured. The quest for a cure for HD for Dr. Wexel is quite personal, considering the fact that her mother and all of her brothers died from it which mean that now she has a fifty fifty chance in inheriting it. When she was younger, she was always told that she hasn't a thing to worry about simply because of the fact that woman are not able to inherit this disease. But in recent studies, it has been proved that men and women suffer from this disease equally, and there is no know trait that can suddenly stop the cycle.
Huntington's Disease is a very serious and very deadly disease. Those who are affected are scared for the rest of there lives, as short as they are. They have uncontrolled facial expressions, irregular walking patterns, and also irregular upper body movements. There is no way for anyone to really know if they have the disease for sure until they start to show symptoms, in which case it is already to late to cure.
The way that it effects the brain is that it starts to kill all the cells in the middle of the brain, and that basically then cancels out all of our brain activity. At first, Dr. Wexel planned that the quest for that certain gene that causes HD would take a minimal of ten to fifteen year. But much to everyone's amazement it took them only four years to find.
Now doctors are able to tell which people have inherited this gene and which haven't. Another type of brain disorder, or brain disease, is Hydrocephalus (HS). This disorder is has only effected infants, mostly newborns. In this type of disorder, the normal flow of Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) is blocked in one of the brains ventricles, thus causing pressure to build up in the brain, causing severe misshaping of the cranium. If left untreated, it will result in death. The ventricles, which usually are butterfly shaped, are enlarged to the point at which the brain itself is only about a centimeter thick.
The Plasticity, or the way that normal brain activity is spread out, is thus disturbed. Most neural activity comes from the back, or posterior, area of the brain. One invention that has saved many individuals from this sort of terrible death is a plastic bypass. The procedure is quite simple, the neurologist takes the bypass, inserts it into the part of the brain of choice, then he simply bypasses all of the Cerebral Spinal Fluid to the heart, where it then gets pumped back into the body as it should normally. A special case that should be noted is that of a girl named Sharon. She was born with Hydrocephalus, and she had a bypass made, and that has saved her from death.
But what is truly amazing is the fact that even though her brain is considerable smaller in area then ours, she has been rated in school as being above average. She seems to basically excel in everything she does. She has stated that "If someone says I can't do something, I do it just to show them that they are wrong." But her case really does not help much. If anything, it raises more questions then answers. Agnes de Hill was a professional dancer that was rising to the top. She had everything she needed to be quite possibly the best.
On May 15, 1975, she had a huge concert held for her. It was great, it was sold out and everyone that was anyone was going to be there. Before the she was going to go on stage, however, one of the dancers did not make it. So they sent an extra to her room. She said great, but we need to fill out the paper work and make a contract so that the union would allow the kid to go out. So she picked up a pen and the contract, and right when she was about to write, she realized that she can not write.
She could not do anything with a pen. So then the ambulance came, and she was paralyzed in the ambulance on the right side of her body. She later recollects that through it all, she honestly felt no pain, she felt no sensation of any kind going through her body. In the hospital the doctors discovered that she had a hemorrhage in her brain. A vessel ruptured on the left side of her brain, the side that contains the neurons for motor control and for vision.
The rupture squeezed most of the tissue around it, which is interesting and quite lucky for her because usually when something of this nature occurs, it does not just squeeze the tissue, but it cuts and breaks it. So that is one reason for her successful recovery. After she had gotten out of the hospital, she then went into rehabilitation. Although she can't tell here her right hand is unless she looks at it, she has learned to use it.
The same can be said for her right foot. Since she is mostly paralyzed on the right side of her body, she had to learn how to do basically every movement all over again, which includes walking. She also has to watch out how she eats, because her right side is paralyzed, if food happens to go there, she will without a doubt drop it out of her mouth. Because of the difficulty of all of this, most people who survive this types of diseases usually don't walk or do much ever again, they just simply give up on life in general and just lay in bed all the time. But Agnes had the perseverance and the determination to do things on her own, she wants to be normal. Now, she teaches at a dance studio, and she has even mentioned that she may be planning to return to the stage herself, it all depends on how well she recovers.
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Research essay sample on Part Of The Brain Huntington Disease
