In Auschwitz during World War II certain Nazi "doctors" performed an experiment on an unwilling subject supposedly designed to measure the effects of progressive brain damage. Ultimately what was revealed, as in all such Nazi efforts, was the experimenters' own identity as members of an inferior race.
In any case, their study involved banging a young man over the head with a hammer two or three times, and then standing back to watch what he would do. Having cataloged the effects, they would then repeat the sequence, taking aim, bringing down the hammer, stepping back to observe.
Soon the young man began to go blind. He continued to struggle at his tormenter's command, trying to walk, turn to the left, turn to the right, pick up an object. He had, after all, no other choice than to be as cooperative a patient as possible.
This horror was actually filmed, for the future glory of science no doubt. I myself have seen the film, and it has haunted me ever since.
Now did the young man's personality change as well? Did the doctor's take aim at the personality chamber in the brain? Then again, this was not likely a goal of the exercise. What was the goal? No more than a perverse amusement, I would guess. A pastime of evil.
We have all seen cartoons wherein a character will be knocked silly by a blow on the head, then smacked again so as to return him to normal. But we know now beyond a doubt, thanks to those Nazi doctors, that this is not the way it works.
Damage to the brain, to the spinal cord as a result of MS becomes manifest quite clearly in the physical realm. It may affect sensation, it may affect gait, it may affect muscle tone, it may affect cognition, and all of this is perfectly observable.
But what about the personality, that which cannot be objectively observed.
What we can say with assurance is that personality change is a product of experience, a response to a change in personal reality. Because our circumstances have changed, our viewpoint changes also in order to comprehend what is new. We describe ourselves according to who we seem to be at any given time. Jupiter is suddenly more like Mercury.
And yet, is our response really the same as personality, or is it personality that determines the nature of our response?
I have seen the gamut of reaction to MS in the past few years--ranging, person to person, from anger to insult, from malaise and depression to inspiration and enlivenment. I have seen growth toward faith and bitterness toward death.
Far from being damaged, it would almost seem that personality becomes activated, charged. It stands at attention, opens its eyes, searches both self and heavens. It becomes, in short, as overactive as the hay wired autoimmune system.
I think that it does not change, so much as it invites us to truly become. Here is the perfect moment to grow. Adversity is playing its catalyst role. Therefore, seize the day, and reap the riches disease has unveiled.
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Showing posts with label the brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the brain. Show all posts
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The MS Brain
A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
Most people will say 10 cents. This answer tends to look obvious at first glance, nonetheless it is incorrect.
This example is given in a book about the brain that I am reading. It is given as an illustration of how the brain thinks, which is really not at all like a computer nor a calculator. Rather, it appears that the brain will often run on intuition rather than logic, the reason for this being that the route to conclusions is shorter, faster on the intuitive highway than on the bumpier road of logic.
Now, on the other hand the damaged brain (i.e. the MS brain) falls into the habit of taking long-cuts. This is because multiple and various routes are blocked by scar tissue. The process runs up against a wall. It reroutes. This takes just long enough to create physical or mental deficits--spasticity, confusion, indecision, cognitive hiccoughs, feet that buzz, shoulders that twitch, hands that tremble.
Maybe you get lost in a parking lot while your brain is busy at sending thoughts through dizzying alternative channels, picking up the necessary information to arrive at a proper construct of sight and memory, motor response and accurate identification. Maybe you actually become dizzy in the process as well, adding a further impediment to the solution of your quandary.
Let us say that yesterday morning you fell down the stairs in your house. This is something that most all people will do at one time or another (unless they have no stairs in their houses), but with MS it is something you can count on happening if indeed you also happen to have a molecular beaver dam halfway down the stream between the lift foot instruction and the put foot down instruction.
We begin, therefore, after enough falls, after enough endless journeys around the parking lot, to commit ourselves to a deliberate sort of thought process. This is not to say that we succeed at all times (or even at most times), but it is a matter of practice, a matter of adjustment. In MS there is no straight route, and there is no intuitive route--there are only the routes that propose to navigate the damage that was done by the storm--whoops log-jam there, washed out bridge to the south, we will have to go north and then cut back again, down by the old river road--you know, the one that hasn't been used in ages. And so forth.
More and more I try to practice an artificial sort of deliberation as often as possible. This in turn often results in a physical slowness that mirrors the mental, a necessary trade-off. I stand by the door counting my way through a checklist--keys, cell phone, wallet, cigarettes, laptop, & etc. I stop before getting behind the steering wheel, collecting data on locale and recollection. I check notes that I keep in my back pocket, and whatever tasks I find that can be done on the instant, I do--for I will surely forget if I put them off for even five minutes.
Sometimes I feel like a game piece on a Monopoly board. I move according to the numbers, look at my cards, follow the directions, plan my strategy. But this is not a game, not a mere amusement--this is walking, thinking, talking, functioning, where poor planning sends you not straight to jail (do not pass Go), but flat on your face at the bottom of the stairway.
Most people will say 10 cents. This answer tends to look obvious at first glance, nonetheless it is incorrect.
This example is given in a book about the brain that I am reading. It is given as an illustration of how the brain thinks, which is really not at all like a computer nor a calculator. Rather, it appears that the brain will often run on intuition rather than logic, the reason for this being that the route to conclusions is shorter, faster on the intuitive highway than on the bumpier road of logic.
Now, on the other hand the damaged brain (i.e. the MS brain) falls into the habit of taking long-cuts. This is because multiple and various routes are blocked by scar tissue. The process runs up against a wall. It reroutes. This takes just long enough to create physical or mental deficits--spasticity, confusion, indecision, cognitive hiccoughs, feet that buzz, shoulders that twitch, hands that tremble.
Maybe you get lost in a parking lot while your brain is busy at sending thoughts through dizzying alternative channels, picking up the necessary information to arrive at a proper construct of sight and memory, motor response and accurate identification. Maybe you actually become dizzy in the process as well, adding a further impediment to the solution of your quandary.
Let us say that yesterday morning you fell down the stairs in your house. This is something that most all people will do at one time or another (unless they have no stairs in their houses), but with MS it is something you can count on happening if indeed you also happen to have a molecular beaver dam halfway down the stream between the lift foot instruction and the put foot down instruction.
We begin, therefore, after enough falls, after enough endless journeys around the parking lot, to commit ourselves to a deliberate sort of thought process. This is not to say that we succeed at all times (or even at most times), but it is a matter of practice, a matter of adjustment. In MS there is no straight route, and there is no intuitive route--there are only the routes that propose to navigate the damage that was done by the storm--whoops log-jam there, washed out bridge to the south, we will have to go north and then cut back again, down by the old river road--you know, the one that hasn't been used in ages. And so forth.
More and more I try to practice an artificial sort of deliberation as often as possible. This in turn often results in a physical slowness that mirrors the mental, a necessary trade-off. I stand by the door counting my way through a checklist--keys, cell phone, wallet, cigarettes, laptop, & etc. I stop before getting behind the steering wheel, collecting data on locale and recollection. I check notes that I keep in my back pocket, and whatever tasks I find that can be done on the instant, I do--for I will surely forget if I put them off for even five minutes.
Sometimes I feel like a game piece on a Monopoly board. I move according to the numbers, look at my cards, follow the directions, plan my strategy. But this is not a game, not a mere amusement--this is walking, thinking, talking, functioning, where poor planning sends you not straight to jail (do not pass Go), but flat on your face at the bottom of the stairway.
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