sen_no_ongaku | (no subject)

(no subject)

My favorite non-obvious body part is the corpus callosum.

You ain't kidding. In neuro we learned about all sorts of awesome shit that happens to a person when their corpus callosum is severed.

I loved reading about that -- though I think the shit is more awesome to an observer. Do you know if there are any layman's books on the subject?

The really bizarre thing is that people who suffer brain lesions like this can't seem to accept that what they're perceiving is "wrong", like the guy who insisted that his left leg wasn't his any more, to the point that he kept trying to throw it out of his hospital bed.

Anyhow, I've never read it, but we talked a lot in class about the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which I'm told is a great read on the topic.

Define non-obvious.

Yeah.

The *PENIS*, OK? Damn.

And the *BREASTS*. Must I spell everything out for you guys?

I cnat' splle.

Oh, see, I thought that 'non-obvious' referred to the body part rather than favorite status. IE, that your statement implied that the phrase "non-obvious body part" had some meaning that I should be aware of. I'm sure I could throw some grammar terms around here if I knew them or knew how not to misuse them.

When I was a freshman in high school, I was friends with a senior who had had his corpus callosum severed years before to treat severe epilepsy. He was naturally brilliant to begin with, but if I remember correctly, he could write poetry (from memory) with one hand while writing equations with the other. He also exhibited the split-brain difficulty with naming objects when they were on his left side: he could hold a piece of chalk in his left hand but not name it until he transfered it to the right.

And yet, if you had asked him to write down the name of the thing he was holding, he probably could have. It's amazing.

I watched like 4 hours of programming on the Discovery Channel on Saturday night about people with savant syndrome (they're not to be called idiot savants anymore). Actually, one of those hours was a thing about feral children. But that was cool.

Anyway, the guy Rainman was based off of, Kim Peek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek) was featured in both "The Real Rainman" and "Savants" and he's pretty fascinating.

Anyway, the reason I bring him up is that he was actually born WITHOUT a corpus callosum.

Good choice! I'm also a fan of the arbor vitae and the vomer.

No way, dude. The Circle of Willis is the shiznit!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only