Thursday, June 23, 2005

Experiments on human brains

I had no idea that scientists could implant 100 electrodes in people's brains and then remove them safely. (They are going to remove them, right? That would be a tough one to explain at the airport.) I used to work in a neuropharmacology lab, and we considered this kind of thing rather destructive to the subject (not human in our case). It was quite difficult and painstaking to find a single firing neuron. I can't imagine how you find 100 of them, since you may have to poke around for a while. I presume that for human subjects they have some kind of precise mapping done beforehand and don't just poke around.

Anyway, thanks to eight epilepsy patients who had the 100 electrodes implanted for the sake of their treatment, scientists have been able to locate the neurons responsible for the Friends cast. It is both surprising and a relief to think that we waste only one neuron for a concept like Jennifer Aniston. Also kind of sad that we may use only one neuron for each grandparent.

Even though it would in some ways be fascinating to be a brain patient (they don't use anesthesia during the surgery so they can give you tests to see when they're messing things up), I nevertheless am sure to wear a helmet whenever I ride my bicycle.

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