“When Brains Attack”
Podcast By: Robert Krulwich & Jad Abumrad
(1 hour long)
Brains are amazing. They have so much power and control over us; that sometimes one feels as if they are a completely separate force from us that can go against our will. In this podcast they tell us four stories of how the brain took a course of it’s own. From a fiber optic wire in a mouse’s brain, to a change in space position, to secrets our brain keeps from us, to a complete power out of a section of the brain, we will learn of how our brains control our viewpoint of the world surrounding us.
In story one, we meet Liza Scrental, a student at the University of San Francisco at California, at the time of this story. She studied the Basal Ganglia, a group of nuclei …show more content…
It is a true story, written like a novel of a woman named Rosemary Morton for The New Yorker in 1958. Morton was a librarian, who experienced a change in spatial location, in her mind. The symptoms lasted over a series of a few months. At the beginning she would momentarily feel the “ground shaking”, and the floor would “move under her feet” like waves. As time progressed, she started to have tremors, and lost sense of touch in her body, mostly in the soles of her feet. She started to feel like she was “sinking into the ground” and “the floor was rising up to her face.” The whole room’s spatial position seemed to change constantly. She went to the doctor, and was told that her condition was “essentially normal” by several specialists. She started to feel like she was going to die soon, and although wasn’t scared of death, she wanted to live her life to the fullest. She went to the theatre with her husband more often, developed a new response to music, and spent hours listening to the “inner structure” of the lyrics and instruments in music. Later she found out that it is vertigo, her doctor called it “labyrinthitis,” it is caused by an “inflammation of the oral labyrinth” or in other words of the inner ear. After a few months of this painful experience, the condition just disappeared without any sign, and didn’t happen again. The scientific concept in this story is acute labyrinthitis, defined as inflammation of …show more content…
Liza Scretel was studying the basal ganglia, and what controlling this part of the brain would do for us. After experiencing her own loss of control over her basal ganglia, she recognized the feeling that the mice are going through, and also felt motivated to further her research on the subject. Rosemary Morton found a new viewpoint of music through her vertigo, and an alternating look at life from her experience with dizziness and loss of spatial location. Kohn’s revelation about himself completely flipped his life around, gave him a closer relationship with himself, his friends, and with his passion of music. Diane Van Deren’s life altering seizures, and surgery gave her a hobby she enjoys and motivates others with, and a hobby that kept her going in the most painful part of her life. All of these stories touched my heart and intrigued me to listen to the podcast. I went into this project thinking it’ll be boring and I’ll probably fall asleep while listening to them talking, but that didn’t happen, and I’ll definitely be listening to more
Podcast By: Robert Krulwich & Jad Abumrad
(1 hour long)
Brains are amazing. They have so much power and control over us; that sometimes one feels as if they are a completely separate force from us that can go against our will. In this podcast they tell us four stories of how the brain took a course of it’s own. From a fiber optic wire in a mouse’s brain, to a change in space position, to secrets our brain keeps from us, to a complete power out of a section of the brain, we will learn of how our brains control our viewpoint of the world surrounding us.
In story one, we meet Liza Scrental, a student at the University of San Francisco at California, at the time of this story. She studied the Basal Ganglia, a group of nuclei …show more content…
It is a true story, written like a novel of a woman named Rosemary Morton for The New Yorker in 1958. Morton was a librarian, who experienced a change in spatial location, in her mind. The symptoms lasted over a series of a few months. At the beginning she would momentarily feel the “ground shaking”, and the floor would “move under her feet” like waves. As time progressed, she started to have tremors, and lost sense of touch in her body, mostly in the soles of her feet. She started to feel like she was “sinking into the ground” and “the floor was rising up to her face.” The whole room’s spatial position seemed to change constantly. She went to the doctor, and was told that her condition was “essentially normal” by several specialists. She started to feel like she was going to die soon, and although wasn’t scared of death, she wanted to live her life to the fullest. She went to the theatre with her husband more often, developed a new response to music, and spent hours listening to the “inner structure” of the lyrics and instruments in music. Later she found out that it is vertigo, her doctor called it “labyrinthitis,” it is caused by an “inflammation of the oral labyrinth” or in other words of the inner ear. After a few months of this painful experience, the condition just disappeared without any sign, and didn’t happen again. The scientific concept in this story is acute labyrinthitis, defined as inflammation of …show more content…
Liza Scretel was studying the basal ganglia, and what controlling this part of the brain would do for us. After experiencing her own loss of control over her basal ganglia, she recognized the feeling that the mice are going through, and also felt motivated to further her research on the subject. Rosemary Morton found a new viewpoint of music through her vertigo, and an alternating look at life from her experience with dizziness and loss of spatial location. Kohn’s revelation about himself completely flipped his life around, gave him a closer relationship with himself, his friends, and with his passion of music. Diane Van Deren’s life altering seizures, and surgery gave her a hobby she enjoys and motivates others with, and a hobby that kept her going in the most painful part of her life. All of these stories touched my heart and intrigued me to listen to the podcast. I went into this project thinking it’ll be boring and I’ll probably fall asleep while listening to them talking, but that didn’t happen, and I’ll definitely be listening to more