Human brain boiled in its skull lasted 4000 years

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029373.000-human-brain-boiled-in-its-skull-lasted-4000-years.html

by daegloe • 13 years ago

49 26 13 years ago

Udo4• 13 years ago

A little addendum: brains are amazingly flimsy structures, not just due to the enzymes causing rapid decomposition, but because of their consistency which is equivalent to jello. This is why brains are generally denatured before dissections. Which is essentially what the heat did to those 4000 year old specimen.

andrewflnr2• 13 years ago

This prompts a whole new level of respect for brain surgeons. And helmets.

arethuza2• 13 years ago

Not to mention fear of lobotomies - I remember watching Shutter Island and wondering what they actually did during a lobotomy and doing some quick research and being deeply disturbed by descriptions of what was involved.

refurb• 13 years ago

The other interesting thing is that your brain couldn't function with cerebralspinal fluid. The weight of your brain would crush the brain cells at the bottom if it simply sat in your skull. Cerebralspinal fluid has a density that results in a bouancy that effectively reduces the weight of the brain to only a few grams.

andrewflnr2• 13 years ago

In practice, this means that the weight is spread from just the bottom to all over its surface area, right? And that puts it under the threshold for squishing?

Also, I think you mean "couldn't function without".

ComputerGuru3• 13 years ago

couldn't function with cerebralspinal fluid

s/with/without/ (also, though this is just nitpicking, s/cerebralspinal/cerebrospinal/)

Cerebrospinal fluid (hereafter referred to as CSF) is actually very interesting. I don't think scientists/doctors have it fully figured out just yet (given how little we understand the brain in general, no surprise).

Of particular interest are persons with very anomalous findings: fully functioning with virtually no real "brain" to speak of, just plenty of CSF sloshing around. When I first came across this, I was certain it was a hoax.

Later, a colleague at Sheffield University became aware of a young man with a larger than normal head. He was referred to Lorber even though it had not caused him any difficulty. Although the boy had an IQ of 126 and had a first class honours degree in mathematics, he had "virtually no brain". A noninvasive measurement of radio density known as CAT scan showed the boy's skull was lined with a thin layer of brain cells to a millimeter in thickness. The rest of his skull was filled with cerebrospinal fluid. The young man continues a normal life with the exception of his knowledge that he has no brain.

Although anecdotal accounts may be found in medical literature, Lorber is the first to provide a systematic study of such cases. He has documented over 600 scans of people with hydrocephalus and has broken them into four groups:

   -those with nearly normal brains
   -those with 50-70% of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal fluid
   -those with 70-90% of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal fluid
   -and the most severe group with 95% of the cranial cavity filled with cerebrospinal fluid.

Of the last group, which comprised less than 10% of the study, half were profoundly retarded. The remaining half had IQs greater than 100.

More citations:

http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/is_the_brain_really_ne...

http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/Science_No-Brain.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lorber

daned• 13 years ago

For certain values of 'lasted'

kfk2• 13 years ago

So, when I see this things I always wonder: can they extract DNA from it?

simias• 13 years ago

Would the DNA of a human living 4000 year ago be significantly different from yours or mine? What could we learn from it?

kfk2• 13 years ago

Definitely nothing, but I have always been curious about how long DNA can rest preserved.

chacham15• 13 years ago

While all of this is really cool, did they learn anything from the 4000 year old brain? Has the brain changed at all in that time?

namenotrequired• 13 years ago

It seems that they have yet to analyse that more deeply. For now all they know is how it's possible that they have it in the first place.

bonemachine• 13 years ago

What a way to go.

Human brain boiled in its skull lasted 4000 years

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