Karen Sandler

Tag: brain

  • Phantom Limbs

    As I’ve mentioned before, I share my home with three cats. The oldest, Casper, who turns 14 this year, has always been a grump. As he’s moved into his golden years, he’s become even more of a sour puss. He just does not like to be Messed With.

    On Casper’s list of activities that humans must not do to his person:

    1. Brushing, combing or otherwise grooming his fur
    2. Attempting in any way to remove snarls from his coat
    3. Petting past the shoulders
    4. Trimming his nails
    5. Removing him from anywhere he has curled up to nap, including your lap

    Should a human attempt any of these activities, Casper will give a warning growl that will grow in volume and gusto. If the human persists, Casper will bring out the big guns–his claws and teeth. He has excellent aim.

    Several months ago I made the mistake of trying to shave a snarl off Casper’s chest with my horse clippers. Casper snagged the back of my right hand with his claw, hit a vein and a nerve. Lots of blood and part of my hand and pinkie finger are still numb.

    I thought of my minor injury as I was listening to an interview with medical doctor and behavioral neurologist V. S. Ramachandran. Dr. Ramachandran has, among other things, worked with people experiencing phantom limb pain. It turns out there are particular parts of the brain associated with sensation in particular parts of the body. An arm might be removed, but those parts of the brain continue to “report” the sensations that the arm was feeling.

    In one particular case, a patient felt as though his missing left hand was gripped into a tight fist, with the fingernails digging into his palm. He was in constant pain, with no way to find relief. How do you relax a hand that is no longer there?

    Dr. Ramachandran devised a simple therapy to help the patient. He set up a box with a mirror inside, and positioned the patient so that the right hand was reflected in the mirror. The reflection then made it look like the left hand was still there. The patient watched in the mirror as he opened and closed his right hand in an attempt to trick his brain into thinking he’d relaxed his left. It took a number of sessions, but he was eventually pain-free. Such an elegant and simple treatment. The human brain is an amazing instrument.

    I’d like to think it’s superior to the cat brain. But when I consider how the feline set keep us at their beck and call, petting and pampering, feeding them delicacies and providing warm soft places to sleep, I’m not so sure which of us is the genius.

  • Fear No Science

    I am a self-confessed science geek. I had great fun in my high school science classes and devoured science fiction short stories and novels. In college, I found physics and chemistry pretty fascinating. I always zero in on the science articles on the web or in the newspaper (yes, I still read the newspaper). No big surprise that I’m thrilled that my own science fiction book, TANKBORN, will be published in the fall.

    No big surprise either that science doesn’t scare me. Yeah, people have done some pretty frightening things with science. Weapons of war come to mind. But the benefits of scientific discoveries so outweighs the negatives (medical advances, computers, cell phones, the Internet), it doesn’t make sense to me to fear it. You might not want to dissect that frog in biology class (yeah, kind of ick), but despite the gross factor, it’s kind of cool seeing what’s inside a frog.

    So what nifty science have I learned recently? I learned that babies make a phenomenal number of synaptic connections in their brains. They start with a clean slate, then as they bop around, discovering one new thing after another, they build those connections until they’re a big tangle. That’s pretty intriguing right there, but then when children grow, they start losing some of those connections. By their teens, they have far fewer than they did as a baby. Why? One explanation is that we start to “specialize,” that is, we focus more on certain things of interest. Our preferences and personalities develop, and we lose the extraneous stuff.

    Synaptic Exuberence at“ Birth, at 6, and at 14, Public Library Association

    As an author, my next question is, how could I use this in a story?

    What if scientists developed a virus that kept babies from losing all those thousands of connections they’d formed? What if the virus escapes the lab and sweeps the world? It doesn’t affect grown-ups, but every infected baby (say, under the age of 1) no longer loses any connections formed in their brain.  The scientists’ goal was to improve the human thinking process, that with all the extra connections, we’d be able to do a ton more things than the average person. But instead, what if we’re so swamped with knowledge and experience that we’re frozen, incapable of doing anything? Have the scientists created a race of overachievers, or millions who can’t function because of brain overload?

    Okay, I’ve ventured into scary science here. But even still, it was fun to learn about baby brain connections (especially since I’m a new grandma) and neat to brainstorm a story idea based on it. That’s one thing I like about science as an author–it activates my imagination.

    How about you? Is science scary or fascinating? Did you sleep through high school biology class or fall in love with science in ninth grade? Drop me a comment and let me know.