brains

This is the kind of news media story that really gets me excited. A girl with half a brain - literally - who is intelligent, charming and just the same as other children - unless you look into her scull, that is. I marvel at the unexplored capacities of neurons, on how our bodies do so well at adapting, and what gets me especially cheerful is how individuals like this girl disprove all the research into biological determinism. Are you a left-brainer or right-brainer? Which cells are YOU a slave to? Ultimate proof that we are not mapped out, not pre-determined, and that life has the capacity to respond in marvelous unexpected ways. Matter over mind!!!


I wonder how the scientists of the Brain Research Institute in Moscow would have reacted to this unusual case. I read about it recently in 'Making Things Public' (Latour et al 2005). The institute, working until 1936, was dedicated to the studies of unusual brains - geniuses like Lenin, but also dissidents. The institute searched (and, having set it as an objective, obviously found) material reson's for greatness as well as downfall. The Institute's main hall was the Pantheon of brains, described by a Dusseldorf Nachritchen correspondent in these terms: "Thirteen brains, each one in a glass case, are aligned along the wall of a large room that may have been the balroom when the palace was still owned by a rich merchant in Moscow. Above each case is the name of the man whose head the brain was extracted from, there are also some notes oh his career; in some cases, even photographs." These brains were copies of course, and the interesting question is how they got around displaying the copy of Lenin's brain, half of which was severely damaged due to numerous strokes he had.

No photographs of this bizzare and fascinating place survive...