Does the brain have a will of its own?

The belief in free will--that personal choices are not simply determined by fate or forces of a physical or divine nature--is under attack!

John-Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Hu­man Cog­ni­tive and Brain Sci­ences in Leip­zig, Ger­ma­ny has looked into the matter, and published his findings, summarized recently in World Science:

Cer­tain pat­terns of brain ac­ti­vity pre­dict peo­ple's de­ci­sions up to 10 sec­onds be­fore the peo­ple are aware of them... Re­search­ers tracked brain ac­ti­vity while peo­ple viewed a stream of let­ters on screen, and then pressed a but­ton. Each par­ti­ci­pant was asked to de­cide freely which of two but­tons to press and when to press it.

Scan­ning the brains with a tech­nique called func­tion­al mag­net­ic res­o­nance im­ag­ing, the in­ves­ti­ga­tors used a sta­tis­ti­cal meth­od known as pat­tern rec­og­ni­tion to ex­am­ine brain ac­ti­vity as­so­ci­at­ed with each choice. Ac­ti­vity in two brain re­gions, called the pre­fron­tal and pa­ri­e­tal cor­tex, pre­dicted which but­ton the per­son would press, they found... This ac­ti­vity oc­curred up to 10 sec­onds be­fore sub­jects were con­sciously aware of hav­ing made a de­ci­sion, ac­cord­ing to the re­search­ers.

Is it true that our decisions are made before we are even aware of them? Has all the trouble I've taken to choose entrees from menus been wasted time? Have I already decided on the answer to that question? At least the brain appears to be efficient.

First page proofs of Dr. Olaf

Last week, I mailed back the first page proofs of Dr. Olaf. Seeing the book laid out really made it feel real, and I can't wait to see the bound review copies later this month. And yes, every time I read through the pages, I have changes--even though the manuscript has gone through several great edits and a thorough copy edit. I don't think the tweaking impulse will ever stop, even after the book is printed and bound and sitting on bookstore shelves (September 9!). That's the news of the moment, just a brief update to share where the book is at the moment.

Preserving the Brain

In 1898, former Civil War surgeon Burt Green Wilder, M.D., launched an impressive collection consisting of whole human brains (perhaps the first such collection in the US). According to Cornell University's Chronicle Online:

Wilder wanted to see if differences could be detected in size, shape, weight and amount of convolution between the brains of "educated and orderly persons" and women, murderers, racial minorities and the mentally ill. Eventually, it was concluded that such differences could not be detected, at least not by the naked eye or any 19th-century tools.

The collection, containing brains of the likes of Helen Hamilton Gardener, suffragist; E.B Titchener, "dean of experimental psychology in America;" and Edward Howard Rulloff, convicted murderer, grew to contain at least 600 specimens. Sadly, by 1978, most of the specimens were "dried up," and many were "purged."

Currently, eight brains and their biographies are on display in Cornell's Uris Hall. The remainder of the collection is "stored in a basement closet." The collection, maintained in Cornell's Dept. of Psychology, contains "14 brains of prominent people and 12 brains of less known or infamous people."

Cerebrum 2008!

Today, I noticed that one of my favorite science writers, Carl Zimmer, has written the forward to a new brain book coming out April 4: Cerebrum 2008: Emerging Ideas in Brain Science. From the description:

The featured articles offer thought-provoking analyses of the human brain and its untapped possibilities, touching on topics as diverse as how discoveries in brain science can help us design better the best nursing facilities for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, the risks and rewards of new drugs based on living cells, why remembering our past is essential to planning the future, and when we can and should use drugs to control our emotional lives. Top scientists and scholars—including acclaimed science writer Carl Zimmer, psychiatrist Paul M. McHugh, neurologist Michael Selzer, and neurobiologist Vivan Teichberg—clearly and concisely explain these and many other exciting developments on the horizon.

The articles have been culled from Cerebrum's Web edition. Looks like an interesting collection!

Power Drill Brain Surgery

BoingBoing brought Dr. Henry Marsh, a 58-year-old British neurosurgeon, to my attention. Without access to compressed air medical drills, he and his Ukrainian colleague, Dr. Igor Petrovich, have resorted to using a Bosch 9.6 volt cordless power drill to perform brain surgery in the Ukraine. At times, the "handyman" drill batteries have drained halfway through surgery, but otherwise, the technology has proved effective.

Dr. Marsh says:

I have used the Bosch drill myself when I’ve been operating with Igor. It’s exactly the drill that you could have in your garden shed. He bought it at a do-it-yourself shop.

For more, see the Anorak news.

The Curative Properties of Radium

Today, we take Airborne to cure the common cold. In the 1930s, we turned to radium for its restorative properties. Here are some nice photos from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities Collection:


Interior View - Standard Radium Emanatorium; patients being treated.


Standard Radium Emanator, Office Style for treating one person.

For more fascinating and historical images, see the Standard Chemical Company Photo Album (ca. 1915-1920)
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A Journey Round My Skull

In Volume LV, Number 4 of the New York Review of Books, Oliver Sacks recommends Frigyes Karinthy's memoir, A Journey Round My Skull. Born in 1887 in Budapest, Karinthy was a Hungarian writer well known for his wit when, at the age of 48, he began hearing trains roar through his head. As Sacks writes, "The hallucinatory train noises soon became a fixture in Karinthy's life. He started to hear them regularly, at seven o'clock each evening, whether he was in his favorite cafe or anywhere else." The hallucinations soon became more intense. He saw mirrors move; the ground appeared to roll away beneath him. Sack's lets Karinthy elaborate:

And yet everything, myself included, seemed to have lost its grip on reality. The tables remained in their usual places, two men were just walking across the cafe, and in front of me I saw the familiar water-jug and match-box. yet in some eerie and alarming way they had all become accidental, as if they happened to be where they were purely by chance, and might just as well be anywhere else.

He was soon diagnosed with a brain tumor, and the book goes on to detail a first person account of early 20th century brain surgery--from the perspective of the patient. For more details, read Sack's great article.