Word: brainstem
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...were often not issued until months or even years after the actual deaths. One prisoner's corpse at Camp Cropper was kept for two weeks before his family or criminal investigators were notified. The body was then left at a local hospital with a certificate attributing death to "sudden brainstem compression." The hospital's own autopsy found that the man had died of a massive blow to the head. Another certificate claimed a 63-year-old prisoner had died of "cardiovascular disease and a buildup of fluid around his heart." According to Miles, no mention was made that...
Does autism start as a glitch in one area of the brain--the brainstem, perhaps--and then radiate out to affect others? Or is it a widespread problem that becomes more pronounced as the brain is called upon to set up and utilize increasingly complex circuitry? Either scenario is plausible, and experts disagree as to which is more probable. But one thing is clear: very early on, children with autism have brains that are anatomically different on both microscopic and macroscopic scales...
...offer DNA tests for 30 or 40 of the more commonly inherited disorders, including cystic fibrosis, susceptibility to some types of breast cancer, fragile X syndrome (after Down, the most common cause of mental retardation), Huntington's disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and various types of degeneration of the brainstem, spinal cord and peripheral nerves. If you include testable variants of some diseases, such as the many different genetic mutations that can cause cystic fibrosis, the number of available DNA probes rises to some 400, with the count growing almost daily. What's more, some tests provide accuracy as high...
...traced to the influences of estrogen and testosterone in the womb. (While all fetuses are exposed to their mother's estrogen, male fetuses produce testosterone in their testes by the 12th week of gestation.) Particularly affected is the hypothalamus, a walnut-size structure located near the top of the brainstem that governs sexual development and sexual behavior and regulates temperature and water balance. Many scientists believe that such gender differences as the male facility with math, the female facility with language, girls' slightly superior hearing and skill at interpreting facial expressions are hardwired prenatally through the influence...
Hobson has conducted extensive research on cats, which he says confirms the existence of the independent dream center in the mammalian brainstem. "REM occurs in cats when the entire brain except the brainstem has been destroyed," he says. The cat research has shown that REM causes the brain to create the dream and not vice-versa, Hobson says. "Obviously, we cannot tell if a cat is actually dreaming, but by inserting a microscopic electrode into a cat's brain, we can measure the electrical signal as it passes along a single nerve cell--the impulse in the eye fires before...