Word: cortex
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...SAME AS BEING BRAIN DEAD? No. Brain death occurs when there is no activity anywhere in the brain. In PVS, certain primitive regions of the brain, including the brain stem, which controls autonomic functions such as breathing and the beating of the heart, are still alive. However, the cortex, which is the thinking part of the cerebrum, and/or the thalamus, which connects the brain stem to the cortex, are so badly damaged that they no longer function...
...PARENTS MADE? The most difficult thing to understand about a vegetative state is that it allows one to be awake but not aware. (In a coma, you are unresponsive and your eyes are closed.) Because the sleep-wake cycle and certain eye movements are not controlled by the cortex or the thalamus, they can continue without conscious awareness. Even acts of crying and smiling may be reflexive events that do not occur in response to specific stimuli...
...having an electrical connection," says Dr. George Wittenberg, a neurologist at Wake Forest University, who is studying magnetic pulses for their potential to help stroke patients recover more quickly. Unlike electroconvulsive therapy, which affects the whole brain, the magnets are focused only on specific regions at the surface, or cortex. And because the treatment does not trigger a seizure (as electroconvulsive therapy does), there's no need for muscle relaxants or anesthesia and no problem with memory loss. Patients undergoing magnetic stimulation usually feel only a kind of tapping on their skull as the current starts to flow...
Although researchers freely confess that they don't know how rTMS works, they do have some ideas. It has long been clear that neurons in different parts of the brain can act in concert. Of particular interest are the circuits that link the areas of the cortex that help us reason and plan our lives with more deeply embedded zones of the brain such as the limbic system, where emotions are processed. One theory holds that depression is either caused by or results in an imbalance in the activity in those regions. Applying periodic bursts of electrical current...
...method is a combination of several previously discovered techniques, including work done by Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, who won a Nobel prize for their work. Their experiments revealed that different neurons in the visual cortex respond to different stimuli...