Word: hippocampus
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...generate new cells, even after death. That is, of course, utterly contrary to everything we thought about the brain up until now. It was assumed that at some point in your grown-up life, brain cells stopped generating and started dying off. Not true -? at least not in the hippocampus, according to a team of American and Swedish scientists who took samples of this portion of the brain from cancer patient autopsies...
Given no choice, I tell myself that within her rejiggered brain cells, in the reconstructed network of 10 trillion nerves inside the hippocampus, the temporal lobe and the parietal lobe, she may discover different kinds of happiness. Perhaps it is oddly fulfilling--the complete use of a brain--to know only that you want to be moved from a wheelchair to a bed. Life consists of small, discrete goals that become the entire universe. Why would she not be furious with me for thwarting her vast ambition...
...tissue, which they examine under high-power microscopes. What they are looking for is the freckling of brownish plaques and blackish tangles that are the telltale marks of Alzheimer's. While such blemishes may show up in virtually any area of the brain, they are usually densest in the hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped region that is critical to memory...
...probably no coincidence that the relaxation response and religious experience share headquarters in the brain. Studies show that the relaxation response is controlled by the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped structure in the brain that together with the hippocampus and hypothalamus makes up the limbic system. The limbic system, which is found in all primates, plays a key role in emotions, sexual pleasure, deep-felt memories and, it seems, spirituality. When either the amygdala or the hippocampus is electrically stimulated during surgery, some patients have visions of angels and devils. Patients whose limbic systems are chronically stimulated by drug abuse...
...over the age of 10 when J.F.K. was shot or when Challenger exploded remembers precisely where he or she was when the news arrived. Posttraumatic stress disorder, which affects Vietnam vets like Bill Noonan, is another good example. While the intellectual memory of emotions is routed through the hippocampus, a different, gut-level sort of memory can be involuntarily revived with terrible clarity by abnormal activity in the amygdala. "It's been an eye opener to me that individuals we study who were traumatized 25 years ago still show abnormal brain function," says Dennis Charney, head of psychiatry...