Word: mapped
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...girl was wheeled into an operating room at 7:30 on a Thursday morning. Dr. Peacock's team exposed the surface of her brain and applied electrodes to stimulate it and provide yet another map to the diseased areas. Surgeons played the pet scan, the mri and the new data over and over on video monitors; the readings on all three had to match before the cutting away of malfunctioning parts of the child's brain could begin. The incisions were delicate, the atmosphere tense and progress slow. Surgeons relieved one another, while gowned students observed intently and residents stood...
...brain's need to fill in the blanks is the phenomenon of phantom limbs. When an arm or a leg is amputated, the victim almost invariably "feels" sensations like pain or itching, often very strongly, in the missing limb. What's happening? The brain carries within it a mental map of the body, a well-formed sense of where every part is in relation to every other. That's why it's possible for you to extend your arm and then, with your eyes closed, bring it in to touch the tip of your nose. (Drunkenness distorts your perception...
Even when a limb is gone, its place on the mental map remains, and the neurons formerly responsible for processing sensations from it occasionally fire at random-the sensory equivalent of Mickey Mouse hallucinations. The brain also attempts to make up for the deficit physically, perhaps, suggests Ramachandran, by sprouting new sets of connections. Because neurons that process information from the arm are near those that handle the face, for example, these new connections can cause a blindfolded patient to think a gentle touch on the face is really a touch on a missing fingertip. Says Ramachandran: "Reorganization can occur...
...Union, South Carolina, a town that last October earned its own pin on the map of American crime, the rage at Susan Smith's actions has gradually given way to more complex emotions. People are still appalled by the way she let her Mazda slide off a boat ramp into the waters of John D. Long Lake with her young sons Michael and Alex strapped into their car seats. They are still outraged at the ease with which she convinced the world that she was the grieving victim of a dark-skinned stranger. But the cries for the death penalty...
Just last week a new study showed that in science tests teenage boys who scored in the top 5% outnumbered girls 7 to 1, while girls outperformed boys in reading comprehension. In general, men as a group excel at tasks that involve orienting objects in space-like reading a map without having to turn it so it lines up with the road. Women, on the other hand, seem to be more adept at communication, both verbal and nonverbal. Readings of mri scans suggest one reason: women seem to have stronger connections between the two halves (hemispheres) of their brain...