Word: whole
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Long before neuroscientists took the first tentative steps toward brain-tissue transplants (let alone dared to think about whole-brain transplants), mischievous philosophers were plumbing the consequences of such 21st century surgery. "In a brain-transplant operation, is it better to be the donor or the recipient?" these wags asked. To put it another way, if you and Tom manage to swap brains, who is now the real you? The man with your brain attached to Tom's body or the man with Tom's brain joined to your body...
...Whole-brain transplants are still science fiction. "I never like to say that something's impossible," says Dr. Evan Snyder, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital in Boston. "I've been burned too many times by categorically ruling something out. And yet I can't imagine that 20 years from now human-brain transplants will be possible. The connections required are just too complex; they number in the millions. But the future of brain-cell transplants--that's another matter...
...idea of implanting brain stem cells, while not as dramatic as swapping whole brains, also raises intriguing philosophical questions. "Sometimes at seminars when I talk about my work," says Snyder, "somebody will ask me whether the introduction of these stem cells will alter memory." Do the newly generated cells distort or erase old memories? Or will the transplanted stem cells bring with them memories of their upbringing in a Petri dish...
...wind up at an arm--has always been a cause for concern. But there may be little reason to worry. Researchers now believe that advancing nerve endings carry chemical markers that guide them straight to receptors at their destination. "It's as if the body wants to be whole," says Reeve...
Skeptics warn against too much giddy hope that damaged spines will become whole anytime soon. Treatments may be many years off, they caution, and only incrementally helpful--restoring wrist motion to a person who has none, for example. Most researchers, though, are more optimistic. Over the course of 10 years, they say, the riddles of the cord have been solved. The question now is not what the treatments for an injured spine should be, but how best to implement them. At hospitals such as the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the University of Florida, human trials are already getting under...