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Current neurochemical research using molecular biological tools such as
mice knockouts (the ablation of specific proteins though interference with their
nucleotide-mediated protein biosynthesis), for example, the production of animals
missing a subunit of their hippocampal glutamate receptors associated with the loss
of some memory functions, conclude the memorial mechanism to be a specific
cellular region, such as hippocampal CA3 cells. Technology advances but continues
to support a primitive philosophic animism of named brain parts which pop science
icons like the late Francis Crick called “The Amazing Hypothesis.” He and his fellow
brain philosophers implicate brain mechanisms such as the amygdaloidal nucleus
man who can emotionally color even affectually neutral information that is
transported through him. Imaging data showing amygdala man lighting up is used to
tell us that circulating sensory information through the differentially behaving
amygdaloid nucleus is used for fight or flight interpretive significance. Emotionally
expressive human faces light up inferior parietal cortex. The lowa University
Professors, the husband and wife Damasios, have located even the criminal
psychopath man in specific locations in the brain. As we have argued, perhaps ad
nausem, using multimillion-dollar imaging and molecular biological technology and
no new thoughts that weren’t around during the era of the 19th Century’s
neuroanatomists, specific brain regions continue to gain implicative properties like
the task-specialized gods of the Roman and Greek pantheons. Crick implied that
God is a brain part.
At the same time, those of us that have been in the brain business for a
while, recall skyscraper window washers, standing steady, high up on rope lashed
planks, suffering from congenital absence of the cerebellum, the supposed sine qua
non brain part supporting motor coordination and balance in humans. More
generally, there is much evidence that if young enough and willing to work, many of
the functions of missing parts of the brain can be taken on remarkably well by other
brain parts thought not to be involved in these functions at all. In addition, since
evidence of neuronal responding to loud noise or bright light perturbation can be
found almost everywhere in the hyper-connected human brain, because anticipation
and brain time inversions make before and after indicate little about human
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