Every Piece of the Puzzle

The world is vast, stretching nearly 24,902 miles (Sharp, 2012), incredibly diverse, and complicated. It’s a miracle that every day the human body is able to perceive all the information gathered from stimuli through sensory organs and convert them into thoughts and images we can use to understand the world. It’s still not completely understood yet how exactly the brain is able to do this. What has been proven is that the brain creates this reality by processing different stimuli in specific parts of the brain, a phenomena called localization of function (Goldstein, 2011), because of which, we can lose specific abilities and even distort our perception of reality by damaging or injuring specific parts of the brain.

In high school, I was fortunate enough to take part in an internship at a local rehabilitation facility where our patients often came to us having recently experienced a stroke. Patients spent weeks in the facility trying to gain movement back in their extremities and relearning how to perform the most basic tasks. A stroke is when the flow of blood is cut off completely or greatly diminished to specific regions of the brain. Often times, when blood is restricted to the left side of the brain, the person is unable to move parts on the right side of the body and possibly, according to Allina Patient Education (2011), “control the ability to pay attention, recognize things you see, hear or touch, and be aware of your own body.” Similarly, when a stroke occurs to the right side of the brain, movement is restricted on the left side of the body and the person is also likely to have complications with communication (Allina Patient Education, 2011).

Selective functions of processing language can be altered by effecting even more specific parts of the brain. House M.D. is one of my Netflix favorites, a drama focused around a renowned diagnostics team, loosely based on real life medical conditions. In season two, episode ten a man falls and hits head on a desk, briefly unconscious, he wakes only for those around him to realize he cannot put the correct words into sentences. This and other complications with processing language, reading, writing, and speech are called aphasias. We also learned about both Broca and Wernicke’s aphasias in lesson 2. Both of these aphasias would be caused by damage to incredibly specific and small smarts of the brain seen on page 33 of Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday, Wernicke’s area being a small section in the temporal lobe and Broca’s area, an even smaller section, in the frontal lobe.

Many parts of the brain must work together to interpret and organize information into useful thoughts and accurate perceptions, without every piece of the puzzle, there can be major issues. We’ve looked at just a few of the thousands of disorders that can occur when one part of the brain is cut off from the rest. The consequences can be devastating and life altering. Thankfully, many of these conditions are becoming more and more manageable, if not treatable through modern science.

 

References

Allina Patient Education (2011). Effects of left-sided stroke: Aphasia and language apraxia. Retrieved September 13, 2014, from http://www.allinahealth.org/ac/strokemanual.nsf/page/left_sided_stroke.

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed.). California: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Sharp, T. (2012). How big is earth. Retrieved September 14, 2014, from http://www.space.com/17638-how-big-is-earth.html.

 

3 thoughts on “Every Piece of the Puzzle

  1. klm6077

    I loved your post, and I agree with the other readers as your title was very intriguing. I know a little about how “every piece of the puzzle needs to fit”. I have a child with Autism and we follow the popular motto “until all the pieces fit”, because just as you said, without certain pieces of the brain functioning properly, there can be many major issues to face. One of the issues that we face in our home is the language barrier. Our son for many years was considered non-verbal, not because his language wasn’t developed, but rather because he did not know how to properly use his verbal skills. Instead, he learned to sign, proving his ability to communicate, much like the gentleman in the episode of “House, M.D.” you refer to. Autism is explained by Autism Speaks as a neurological brain disorder. “Autism appears to have its roots in very early brain development. These disorders are characterized, in varying degrees, by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors”. (http://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism#sthash.8lZsbB61.dpuf). Though causes of Autism are largely suggested, none have been solidly proven, however there are studies that are showing that development in utero could be causing Autism. “Something is going terribly wrong with mechanisms that control the number of neurons beginning in prenatal life and may extend to perinatal and early post-natal life,” says lead author Eric Courchesne, Ph.D. When there are too many brain cells, the brain can’t wire itself up correctly. If there’s too much wiring in the prefrontal cortex, it could help explain why children with autism have poor social skills, difficulty communicating and why some may never learn to speak at all.” (http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/08/new-study-suggests-autism-starts-in-the-womb/) This is in relation to your statement about damaging parts of the brain and how it affects different functions.

    Autism Speaks. 11 October 2014

    Falco, Miriam. “New Study Suggests Autism Starts in the Womb.” CNN Health.
    8 November 2011. 11 October 2014

  2. Daria Kowalska

    I really like your post, you made it very clear, informative and easy to understand. The fact that you relayed all of this to a personal experience that you had at a rehab facility is great because I was then able to connect what you were saying and was able to visualize it quite easily. It is crazy to see that our brain is able to store all of the information that we process throughout the day. One thing that I find interesting is that we as human really don’t think about what we are doing and how our brain is processing what we are doing but everything that we do is thanks to our brain and the signals it send. Each part of the brain frontal, parietal, occipital etc each have their own function in our life. Like you said if we were to have some type of injury this would cause a part of our brain not to work functional. Overall I really liked your post.

  3. Martinique Gaynelle Nicol

    First let me start by saying your title was extremely intriguing, it made me want to read more. First off, the way you relayed your internship to House was awesome, it made me want to me more. But beyond that i enjoyed reading your post. Having ever piece fit and work together in the brain to help a person function properly is an important thing to understand about the human body. Accidents, traumas, birth defects can all inhibit the brain from functioning properly and working to figure out how to save damaged areas is the next step. Your post was extremely informative and honestly made me want to read more about how information is stored. It also helped disprove the premise of the movie Lucy where they said using 100% of the brain could allow humans to move other people with their mind. Now that movie is horribly misleading.

Leave a Reply