Word: cortex
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Dowling, who is Leverett House master and the author of a recent book on human sight, said advances in neuroscience could lead to new treatments for previously incurable disorders. He said blind people might someday "see" through a system of electrodes connected to the brain's visual cortex...
Finally, experts in fetal development argue that at twelve weeks a fetus cannot move "purposefully," as Nathanson asserts, nor can it perceive danger; the cerebral cortex, which coordinates perception and thought, is not yet developed. As for the silent scream, says Johns Hopkins Neurobiologist David Bodian, doctors have no evidence that a twelve-week-old fetus can feel pain, though "there is a possibility of a reflex movement" in response to stimuli like surgical instruments. Hobbins suggests that the dramatic scream may have been a fetal yawn, because "the fetus spends lots of time with its mouth open." Indeed...
...meter, and it can take about two seconds for the message to arrive. From there, it is relayed in a bewildering flurry of chemical messages to the brain, first to the thalamus, where sensations like heat, cold, pain and touch first become conscious. Then on to the cerebral cortex, where the intensity and location of pain are recognized. This final stretch of the pathway is the great terra incognita in pain research. Says Fields...
...electrode into the consciousness." In any case, it is the cortex that coordinates such highly sophisticated responses to pain as screaming "Ouch!" and rubbing the sore...
Most experts now think a baby is born with a number of reflexes that are gradually replaced by the "cortical behavior" dictated from the cortex of its rapidly developing brain. Brown's Lipsitt believes that a period of "disarray" during the course of this transition may be an important element in the "crib deaths" that can mysteriously strike during the first year. The struggle to escape from accidental smothering in bedclothes, known as the "respiratory occlusion reflex," is automatic at birth but then needs to be learned. Says Lipsitt: "The peak of 'disarray' is right...