[asa] Consciousness in the Raw

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070915/bob9.asp

Week of Sept. 15, 2007; Vol. 172, No. 11 , p. 170
 
Consciousness in the Raw
The brain stem may orchestrate the basics of awareness

Bruce Bower

In October 2004, Swedish neuroscientist Bjorn Merker packed up his video
camera and joined five families for a 1-week get-together in Florida
that featured several visits to the garden of childhood delights known
as Disney World. For Merker, though, the trip wasn't a vacation. With
the parents' permission, he came to observe and document the behavior of
one child in each family who had been born missing roughly 80 percent of
his or her brain.
 
These children, 1 to 5 years old at the time of their Disney adventure,
had suffered strokes as fetuses or had experienced other medical
problems shortly before or after birth that destroyed nearly all of the
brain's outer layer, or cortex. In this rare condition, called
hydranencephaly, cerebrospinal fluid fills the gaping hole within the
child's head.

Such youngsters often die in the first year of life as a result of
seizures, cerebral palsy, lung abnormalities, and a variety of other
physical ailments. With proper medication and the installation of shunts
to drain fluid from the braincase, however, some individuals live 20
years or more.

Neurologists typically regard hydranencephaly as an anatomical sentence
to a lifelong "vegetative state." Such children supposedly validate a
brutally simple equation: Little or no cortex equals no awareness of any
kind.

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Received on Fri Sep 21 10:09:08 2007