BRAINS!

Today in anatomy, we began the "Head and Neck" section - famous for being tortuously complicated and almost completely incomprehensible. On top of this, I have some brain issues that I am trying to deal with. You see, I have this anatomy confession to make - I am really afraid of the brain.

Yes, I am afraid of the brain. A diabolical 3 pound mass of neurons and dendrites. It seems to throb with evil intent every time I look at it. I had no trouble squeezing stool out of a cadaveric colon, cutting out a cancerous lung or ripping the pelvic diaphragm out of the pelvis, but even going near the brain gives me the heebie jeebies. Upon long reflection over this deep-seated fear, I have isolated two different causes for this brain-o-phobia. The first, and probably freakiest fear, is that of prions, which are found exclusively in the brain (and the CNS in general, I think). I don't know much about prions, or should I say, I know just enough about prions to scare the crap out of me without being able to rationalize myself out of said fear. But for those of you who DON'T know what prions are, let me spread the love. They are these evil little proteins that are folded into the wrong shape. They are awful because, instead of just having the good grace to get eaten up by a macrophage or just bugger off to the corner of the brain like a respectable virus or bacteria, it finds other proteins in your brain folded the RIGHT way and flips them to its evil conformation. It's kind of like that bad kid at school who gets the good kids to smoke pot. So if you are unfortunate enough to ingest them, say, through a mad cow that made it in from the UK or something, you could get a hideous degenerative neurological disease (like mad cow disease for people - Jakov-Creutzfeld disease). And there is absolutely NO cure for prion disease because it is just a deviant form of natural proteins found in your brain - our immune system wouldn't know how to attack it without attacking the healthy ones too. And I am not saying I am going to accidently eat the brain or anything, even assuming it WAS infected with prion material, which it probably isn't. But after all, our anatomy professor IS from the UK, the home of mad cow. That's all I'm saying.

Another cause of brain-fear are all those "evil brain from outer space" movies and cartoons I saw as a child. They just sort of make an isolated brain seem a little malevolent and potentially capable of forming independent thought (which naturally will then tend towards world domination).



So you can see why I hesitated when anatomy partner Mark tried to hand the brain off to me this morning. I put it down very quickly, lest its prions tried to jump ship.