It powers everything we do, yet remains one of our biggest mysteries.
But thanks to an unusual Peruvian museum dedicated entirely to the brain, visitors can get up close and personal with the most complex organ in the human body.
The “brain library” at the Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Hospital in Lima has a massive collection of diseased and healthy brains, giving researchers and also the general public a glimpse of what is going on inside our heads.
Photo: AFP / ERNESTO BENAVIDES
It is the only museum in Latin America, and one of the few in the world, with a large collection of brains that is regularly open to the public.
The hospital, which was founded more than three centuries ago, has a total of 2,912 brains collected over the years, nearly 300 of which are on display in a mind-opening exhibit.
Some 20,000 people visit the museum each year.
Photo: AFP / ERNESTO BENAVIDES
“Touch a real skull,” the museum invites them on arrival, proffering a specimen so visitors can feel the cranial bone structure and imagine how it holds two square meters of intricately folded brain matter.
The brains of this operation, so to speak, is neuropathologist Diana Rivas, who is hovering over an icy steel table choosing scientifically interesting specimens to add to the museum’s collection.
“This is where we do the autopsies. I handle them myself,” she tells AFP, barely looking up from the brain she is holding in her gloved hands.
She has just removed this particular specimen from a jar of formaldehyde.
It is about the size of a deflated football, and “has the consistency of a rubber eraser,” she says.
She examines the brain’s two hemispheres, which resemble giant walnuts, then carefully removes the thin layer of three membranes that hold them together, the meninges.
Once open, the organ’s fascinating geography is on full display: a labyrinth of gray and white tissue that holds the mysteries of thought, language and virtually every bodily function inside.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Rivas gives a lesson as she dissects.
“A human brain weighs between 1.2 and 2.4 kilos, depending on the height and weight of the person, and on the sex,” she says.
“Women’s are more evolved than men’s. What differentiates us is the evolution of language, which we use much more than men.”
The museum is divided into three parts: neuroanatomy, birth defects and brain damage caused by diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and the Zika virus.
“We show students what a healthy brain looks like, and then a sick brain, like this one with cysticercosis, which causes convulsions,” she says, pointing to a brain stained with marks left by invading tapeworms.
The parasites are present in pork and can also be transmitted when people fail to wash their hands properly, she explains.
Offering more food for thought, she points to another sick brain affected by arteriosclerosis — the result of eating too much fatty food, which clogs the arteries, including the ones feeding the brain.
“This is to remind us not to get carried away with the hamburgers. It’s not good to abuse fatty foods,” she says, pointing out the brain’s blackened blood vessels.
Speaking of food, she warns that visitors need a strong stomach for some parts of the exhibit, such as a display on encephalocele.
The fatal birth defect happens when the “neural tube” that becomes the brain and spinal cord fails to develop normally during pregnancy, leaving the brain and the membranes around it hanging out through an opening in the baby’s skull.
“Around five percent of students are afraid when they see it. Some faint, others vomit,” Rivas says matter-of-factly.
Before the recall election drowned out other news, CNN last month became the latest in a long line of media organs to report on abuses of migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing fleet. After a brief flare of interest, the news media moved on. The migrant worker issues, however, did not. CNN’s stinging title, “Taiwan is held up as a bastion of liberal values. But migrant workers report abuse, injury and death in its fishing industry,” was widely quoted, including by the Fisheries Agency in its response. It obviously hurt. The Fisheries Agency was not slow to convey a classic government
It was on his honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur, looking out of his hotel window at the silvery points of the world’s tallest twin skyscrapers, that Frank decided it was time to become taller. He had recently confessed to his new wife how much his height had bothered him since he was a teenager. As a man dedicated to self-improvement, Frank wanted to take action. He picked up the phone, called a clinic in Turkey that specializes in leg lengthening surgery — and made a booking. “I had a lot of second thoughts — at the end of the day, someone’s going
It turns out many Americans aren’t great at identifying which personal decisions contribute most to climate change. A study recently published by the National Academy of Sciences found that when asked to rank actions, such as swapping a car that uses gasoline for an electric one, carpooling or reducing food waste, participants weren’t very accurate when assessing how much those actions contributed to climate change, which is caused mostly by the release of greenhouse gases that happen when fuels like gasoline, oil and coal are burned. “People over-assign impact to actually pretty low-impact actions such as recycling, and underestimate the actual carbon
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
RSS