X-Message-Number: 5993
From: Alan Brain <>
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Brain Damage - Personal Experience
Date: 14 Mar 1996 07:59:31 GMT
Message-ID: <4i8jl3$>

2 Anecdotes regarding Neural damage, which may be germane to discussions 
regarding the 'not 100% perfect' issue of being de-suspended.

a) [Personal Experience] I contracted E II Viral Encephalo-Meningitis at 
age 20. When I recovered from the Coma, I'd suffered significant and 
irreversible disfunction along the spinal cord, Cerebrum and Cerebellum.
In terms of what this meant to me, I'd lost a lot of reflexes in my legs, 
had slight-to-moderate aphasia, an almost indetectable speech impediment, 
and virtually complete loss of sensation in all extremities.
The sensation bit has come back about 60% in the last 17 years, but there 
seems to be no improvement in the last 5. Even now, I must perform a 
visual scan of hands, feet etc that is the lot of anyone stricken with 
Hansen's disease, or similar damage. No fun when a secretary screams when 
she comes in the office because you haven't noticed the pool of blood 
from a cut on your hands... Fortunately for my peace of mind, I'd had a 
Stanford-Binet test only a week previously, and took another a few weeks 
later - which gave a 2 pt improvement. Yes, I know such a thing is 
statistical noise, but was still glad it was higher, not lower. I've 
since travelled extensively in non-English-speaking countries, and seem 
to have an increased faculty for learning languages by sound.

b) A very good friend of mine suffered a complete heart shutdown on his 
honeymoon. Somebody-or-Other's syndrome, a genetic abnormality. His wife 
is a nurse, he was on the steps of a hospital at the time, BUT he had no 
pulse for 7 minutes. Very bad news. During recovery he had to be taught 
to walk again, had almost no memory of the last 15 years, and had a 
radically changed personality - almost a Tabula Rasa.
Over the next 10 years, he's made an almost complete recovery! Even 6 
months later, he remembered my face, if not my name. A year later, he 
remembered my name, and some of the past. His new personality seems to 
his friends and family to be just the old one grown back again. Not all 
memories are intact, but most are, and the remainder are at least 
partial.

Conclusions:
I'm not a neuro-physician, nor a psychologist, just a Computer Scientist, 
so can only give a personal view: I hypothesise that providing no gross 
structures are destroyed, that the self-repair capability of a Neural 
network as complex and redundant as the Human CNS seems to be quite 
effective at recovering lost patterns, and establishing alternate paths. 
Unfortunately, without knowing quantitatively how many, and the 
distribution of cells that karked it from toxins/viral infection or 
anoxia respectively, I can't say more than that. 


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