Neurosurgeons find small brain region that turns consciousness on and off, like the key in a car's ignition

The 54-year-old epilepsy patient - her name remains concealed to protect her privacy - was lying on the operating table while surgeons explored inside her brain with electrodes. They were looking for the source of her epileptic seizures. Suddenly, after they applied electricity to a small region, buried deep, near the front of the brain, the woman froze and her eyes went blank. She was awake, but entirely unresponsive.The precise area the surgeons had zapped included a sliver of tissue known as the claustrum, which is part of a network that supports awareness. Mohamad Koubeissi and his colleagues state that nobody has ever examined the effects of stimulating this specific brain region before, despite this kind of surgical procedure having been performed for decades. Just as geographers still surprise us with reports of having discovered previously unchartered parts of the earth, it takes one aback to hear of unexplored areas of neural terrain.Intrigued by the woman's response to the stimulation of this specific brain region, the surgeons investigated further. Ten further stimulations, and on every occasion zapping the claustrum had the same effect. By contrast, zapping an area just 2.7mm away did not.Perhaps the woman was simply paralysed by the electrical stimulation? The effects are more intriguing than that. If given an instruction prior to the stimulation, such as words to utter or movements to make, she continued this for a few seconds after the stimulation began, but th...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs