News of the Weird
Chuck Shepherd
Issue date: 10/21/09 Section: News
LEAD STORY
The human brain's 100 billion neurons may have such specific functions that a few electrically charge only upon recognition of a single celebrity, such as Oprah Winfrey or Bill Clinton. UCLA researchers, studying the healthy cells of pre-op epilepsy patients, inadvertently discovered this unusual property, which apparently varies with individuals but remains internally consistent, whether the celebrity is represented by picture, name or sound. Patients were presented "hundreds of stimuli," one researcher told The Wall Street Journal in October, but "the neuron would respond to only one or two." For example, neurons were found that reacted only to to Jennifer Aniston, only to "The Simpsons," only to Mother Teresa.
The Continuing Crisis
-In 2002, following an acrimonious family debate, the head of late baseball slugger Ted Williams was cryogenically frozen, in the hope that science will some day learn how to revive dead people. An employee of the Arizona lab that stores the head recently disclosed some inside shenanigans, according to a September report in the New York Daily News. According to the employee, to keep Williams' head from sticking to the inside of its storage carton, the head was placed on an empty Bumble Bee tuna fish can inside the container, but the can itself then stuck to the head and had to be whacked off with a monkey wrench. (Since the lab's work is secretive, only first-person reports are likely to emerge on this story.)
-High-Maintenance Goddesses: In Ahmedabad District, India, in September, Ramveer Singh Baghel, 35, sliced off his tongue as an offering to the goddess Amba. His sacrifice made him an instant deity in the local temple, delaying his trip to the hospital. And two weeks later, in a village in Bargarh District, India, a 19-year-old woman cut out her tongue, hoping, she said, that the Shiva temple's resident goddess would halt the woman's imminent arranged marriage and allow her to pick someone closer to her age.
The human brain's 100 billion neurons may have such specific functions that a few electrically charge only upon recognition of a single celebrity, such as Oprah Winfrey or Bill Clinton. UCLA researchers, studying the healthy cells of pre-op epilepsy patients, inadvertently discovered this unusual property, which apparently varies with individuals but remains internally consistent, whether the celebrity is represented by picture, name or sound. Patients were presented "hundreds of stimuli," one researcher told The Wall Street Journal in October, but "the neuron would respond to only one or two." For example, neurons were found that reacted only to to Jennifer Aniston, only to "The Simpsons," only to Mother Teresa.
The Continuing Crisis
-In 2002, following an acrimonious family debate, the head of late baseball slugger Ted Williams was cryogenically frozen, in the hope that science will some day learn how to revive dead people. An employee of the Arizona lab that stores the head recently disclosed some inside shenanigans, according to a September report in the New York Daily News. According to the employee, to keep Williams' head from sticking to the inside of its storage carton, the head was placed on an empty Bumble Bee tuna fish can inside the container, but the can itself then stuck to the head and had to be whacked off with a monkey wrench. (Since the lab's work is secretive, only first-person reports are likely to emerge on this story.)
-High-Maintenance Goddesses: In Ahmedabad District, India, in September, Ramveer Singh Baghel, 35, sliced off his tongue as an offering to the goddess Amba. His sacrifice made him an instant deity in the local temple, delaying his trip to the hospital. And two weeks later, in a village in Bargarh District, India, a 19-year-old woman cut out her tongue, hoping, she said, that the Shiva temple's resident goddess would halt the woman's imminent arranged marriage and allow her to pick someone closer to her age.
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