Life After Brain Injuries Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

Life After Brain Injuries Are We Still the comparable People?During the summer of my junior year, a friend of mine, we will natter her Jen, got into a horrible car accident. Apparently sitting in the tenderness of the backseat, only strapped in with a lap belt, my friend hit her result on the side window, smashing the window upon impact. After 3 weeks of beingness in a coma, my friend eventually recovered. Even though she was deemed physically healed, my friend was truly never the selfsame(prenominal). Not only had her demeanor and interests changed, just now also it seemed as if she had become a completely different someone after her accident. I thought it very sad at the time, because the friends who had been goal to her before were no weeklong close. I did not understand what they meant when they tell that she had become a different person. Certainly, I realized that she had changed, but I could not fathom that she was now so different that they could no longer treat he r like the old Jen. I believed that this new Jen was still the same person as before-that the inner soul with which they had become friends had never and, indeed, could never change. However, after reading Descartes Error Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, by Antonio R. Damasio, I rue the harsh judgments I made about Jens friends. Dealing with someone who has suffered from a tremendous change in personality is not as well-fixed as one would expect.Descartes, a famous philosopher, once made the statement, Cogito ergo sum (6). Like, Descartes, I previously believed that a separation between the legal opinion and ones body existed. I believed that the mind of an individual was his or her soul and that the star and body were just the machinery used to share that soul with the outside worl... ...rror, unexampled York Avon Books, Inc., 1994, a great book with much about Phineas Gage and early(a) Brain injury victims6) Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on front most Philosophy, Indianapolis, Indiana Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1998, cant read one without the other7)Athiest Site, a locate consecrated to atheism that explores some of the questions this paper raiseshttp//serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web2/www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/brain.html8)American University, a target outlining the neurospychology of emotionhttp//serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web2/www.american.edu/bfantie/teaching/neuropsych/fundamentals/lectures/emotion.html9)University of Northern Iowa, a site dedicated to the effects of different injuries to the brain http//serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web2/www.uni.edu/walsh/front.html