Sketchy Fact #104: This is your Brain on Ice Cream

Brain freeze is an evolutionary reflex to protect you from damaging your brain. It is known to science as sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. Try saying that with a mouthful of ice cream.

Phineas Gage: The Living Halloween Costume

If you’re looking for a good, simple, and horrifying Halloween costume, our topic this week might serve as some inspiration. A warning though, this is not a tale for the squeamish.

On September 13, 1848, a man named Phineas Gage had a very rough day. Gage was a rail worker in Vermont tasked with the unenviable job of blasting rocks. While today this might involve dynamite, wires, and some measure of safety gear, 1848 was a different time. The process basically went as such: drill a hole in a rock, toss in some blasting powder, a fuse, and sand, and smash the whole mixture down with a tamping iron (a big metal pole). No one knows exactly why things went wrong for old Phineas, but you can rest assured that they did. Possibly because he forgot the sand, his tamping iron set of a spark which ignited the powder and set off a premature blast. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the blast itself that made Gage famous (at least to science-types); it was the tamping iron. The explosion launched the iron out of the hole in the rock and directly through Phineas Gage’s head.

The iron entered Gage’s head below the left eye socket and exited through the top of his skull, landing about 80 feet away. The blast threw him backwards, landing face up where his body convulsed for a few minutes. However, being a rail worker of 19^th century constitution, once the convulsions subsided, Gage sat up, talked to his co-workers, and walked with little assistance to the wagon that drove him home… Yes, I’m serious.

Within a few hours of the accident, doctors arrived at Gage’s house. As they did their best to piece Gage’s skull back together, the man calmly explained to those around him what had happened. He only paused occasionally to vomit, the act of which “pressed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor,” according to his doctors.

While Gage did his best to assure everyone he would be back at work in a few days, things were a little touch and go for the next couple of weeks. One day he would know who is friends and family were, the next he wouldn’t. Eventually he slipped into a coma. That is when Dr. John Matryn Harlow reopened Gage’s wounds and drained about a cup of pus and blood. After that, things went better.

Amazingly, Gage lived another 12 years, working mostly as a stagecoach driver in New Hampshire and Chile. Eventually though, his brain damage caught up to him and he developed seizures, which eventually led to his death.

The truly incredible thing about the story of Phineas Gage is the degree to which he recovered. Prior to his accident, the common understanding of brain function was that it was completely essential to life. What Gage taught science was that even trauma on an unimaginable scale was not only survivable, but not even all that impactful.

Actually, that isn’t totally true. What Gage actually taught science was that, while some parts of the brain are absolutely essential for life (such as your cerebellum, which controls breathing and other involuntary motor functions), some areas are devoted to higher-order functions. Following his accident, friends and co-workers reported that Gage’s personality changed somewhat drastically. The once polite, considerate man they had known became short, impetuous, and developed a cursing habit that could make a sailor blush.

Gage’s was the first documented case of how brain trauma impacts a person’s mental abilities. From him we learned that the brain’s frontal lobes play an important role in impulse control and planning for future events. We now know that this area of the human brain was the last to evolve and is critical in our ability to form functioning social groups, as it allows us to control our more instinctual behaviours. Your frontal lobes are the jockey that controls the horse of emotion and impulse.

Phineas Gage’s life can also serve as a cautionary tale in a world where we increasingly value fame and attention. In his day, Gage acquired a good measure of fame. He even spent some time at Barnum’s American Museum. But I guess if you asked old Phineas whether or not the fame was worth getting an iron bar through his head, he would probably just look at you, swear a bunch, then have a seizure.

Sloppy Science: Why does alcohol get you drunk?

Few substances have as long and strange a history with the human race as the collection of liquids we call alcohol. For about as long as humans have been living together in large groups we have been consuming, fighting over, and occasionally procreating as a result of what is basically a low-grade poison.

The alcohol that we know and love (found in beer, wine, hard liquor, etc.) is called ethanol and it may disturb you to know that it is actually the waste produced by unicellular fungi called yeast. Yeast loves to eat/react with sugar, and when that happens ethanol and carbon dioxide are expelled. Humans make use of both of these products. When you bake a loaf of bread it is the carbon dioxide bubbles that make it rise as the alcohol is evaporated away. In beer, the same carbon dioxide produces fizzing as the alcohol primes you for karaoke.

The amazingly simple chemistry and minimal ingredients involved are the reason why many researchers believe humans were drinking wine 3,000 years before we invented pottery or the wheel. Yeast thrives on the skin of fruit and when that fruit starts to decay the yeast gains access to the sweet sugars within. Half-rotten fruit (especially grapes) is basically booze waiting to happen. It wouldn’t have taken much for Neolithic people to put two and two together and start serving fermented grape juice (AKA wine) with their mammoth steaks at dinner parties.

But why do we love alcohol so much? To answer that question you need to understand what happens when ethanol gets into your body: When you drink alcohol it makes its way through your stomach into your small intestine, where nutrients are absorbed by the blood. Ethanol isn’t much of a nutrient but it can still hitch a ride on your blood cells to any tissue in your body that contains water (they all contain water). Your brain in particular is a veritable paradise for the stuff. Alcohol is processed by the liver and kidneys and broken down/removed from the body at a rate of about an ounce per hour, it is also a diuretic, meaning it makes you pee a lot, but when you drink more than your body can process ethanol starts to build up in your tissues. That’s where the fun begins.

In your brain, ethanol slows things down. That is why we call it a depressant. Your brain contains different neurotransmitters, some activate parts of your brain (excitatory neurotransmitters) and others de-activate parts of your brain (inhibitory neurotransmitters). Alcohol stimulates the release of GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid) which is inhibitory and it prevents the release of glutamate which is excitatory. The influx of GABA turns down the parts of your brain that control inhibition, making you say and do things you would otherwise consider a bad idea. At the same time the parts of your brain that control reaction times, balance and coordination also get dialed down, making you clumsy and a bad driver. Too much alcohol can even turn off the parts of your brain that remind you to breath or gag, an effect that has robbed the world of many a great musician. We call this “alcohol poisoning.”

But beyond all of this flipping of dimmer switches, alcohol results in a flood of the neurotransmitter dopamine in your brain’s reward centres. The same thing happens when you win a hand of blackjack or steal a kiss from someone you like. It is addictive. That is what makes alcohol dangerous.

In the short-term, processing alcohol is a drain on your body’s water resources. As your body tries to flush your system through constant peeing and your liver uses even more water to break down ethanol, other parts of your body get dried up, including your brain. That is why you often feel so rough the next day. You brain has literally shriveled up and the tissues throughout your body cannot work how they are supposed to. Other important chemical balances like the level of potassium in your blood also get out of whack. Over the long-term, your liver is damaged by repeated exposure to the waste products released as ethanol is broken down. Your liver is a pretty important organ if you like being alive.

There is some evidence that a single beer or glass of wine per day may have long-term health benefits for some people, but that just speaks to what the role of alcohol should be in anyone’s life. As with most things that you end up craving, the name of the game is moderation. 

Feel the Burn: What does exercise actually do to your body?

Ask any doctor what the top five things are that you can do to protect your health and they are likely to rhyme off a bunch of stuff you already knew. Eat healthy, unprocessed foods. Sleep at least 7 hours a night. Avoid stress. But few things are as likely to appear on virtually every list as exercise. From the time we are in grade school right up until our teachers give us the boot at prom we are encouraged to participate in physical education and exercise. But why? What does exercise actually do to your body that is so great anyway?

Everyone hates their first day of exercise, and for good reason. Day one is really hard. That is because our bodies have a tendency to do the bare minimum in terms of upkeep. If the hardest thing you do all day is climb 5 steps in front of the building you work at before hopping in the elevator, that is what your body will prepare you for. When you take a body that is used to a sedentary lifestyle and force it to exercise, you shock the system. That is why it is so important to do your research before taking on anything too strenuous. If you think you might have a heart condition or some other underlying problem, you might even want to talk to a doctor.

The great thing about exercise, however, is that it begins to change your body very quickly. Within the first few weeks (if you stick with it) your body will begin to adapt at the cellular level. Each of your body’s cells contains mitochondria which break down carbohydrates and fats and turn them into energy. Regular exercise spurs your body on to pack as many mitochondria into cells as it can. That means the food you eat is more likely to turn into energy than to be stored as fat.

In addition to a mitochondrial population boost, your entire circulatory system becomes more beefy. When you exercise, and especially when you’re starting out, your muscles are basically screaming for oxygen and your body is doing whatever it can to get it there. Oxygen travels in our blood, so one way to carry more oxygen to the muscles that need it is to make more blood. According to BodyBuilding.com, exercise can add an extra half litre of blood to your body. The heart itself also gets stronger as it is called on to pump more blood quicker. Over time the heart will even increase in size to allow each pump to carry the maximum amount of blood.

Finally, in terms of blood, your body adapts to exercise by improving the highway along which it is carried. As you exercise regularly your blood vessels become better at constricting and relaxing. They become more elastic and let blood flow through them more smoothly. Over time your body even builds more of the tiny vessels called capillaries that supply muscles directly. This, along with a stronger heart, is one of the main ways exercise adds years to your life. The idea is that by forcing your heart to work hard in short bursts, it won’t have to work as hard on average over your whole life. Trained people generally have slower resting heart rates and don’t develop heart disease as often as untrained people.

Exercise also damages your body in a way that ends up working to your benefit. Each hard workout produces small tears in your muscles. As your body works to rebuild the gaps between the tears your muscles get bigger. The result is that there are more fibers that are better able to contract and relax, meaning they can produce more force, making you stronger.

Finally, one of the biggest benefits of exercise is also one of the least expected: it makes your brain work gooder! Believe it or not, studies have shown that exercise encourages your brain to build connections between neurons and can even stimulate the growth of new brain cells, something that was long thought to be impossible in adults. Regular aerobic exercise has been linked to increased brain volume in areas like the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory. The upshot is that if you go for a run today, you’re more likely to remember where your keys are on your 90^th birthday.

Ultimately exercise does a lot beyond what we’ve had time to cover here. If there is a miracle method to achieve better health, feel better, look better, and live longer it is working up a sweat. As much as we all want to believe we can get ripped and live forever by taking a pill or buying one of those belt things that electrocutes your abs, the only way to get there is by putting in the work.

Concussions: Brain Damage for the Every-Man

Disclaimer: Our guiding principle here at Sketchy Science is the belief that science is fun and that understanding the way things work can give you a deeper appreciation for the world you live in. With that in mind, we try to have fun and make jokes. We plan to continue that today, but keep in mind that this topic is a serious one. We hope this information can promote some good judgment among our readers.

Have you ever hit your head really, really hard? Most people have done it at least once and it is a pretty unique experience when it happens. Your vision blurs to a total white out, you stagger on your feet, you can’t think or speak for a few minutes, you might even lose consciousness. Few things cause a person to panic as quickly as losing control of their own brain, but that is exactly what a concussion is.

One of the coolest things about neuroscience is the ridiculous relationship between cause and effect. If I put an electrode in your brain in just the right spot and switched it on, I could make you pick your nose or slap your face or yell out your deepest darkest secrets in a crowded operating room. Your brain is an incredible network of cells that uses electrical impulses to control every part of you. In a very real sense, those electrical impulses are you. That’s why a blow to the head messes you up so badly, so quickly.

Basically, a concussion is what happens when your brain and your skull disagree about where they are moving to. Your brain is in motion, and as all things in motion do, it wants to stay in motion. But sometimes something blocks your way and brings your skull to a crashing halt. Examples may include a wall, the sidewalk, or a 350 pound linebacker. When this happens, your brain slams into your skull and as you might expect, bad things happen.

Blood vessels can tear, swelling and bruising can set in. Your brain may be the most complex organ in your body, but when you smush it a little it reacts the same way all your other organs do. The downside is that swelling and tearing in your brain prevents your body from functioning properly.

The obvious symptoms (headache, blurred vision, unresponsive pupils) can last anywhere from a couple days to a couple months. However, just because you stop noticing the effects doesn’t mean you are back to 100%. Research has shown that abnormal brain function can continue for years following a concussion.

That may sound really bad, and in a sense it is, but the good news is that if you rest and avoid blunt force trauma to the head following a concussion your brain can heal itself and eventually get back to normal. Hits to the head happen. I would even go as far as to say that if you never get a concussion, you’re not being adventurous enough. But, that being said, there are real and serious consequences to getting multiple concussions in quick succession.

In the short-term the biggest threat from a bonk on an already concussed noggin is Secondary Impact Syndrome. What happens with SIS that that your already damaged blood vessels get pushed too far. Your brain hemorrhages, swelling suffocates blood flow throughout your brain, and you either go into a coma or you die. Not fun stuff.

Fortunately SIS isn’t very common. Unfortunately, multiple blows to the head (even small ones) can also cause your brain to scar and degenerate. This condition is called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and it is increasingly being observed in the brains of retired football and hockey players. People with CTE in their 20’s and 30’s have the brains of 80 year old Alzheimer’s patients. CTE can lead to memory loss, depression, loss of motor control, and early death.

Clearly concussions are serious stuff and your brain is something you should probably look into taking good care of. Wear a helmet if you’re playing contact sports and if you even think you have a concussion, take the day off. Get some sleep (the old advice about trying to stay awake is pure myth) and wait out the headaches. It’s a dangerous world out there, so use your head… just not as a battering ram.

Sketchy Fact #52: Ostrich Gaze

Ostrich eyeballs are bigger than ostrich brains.