Life After Brain Injuries Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

Life After Brain Injuries: Are We Still the Same People? During the summer of my junior year, a friend of mine, we will call her "Jen", got into a horrible car accident. Apparently sitting in the middle of the backseat, only strapped in with a lap belt, my friend hit her head on the side window, smashing the window upon impact. After 3 weeks of being in a coma, my friend eventually recovered. Even though she was deemed "physically" healed, my friend was truly never the same. Not only had her demeanor and interests changed, but also it seemed as if she had become a completely different person after her accident. I thought it very sad at the time, because the friends who had been close to her before were no longer close. I did not understand what they meant when they said 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 her 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 regret the harsh judgments I made about "Jen's" friends. Dealing with someone who has suffered from a tremendous change in personality is not as easy 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 mind and one's body existed. I believed that the mind of an individual was his or her soul and that the brain and body were just the machinery used to share that soul with the outside worl... ...rror, New York: Avon Books, Inc., 1994, a great book with much about Phineas Gage and other Brain injury victims 6) Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 1998, can't read one without the other! 7)Athiest Site, a site dedicated to atheism that explores some of the questions this paper raises http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web2/www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/brain.html 8)American University, a site outlining the neurospychology of emotion http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web2/www.american.edu/bfantie/teaching/neuropsych/fundamentals/lectures/emotion.html 9)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