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You are your brain. This simple fact is at the heart of any lawsuit involving brain injuries. All of your physical, emotional and cognitive life arises in your brain and is expressed by your brain. Everything you feel, see, hear, say, think, remember or do is the result of your brain. Understanding the complexity of the brain is therefore of great interest and importance in a legal case involving injuries to your brain. See, How Trauma Affects the Brain.

The media also is finally paying attention.  In 2007, Time Magazine and National Geographic both ran cover stories on the brain. 

Here's the National Geographic cover story in the November, 2007, issue. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-11/memory/foer-text.html.  An interactive site showing the functions of the brain is provided by National Geographic at this link. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-11/memory/brain-interactive.html. 

Here's how Time describes the brain, consciousness, and the formation of memories in its January 29, 2007, cover story.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580394,00.html. 

Late in his career, Francis Crick, the Nobel laureate who was one of the co-discoverers of the molecular structure of DNA, announced what he called his "astonishing hypothesis" of the brain and mind: "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." 

Others have since commented on Dr. Crick's hypothesis, some of whom, such as the evolutionary biologist Edwin O. Wilson, describe a genetic basis for a predisposition to religious belief.  But there need be no conflict between the religious and secular positions.  Simply stated, whether the gift of a brain comes from God or nature, there can be no doubt it is the brain which processes all of the input and output making us who we are.

Before concluding this website let me give you an analogy between your brain and the universe. This is not meant to suggest that one explains or even relates to the other in any scientific way, only to illustrate the magnificence and complexity of both and to show how remarkable your brain is.


You Are Your Brain

Like our star--the Sun--a healthy brain is central to your life on Earth. Your brain is a galaxy of nerve cells and their connections that constitutes your entire world. 
 
Weighing about three pounds but requiring at least 20% of the oxygen and blood of your body, your brain is estimated to have100 billion nerve cells (neurons) and each neuron is estimated to have between 100 and 10,000 connections (synapses). Assuming an average of 1000 synapses for each neuron, a conservative estimate (see discussion, below), there are about 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) connections between the nerve cells in your brain. 

These synaptic connections are how your brain processes all of your senses, thoughts and memories. All of the information coming into and leaving your brain does so as patterns of electrochemical activity. Your brain is a black box, there is no light, sound or even feeling, such as pain, in brain tissue itself. What you see, hear, think and feel is caused by these electrical signals passing along fibers extending from the nerve cells, called axons. These electrical messages are carried across microscopic synapses, tiny open spaces, by chemicals known as neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin, to neighboring cells. 

How you perceive and act in the world, as well as how you form thoughts and memories, is determined by the sequences of patterns of this electrochemical activity in your brain. Patterns are more readily recognized in your brain as they become more familiar. Another way to express this is that cells that fire together, wire together. The patterns are strengthened or weakened based on your life experiences.  It is your individual wiring pattern that makes you who you are. Because there are an astronomical number of possible combinations and connections of neurons, no two persons are the same--not even identical twins. You are unique.

Memory is described in the National Geographic cover story in the November, 2007, issue: 

"What is a memory? The best that neuroscientists can do for the moment is this: A memory is a stored pattern of connections between neurons in the brain. There are about a hundred billion of those neurons, each of which can make perhaps 5,000 to 10,000 synaptic connections with other neurons, which makes a total of about five hundred trillion to a thousand trillion synapses in the average adult brain. By comparison there are only about 32 trillion bytes of information in the entire Library of Congress's print collection. Every sensation we remember, every thought we think, alters the connections within that vast network. Synapses are strengthened or weakened or formed anew. Our physical substance changes. Indeed, it is always changing, every moment, even as we sleep."

Using the National Geographic statistics of 500 trillion (500,000,000,000,000) to 1000 trillion (1,000,000,000,000,000 or one million billion), or the more conservative estimate of "only" 100 trillion connections, shows at a glance the magnitude of the complexity. Not only are these numbers much larger than the total bytes of information in the Library of Congress, the magnitude of synaptic connections in your brain is so enormous as to defy real comprehension. 

Gerald Edelman, who won the Nobel prize for his work on the immune system, is the founder and director of The Neurosciences Institute, a nonprofit research center in San Diego devoted to the study of the biological basis of higher brain function in humans.  Dr. Edelman states that the complexity of connections in the brain is "awe-inspiring."  As he describes in his book Second Nature, "the number (one million billion) of possible active pathways of such a structure (the human brain) far exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known universe."

This is an MRI study of the brain.

No wonder, as described in several of my articles on the website, brain injuries often involve microscopic damage that cannot be seen on standard radiographic studies such as CT scans and MRI's.  In many instances, especially in "mild" traumatic brain injury, these scans simply do not have the resolution necessary to show damage to huge numbers of infinitesimally tiny neurons and their connections.

Here's a picture of a slice of the heavens above.

The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.

Imagine 50,000 light years of space with 800 billion stars within just one galaxy among an estimated 125 billion galaxies in the universe.  Imagine three pounds of brain tissue with more 100 billion nerve cells and more than 100 trillion connections in each human being, among an estimated total of 6.6 million people on Earth, containing all our thoughts, memories, perceptions, feelings and actions.  Both are true estimates of the enormous complexity we often take for granted in our daily living.

Remember the old saying: "A penny for your thoughts." Today the expression is considered outdated because a penny is worth so little. But if you had a penny for each of the synaptic connections in your brain you would be far and away the richest person on Earth with wealth more than 2000 to 20,000 times that of Bill Gates.

Perhaps the best way to end my website is with a wonderful poem about the brain:

The Brain--is wider than the Sky--
For--put them side by side--
The one the other will contain
With ease--and You--beside--

The Brain is deeper than the sea--
For--hold them--Blue to Blue--
The one the other will absorb--
As Sponges--Buckets--do--

The Brain is just the weight of God--
For--Heft them--Pound for Pound--
And they will differ--if they do--
As Syllable from Sound--

Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

Judges and juries want to learn about the brain. They want to know why and how a brain is injured and how and why that affects you, the brain injury survivor.  It is your lawyer's job to teach those who will decide your case about the brain and to help them understand and appreciate the reality and severity of your brain injury. 

It is up to your lawyer to inspire the jury to do justice.  Those who are responsible for deciding your legal case can be trusted to do so fairly if they are educated about the brain and understand and believe the great loss each of us would suffer if we had your injuries. 

If I can answer your questions, please call (619) 235-6344 or (866) headlaw (toll free) or e-mail me to set up an appointment for a free consultation.