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If The Cerebral Cortex Was Removed


biologyresearcher16

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This is just a hypothetical question and it has to to do my research on the "mind" per se. Based on my research everything tha makes us well "us" is located with in the cerebral cortex. So it got me thinking. In a pure hypothetical situation what would happen if the cerebral cortex of Person A was removed and the cerebral cortex of Person B was removed and transplanted into Person A's brain. Would person A have person B's thoughts ? Like say person a had intrusive and or random thoughts would they not have those random and or intrusive thoughts ? What causes intrusive thoughts in the brain ? I've heard that it's the ruslt of the neocortex inerfering with the amygdala but I can't confirm that. Even if they didnt would they not have their thoughts but Person B's thoughts ? Are thoughts even stored in the brain ? Like say Person A is thinking or talking about a certain subject and a image comes to their head and another one comes up having to do with the subject in question but the thought thens turn violent or sexual. What causes that ? 

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Your openinig post doesn't seem to indicate any "Research" but rather a passing inquiry...

 

'Like Say' What?  Become violent or sexual..?

 

"Like um, yeah dude... If I took my frontal lobe dude, and put it in your cranium bro.. Like you would totally think like I did.. And that'd be like a total bummer to you because my brain thinks about Raping all the time.. "

 

What is your "Research" on the mind per se??  nothing any of us can't google in 2 minutes.  

 

My guess is you wouldn't be able to transplant just one part of the brain and change everything completely.. Like I couldn't transplant my heart to you and make you a marathon runner if your lungs and legs and everything else wasn't up to the same task/standard.

Edited by Racoon
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Your openinig post doesn't seem to indicate any "Research" but rather a passing inquiry...

 

'Like Say' What?  Become violent or sexual..?

 

"Like um, yeah dude... If I took my frontal lobe dude, and put it in your cranium bro.. Like you would totally think like I did.. And that'd be like a total bummer to you because my brain thinks about Raping all the time.. "

 

What is your "Research" on the mind per se??  nothing any of us can't google in 2 minutes.  

 

My guess is you wouldn't be able to transplant just one part of the brain and change everything completely.. Like I couldn't transplant my heart to you and make you a marathon runner if your lungs and legs and everything else wasn't up to the same task/standard.

Well I was doing research on the mind and what maked each person different. I started looking up what maked us us. What is responsible for my sens of self ? What are the things that make this sense of self up. And I had been doing research on the brain and basically I found that what makes you you is in the cerebral cortex so I wonderened what would happen if the cortex was removed from one person and another was inside ? 

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Welcome to hypography, biologyresearcher! :) Please feel free to start a topic in the introductions forum to tell us something about yourself.

 

In a pure hypothetical situation what would happen if the cerebral cortex of Person A was removed and the cerebral cortex of Person B was removed and transplanted into Person A's brain.

Though it’s an oversimplification to cleanly assign specific feeling, thoughts and personality traits to specific brain areas, as you’re research likely has informed you, the cerebral cortex (the evolutionarily newest and physically outermost part of the human brain) appears to hold the kind of information that can be represented as text - things we’ve learned, such as names, numbers, and step-by-step techniques. Other, evolutionarily older parts of the brain appear – again, this is a very rough, oversimplified description - to motivate us and give us emotions.

 

So if you could replace person B’s cerebral cortex with person A’s, in most way’s we define identity, the body known as person B would become person A. They would have person A’s memories and knowledge. They would, in a sense, have person B’s emotions and drives. For example, if, pre-transplant, B was prone to depression and A was not, post-transplant, A’s cerebral cortex in B’s body would likely be similarly prone to depression.

 

While our identities are mostly defined by what we know, our personalities are much defined by our emotional displays – what we often call our “spirit”. So in a sense, A-in-B would be similar to B impersonating A, like an actor completely and irreversibly immersed in a role.

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The things below the cerebral cortex also have functions. The thalamus region in the core of the brain, for example, is the most highly wired part of the brain. It is wired into almost everything in the brain and brain stem. The thalamus is the integrator of the brain. This is where the inner self is. 

 

The new cerebral cortex would need to become integrated, via the thalamus, with the data and programs in the rest of the old brain and old brain stem. This would loosely be like adding a new hard drive to a different mother board. This new configuration may impact which programs work and which might crash. As time goes on, there will be a drifting toward a better balance between the cerebral and the rest of the brain, via the thalamus.

 

The base "gut feeling" that defines you, comes from the thalamus and brain stem; arousal, will remain after the transplant. This will become disorientated, due to the new data base. There are currents from thalamus to cerebral and from the cerebral to thalamus. These will not jive at first, based on each aspect of the brain having a different history. But since the thalamus is the central controller, it will force its currents up stream to the cerebral. This is because the thalamus is needed for the entire nervous system and not just the memory. It will slowly get the cerebral to line up so functionality returns. 

 

I remember doing unconscious mind research on myself. At one point, the brain induced a major memory reorganization, where I couldn't remember almost anything in the same way. As an analogy, picture a young male who take risks and jumps off the bridge. As he gets older, he sees this same thing in a different way, such that this is now scary and even seemed crazy. That  memory is not the same anymore, because the emotional valence becomes different. In my case, there was a global valence reassignment, that disconnected me from the past, because nothing was the same. The only place to be was in the now. The thalamus started a process of rewiring the data with new learning from the inside out. This may be similar.   

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I think Hbond and I are saying essentially the same thing here

Other, evolutionarily older parts of the brain appear – again, this is a very rough, oversimplified description - to motivate us and give us emotions.

...

While our identities are mostly defined by what we know, our personalities are much defined by our emotional displays – what we often call our “spirit”.

The things below the cerebral cortex also have functions. The thalamus region in the core of the brain, for example, is the most highly wired part of the brain. It is wired into almost everything in the brain and brain stem. The thalamus is the integrator of the brain. This is where the inner self is.

The cortex encodes the part of a person consisting of what they know – memories of experiences, learned knowledge – while the thalamus is what “drives” the person, drawing on old and creating new memories. Which of these is the “true self”, or whether this is a valid question, is a deep philosophical question.

 

So would you say if I had someone else cerebral cortex would I have their thoughts instead of the thoughts my brain creates ?

We have to be careful to precisely define what we mean by “having thoughts” and the brain “creating” thoughts.

 

If you had someone else’s cortex, you would answer identity-confirming questions like “what is your name?”, “what was the name of your elementary school”, or “what is your PGP passphrase?” as that other person would. You would have no memories of, and unless you’d been told something about your original identify, wouldn’t be able to successfully answer identity-confirming questions for that person.

 

Since the cortex doesn’t “create thoughts” – that is, cause action potentials in neurons in the thalamus and cortex – your thoughts would still the “the thoughts your brain creates”. In a practical sense, though “you” would no longer be you, but rather the person who’s cortex had been transplanted into your body.

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The things below the cerebral cortex also have functions. The thalamus region in the core of the brain, for example, is the most highly wired part of the brain. It is wired into almost everything in the brain and brain stem. The thalamus is the integrator of the brain. This is where the inner self is. 

 

The new cerebral cortex would need to become integrated, via the thalamus, with the data and programs in the rest of the old brain and old brain stem. This would loosely be like adding a new hard drive to a different mother board. This new configuration may impact which programs work and which might crash. As time goes on, there will be a drifting toward a better balance between the cerebral and the rest of the brain, via the thalamus.

 

The base "gut feeling" that defines you, comes from the thalamus and brain stem; arousal, will remain after the transplant. This will become disorientated, due to the new data base. There are currents from thalamus to cerebral and from the cerebral to thalamus. These will not jive at first, based on each aspect of the brain having a different history. But since the thalamus is the central controller, it will force its currents up stream to the cerebral. This is because the thalamus is needed for the entire nervous system and not just the memory. It will slowly get the cerebral to line up so functionality returns. 

 

I remember doing unconscious mind research on myself. At one point, the brain induced a major memory reorganization, where I couldn't remember almost anything in the same way. As an analogy, picture a young male who take risks and jumps off the bridge. As he gets older, he sees this same thing in a different way, such that this is now scary and even seemed crazy. That  memory is not the same anymore, because the emotional valence becomes different. In my case, there was a global valence reassignment, that disconnected me from the past, because nothing was the same. The only place to be was in the now. The thalamus started a process of rewiring the data with new learning from the inside out. This may be similar.

What type of thoughts would a person have post transplant do you think ?

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What type of thoughts would a person have post transplant do you think ?

As Hydrogon bond suggested, I imagine most of the thought a person who had their cortex transplanted into another person’s brain and body would have would be confusion and body dysphoria, because they would have memories of having a different body and brain chemistry.

 

For example, as there’s evidence and theory that sexual orientation is strongly related to differences in the hypothalamus (source Wikipedia article Hypothalamus, section Sexual orientation), I expect the person would have thoughts of sexual attraction and aversion similar to those of their “body donor”. So, if the cortex of a strongly heterosexual man were transplanted into the body of a strongly homosexual man, the resulting person would remember being sexually attracted to women and not to men, but feel sexually attracted to men, not to women.

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As Hydrogon bond suggested, I imagine most of the thought a person who had their cortex transplanted into another person’s brain and body would have would be confusion and body dysphoria, because they would have memories of having a different body and brain chemistry.

 

For example, as there’s evidence and theory that sexual orientation is strongly related to differences in the hypothalamus (source Wikipedia article Hypothalamus, section Sexual orientation), I expect the person would have thoughts of sexual attraction and aversion similar to those of their “body donor”. So, if the cortex of a strongly heterosexual man were transplanted into the body of a strongly homosexual man, the resulting person would remember being sexually attracted to women and not to men, but feel sexually attracted to men, not to women.

 

What do you think would happen say one person suffered from intruisve or random thoughts and had anther persons cerebra cortex ? What would become of their thoughts ?

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