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Covering The Brain: Headache is a major manifestation of cerebral tumors and abscesses and subdural hematoma, bleeding under the outermost covering the brain of the brain. In these disorders, at least in their early stages, the headache is often limited to the site of the disorder, but later the headache becomes generalized.
Among the most interesting developments in brain studies was a finding that corrected the long-held conviction that glucose was the only fuel the brain was capable of using. George Cahill studied brain metabolism in persons who fasted for more than 30 days as part of a weight reduction program. By sampling blood entering and leaving the head, he was able to show that during fasting the brain will readily metabolize fatty acids, the breakdown products from deposits of body fat. Careful intelligence tests before and after the fast failed to show any mental impairment during the period of fasting. Cahill said that in fact the subjects were at least as sharp after fasting, and maybe a bit sharper.
1. If new medical techniques can prolong a healthy life far beyond the present span, who will be selected to remain alive? Society, through law, probably will not leave it to the workings of the marketplace or the caprice of physicians. At the very least, it will try to prevent a black market in hearts and lungs. But if science manages to transplant a human brain, the law will be in serious trouble. Which individual will be considered legally "alive"—the one into whose functioning body the new brain has been deposited, or the one whose brain with all its memories has merely moved to a new home?
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