Life After Brain Injuries Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

action After Brain Injuries Are We Still the Same People?During the summertime of my junior year, a friend of mine, we will call her Jen, got into a awful car accident. Apparently sitting in the middle of the backseat, only strapped in with a lap belt, my friend hit her head on the case 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 authentically never the same. Not only had her demeanor and interests switch overd, but also it seemed as if she had become a completely disparate 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 sink in that she was now so different that they could no longer treat her equivalent 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 yarn Descartes Error Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, by Antonio R. Damasio, I regret the harsh judgments I made about Jens friends. Dealing with some unrivaled 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 ones body existed. I believed that the mind of an individual was his or her soul and that the brain and body were honorable the machinery used to share that soul with the outside worl... ...rror, New York Avon Books, Inc., 1994, a coarse book with much about Phineas Gage and other Brain scathe victims6) Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, Indianapolis, Indiana Hackett make Co., Inc., 1998, cant read one without the other7)Athiest Site, a site dedicated to godlessness that explores some of the questions this paper raiseshttp//serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web2/www.abarnett.demon.co.uk/atheism/brain.html8)American University, a site outlining the neurospychology of emotionhttp//serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro02/web2/www.american.edu/bfantie/ teaching/neuropsych/fundamentals/lectures/emotion.html9)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