Transcript The Brain - livingwordfellowship.ca

Luke 17:33
Whosoever shall seek to save his life
shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose
his life shall preserve it.
57-0630 THIRSTING.FOR.LIFE_ CHICAGO.IL SUNDAY_
E-13 Now, there's only one Eternal
Life, and that lays in God only. And God
only has Eternal Life. And we have been
privileged to become the sons of God.
Then that word: "He that heareth My
words and believeth on him that sent me,
hath Eternal life." The Greek word "Zoe,"
there used for God's own life. The
creature that accepts Him becomes a part
of God and is just as eternal as God is.
REVELATION.BOOK.OF.SYMBOLS_ JEFF.IN V-13 N-6 SUNDAY_ 560617
54 But when the Holy Spirit comes
into the heart, quickly he becomes then
a--a twofold being: one of the earth to
die; and one of heaven to live. Amen.
In his body he's still subject to death;
but in his soul he's passed from death
unto Life. In his body he has his earthly
contact with his five senses; in his spirit
he has a contact with God through the
Holy Ghost.
What makes me who I am?
• Likes/dislikes
• Desires/ambitions
• Traits: compassion, cruelty, loyalty,
selfishness, sacrifice
• Values and norms: truthful, moral
• Needs: to be
admired/respected/accepted/loved
• How much genetic, acquired?
• What is the centre of the personality?
The Brain
We are
what we
think?
Existence based on rational
thought?
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René Descartes: Cogito Ergo Sum “I think, therefore I am.”
Descartes claims to know that he exists due to the occurrence of any
cognitive process, including doubt.
"I convinced myself that there is
nothing at all in the world, no sky, no
earth, no minds, no bodies; is it not
therefore also true that I do not
exist? However, I certainly did exist,
if I convinced my self of something.
There is some unidentified deceiver,
however, all powerful and cunning,
who is dedicated to deceiving me
constantly. Therefore it is indubitable
that I also exist, if he deceives
me…he will still never bring it about
that I am nothing as long as I think I
am something."
Your fragile
mind
Extracts from an article
entitled: “Quiet
Miracles of the Brain”;
National Geographic,
June 1995.
Who am I?
Extracts from several
messages of Bro.
Branham; selected
scriptures.
Developing a Brain
• Eight cells: all the same – some become the heart, the skin, the
brain
• 3 days after fertilization: 100 cells, different; no one knows how
• Neurons grow at 250,000 per minute; half die before birth
• Brain development is very sensitive: vitamin deficiency, maternal
smoking, or prenatal exposure to alcohol, chemicals, or too much
heat may prevent neural development or cause damage to
neurons.
• Dendrites, threadlike extensions that grow out of neurons, form
connections in the brain
• More connections = better functioning brain
• Connections formed from inherited patterns and external stimuli,
like imagined sensations
• Dendrite production
peaks after birth from
age 4 to 10.
• Child brain of this age
has more connections
than an adult one, and
uses twice as much
energy.
• At an institute for early
development in
Philadelphia, children
take on algebra and
Japanese to maximize
the brain’s potential.
• Learning means forming
new connections
between neurons.
• The body receives information at the
periphery (everything that is not the brain)
• Information is encoded as nerve impulses
• These electrical impulses reach the brain
and trigger messenger chemicals
• The chemicals induce electrical impulses
when in contact with neurons
• This electrochemical process may
stimulate the growth of new dendrites
Matthew Simpson
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8 years old
Diagnosed with Rasmussen’s encephalitis
Just before 4th birthday: seizures
Worsened, sometimes every three minutes
When he was 6, two surgeons removed nearly half his brain
Patients can live because neither the disease nor the operation
touches areas that control basic functions
The empty area of the skull filled with cerebrospinal fluid at about a
teaspoon every five minutes
Visible effects: slight limp, limited use of his right arm and leg, no
right peripheral vision in either eye
Report card: respectable grades, good behavior, and steady
improvement
With the left side of his brain missing, he still enjoys piano lessons,
and maths is his strongest subject
No discernible change in personality
So far:
• “Blank” brain at birth needing to form
connections (dendrites)
• Chemicals from body periphery stimulate
this growth, especially in early childhood
• This is called learning: language,
knowledge, ethics (right and wrong)
Damage
• What happens to the personality when the
physical brain is damaged through illness
or injury?
• Can a traumatized brain be
reset/recovered?
• Is the person(ality) lost forever?
Mental Illness
• Including depression and manic
depression, mental illnesses afflict 20% of
all Americans.
• About one in every hundred Americans,
including one third of homeless adults,
have schizophrenia. (3 million)
• 40% of Americans with severe mental
illness receive no treatment
•
38-year-old Chuck Green suffered a brain hemorrhage 7 years before. Now he
cannot brush his teeth. Though new connections may be formed, the brain cannot
replace dead neurons.
Schizophrenia
• The writer noticed one woman among the homeless wearing a wireand-foil hat. ‘To keep my skull from opening,’ she explained.
• Using drugs to restrict the actions of dopamine, a chemical in the
body responding to stimuli, schizophrenic symptoms may be
reduced.
• Steve Elmore, 33-year-old schizophrenic, has less cortex and larger
fluid-bearing ventricles in his brain than his identical twin David,
though their brains are genetically identical.
• These areas perform complicated tasks such as thinking organized
thoughts. Reason for paranoid delusions and hallucinations?
• Also smaller hippocampus – memory problems
•
Steven describes how his life changed at 19: anger at noises only he heard,
walks through the neighborhood screaming.
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He has few books, for he can concentrate only long enough to read in short
spurts.
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“When an episode starts,” Steve says, “I feel like a nothing, like I’m falling
apart, like I’m not on this planet. My brain gets stuffy, like people are trying to
stuff cotton balls in it. I can feel the brain pressing against the skull. If I went
off my meds, I’d be weird in about a week.”
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The medication does not do all the work, it’s a permanent struggle.
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Steven still hears voices, and though he is told that no one is talking to him,
he believes that they are likely real.
•
Steven, at right, owns his own car, handles his own finances, and works for
a mental-health agency. David, his twin, does not have schizophrenia.
Depressio
n
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Severely depressed and homeless, Ron Lintz
built a plywood shack in a secluded area of
Kansas City, and lived there for several years.
Lintz found help in
Kansas City after a
decade of picking
up odd jobs from
Florida to
California. A social
services company
got him an
apartment, food
stamps, and
medication, which
includes an
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antidepressant.
“I’d have done this years
ago if I’d known it was out
there and I could have
trusted people,” he says.
• Mild shocks to the brain keep depression at bay for a Pennsylvania
woman sleeping after her monthly maintenance session.
Alzheimer’s Disease
• Strikes between 5 and 10 percent of all people over 65 and 25 –
50% of those over 85.
• Neurons die relentlessly, and mental capacity deteriorates.
• No effective treatment exists.
• If they live long enough, victims forget how to chew their food.
• Until then, the disease slowly steals the tissue that defines them.
• ‘A diseased heart can be replaced with another, and life goes on,
but our brains, filled with ever shifted collages of memory, define
us.’
• “It is,” says one minister working with people who have Alzheimer’s,
“almost as though the soul of the person changes.”
A typical session
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A sunny room with comfortable chairs
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20 patients listen to a volunteer reading the morning newspaper
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No outward indication of illness, except wearing of name cards, and looking
at their own regularly.
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Do not remember names of spouses or children, but state capitals, etc.
which they learned at a young age.
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Many remember music in areas resisting the disease, and join hands to
sing “Let me call you sweetheart” etc.
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One man taps the writer on the shoulder. “Have you seen my letter?” he
asks, holding it out.
Dear Dave,
You are in a day-care center. There are many people there who are your
friends and will take good care of you. Please co-operate with everyone,
and you will have a pleasant day. I will pick you up at 3 o’clock.
Jeannette
During the next song he asks again, “Have you seen my letter?” The moment a
conversation ends he has no memory of it.
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Child’s play perplexes Bea Olshan, a 76-year-old Alzheimer’s disease
sufferer. “She’s lost,” says her husband, Harry. “You can just see the misery
in her eyes.”
Physical basis for our emotions?
• Communications between cells occur via chemical reactions and
transfer of electrochemical energy.
• The brain also relies on neuropeptides, that float throughout the
body and convey information by attaching themselves wherever
they find a welcoming receptor.
• These are extraordinary because they trigger emotions.
• Experiments revealed that electrical stimulation of certain areas of
the cortex provoked emotions – areas filled with neuropeptides.
• “Emotions,” says researcher Candace Pert, “are neuropeptides
attaching to receptors and stimulating an electrical change on
neurons.”
• Joy, grief, love… all biochemical.
• All love, for everyone, involves the same peptides.
• Feelings in the heart: the heart also contains neuropeptides, as
does the spleen, thymus, bone marrow, lymph glands, dorsal horn
of the spine, and the stomach (gut feeling?)
The mind is not only in the brain
• Flow of neurocommunicators throughout the
brain, glands, and immune system
• For over 4,000 years Chinese medicine held
that control over the brain rests with the liver,
heart, spleen, lungs, and kidneys – which
communicate via energy channels
• Old Testament: “A merry heart doeth good like a
medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”
• Stress increases susceptibility to disease by
compromising the immune system.
Memory
• No one knows what memories are.
• Decades ago, when looking for the so-called grandmother neuron,
scientists concluded that one neuron held grandmother’s face,
another her smell, still another the sound of her voice.
• No longer believe her memory resides in a single neuron, rather in
the changed connections between different sets of neural networks.
• There is no total recall: all memories, even very vivid ones, are
more or less accurate reconstructions.
• Even unusual experiences, which we remember better, often
change to fit what we later believe must have happened.
• The body never replaces neurons, new neurons would have none of
your memory: they would be a different person, with a different life
history.
Patsy Cannon
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On October 13, 1986, Patsy Cannon was driving her nine-year-old daughter
to school, when another woman’s car collided with hers.
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Her seat belt came loose and her head hit the windshield and then the side
window.
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She awoke several hours after the accident, feeling fine, but with severe
amnesia. ‘Retrograde’, enabling her to remember everything after the
accident, but nothing before.
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Patsy has all her brain, but lost her entire self.
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“I learned to speak through tapes and friends,” she says without emotion.
“Once a friend told me it was raining cats and dogs, and I panicked. I ran to
the window expecting to see flying animals.”
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“When I saw my nine-year-old daughter, Leah, I felt nothing,” Patsy says. “It
could have been any child off the street. How do you explain love to
someone who has no memory of love?”
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Relearning love came hardest.
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The woman she once was is a stranger to the Patsy Cannon of today (at
left). Since the car crash, which erased her memories, she has had to
relearn all the skills and emotions that form a life.
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Leah describes her mother’s return from the hospital. Patsy and Leah’s
father were divorced before the accident, and no other adult was around.
“Can you cook?” Leah asked. Patsy said “show me” and almost burned the
house down.
•
Leah easily convinced her mother that children never do homework and all
mothers take their daughters shopping every day after school. “At the mall
my mother bought herself dresses with floral patterns,” Leah said. “It scared
me, because I realized she was a different person. The mother I knew wore
only black and blue basic suits.”
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Before, Patsy hated bananas. Now she loves them.
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Do pieces of the old Patsy appear in dreams? “No,” Patsy says, “and I don’t
worry about her. I’m happy with the person I am now.”
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Such changes after head injuries are mysterious, but common.
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Brain injuries kill or disable someone in the United States every two and a
half minutes.
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Though the brain is the only organ mostly covered by bone, it floats in a thin
cushion of fluid and can bounce against the skull. Even shaking a baby can
cause permanent brain damage.
Are you your thoughts?
“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.”
- Francis Crick, winner
of Nobel Prize, 1962
Multiple Intelligences
“Intelligence is a capacity. To ask ‘Where in
the brain is intelligence?’ is like asking,
‘Where is the voice in the radio?’”
- Howard Gardner
Questions
• Are we the sum total of our thoughts?
• Emotions, memories, reasoning,
imagination, conscience
• All may alter, all may be erased, lost… or
slowly eroded over time
• Who are we, then?
Who am I?
UNCERTAIN.SOUND_ JEFF.IN V-26 N-19 SUNDAY_ 55-0731
64 The mind is only a director. It will
direct you, and it's very incapable of
bringing you to God: your mind. You
cannot know God by your mind,
intellectual. It's one of the resources,
or the channels that would lead to it,
but your soul is what governs you. You
are what you are, by your soul.
UNCERTAIN.SOUND_ JEFF.IN V-26 N-19 SUNDAY_ 55-0731
They hardly have enough faith to get
to the platform. But they are conscious
of one thing, that they do believe. They
are believing intellectually with their
mind. And their mind will never bring
them to God. Your mind is
reasonings. And God has no
reasonings.
UNCERTAIN.SOUND_ JEFF.IN V-26 N-19 SUNDAY_ 55-0731
God can never touch that line, as long
as you reason. But let's put down
reasoning. God never made us to live
by our intellect. We live by the Holy
Spirit that's in our soul, that says "no"
to any reasonings that's contrary to
God's Word.
PROVERBS 23:7
• 7 For as he thinketh in his heart, so [is]
he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his
heart [is] not with thee.
MATTHEW 13:15
• 15 For this people's heart is waxed
gross, and [their] ears are dull of hearing,
and their eyes they have closed; lest at
any time they should see with [their] eyes,
and hear with [their] ears, and should
understand with [their] heart, and should
be converted, and I should heal them.
EPHESIANS 1:18
• 18 The eyes of your understanding
being enlightened; that ye may know what
is the hope of his calling, and what the
riches of the glory of his inheritance in the
saints,
• AMP: eyes of the heart