DIY Neurosurgery

[Gurdur]

Inspired by HawkerHurricane, Don Alhambra and Master Taran from this thread here:

Ways of doing interesting DIY neurosurgery on yourself

Note: DIY = Do-It-Yourself

1. First one done here, but to repeat a little:
   
   You crash, fly off the bike, hit the ground, you bash the front of your head. Your eyes are fine. Even the front of your head is fine (after the bruise wears off). No skull fracture, no broken bones. But a small, small strip at the back of the brain isn't OK; a small, small strip responsible for primary initial processing of visual input is now dead or on very very longterm strike. Which means, very effectively, you are completely OK -- except you are totally blind. Happens with bikers a fair bit.
   .
   
2. Second one: Wear hiphugger jeans.
   The jeans hanging low over your hips, and very tightly, can easily compress a major nerve there. Nerves hate being compressed. They go on strike. Result here? Large area of lack of sensitivity (can't feel touches); big pain too.
   .
3. Third: Saturday-Night-Arm
   Related to the second. You can do this by drinking a couple of large whiskeys, taking a couple of sleeping pills, then crunching up in an airplane seat for a really long 8-hour flight (one actual case I heard about).
   
   Or get drunk watching TV on Saturday evening (thus the common medical name for this), sitting in an armchair, with your arms thrown above and back behind you over the back of the armchair, go to sleep.
   
   Result? Paralysed arm, big pain too. Maybe arm can take as long as six months or even more to recover. Reason is, you nastily compressed a major, major nerve in your arm. Nerves are resentful little buggers.

Over to others now to contribute.

__ Kidz! You can do these at home! __

__ But shouldn't! __

[Master Taran]

I do #3. Strong arms from lifting those 24oz mixed drinks.

[retrow]

Not exactly neurosurgery, but very high field magnets (MRI system) can mess with functions of medulla oblongata in a reversible fashion. Several techs who worked on 9.4Tesla system had trouble standing up for a couple of minutes after they stumbled while installing or doing maintenance work on these systems.

Even mice who were scanned in those systems rolled upside down when put back into their cages after studies.

[Lifelinking]

1. Bevvy like a man / woman / non gender specific human being possessed for a prolonged period of your life
2. take insufficient amount of thiamine in your diet (your homeland puts it in the beer Gurdur - dog bless em)
3. Develop Korsakoff's syndrome

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Lifelinking

....3. Develop Korsakoff's syndrome

Strangely enough, you can also do this for very short periods (if susceptible) by smoking Salvia.

[Don Alhambra]

You can have a stroke, though I wouldn't recommend it.

Transient ischaemic attacks (TIAs) are strokes caused by clots that block off blood flow to part of the brain. If the neurons don't get any oxygen for a while, they tend to die. Because blood vessels in certain areas are more likely to get blocked than others, stroke patients typically present with similar symptoms usually involving verbal and motor deficits. Because the blockage is usually on one side you get the standard paralysis on one side only.

One interesting aftereffect of stroke is something called neglect, where patients cannot attend to one side of space; in effect, it apparently ceases to exist for them. Typical stories involve patients putting make-up only on one side of their faces, or eating the food off only one half of their plates. Neglect patients also often do not even have any concept of the neglected area of space - the word 'left' to a left neglect patient would be meaningless, for example. 'Left' has ceased to exist for that patient.

Blockages aren't the only way the brain can damage itself: you can also get bleeds due to breaking down of blood vessels. Small bleeds in the posterior parietal cortex (the back half of the cortex at the top of the head) cause a condition known as Balint's syndrome. In this rare malady, patients present with three main symptoms. They tend to have sticky fixations, in that they have difficulty moving their eyes to fixate on various objects; they misreach under visual guidance, i.e. they miss objects when looking directly at them, but not with their eyes closed; and an interesting symptom called simultanagnosia which basically means that they can recognise individual objects but not put them together into a coherent visual scene.

Here is an image called the Boston Cookie Theft task:



I tested a Balint's patient a couple of years ago and asked him to say what he could see. He basically said single words like "cup" "stool" "boy" "woman", etc. When I asked him to tell me what he thought was happening in the picture he said, "The woman is probably doing some cooking or something." Classic simultanagnosia: he could pick out individual objects and even got a sense of the context (of the kitchen) but couldn't piece together the scene in the way we can all do instantly.

The complexity of the brain's sensory integration system is something that astounds me. Think how difficult it must be to combine neural representations of objects arranged in visual scenes into a coherent narrative so that we can not only understand what is going on but can formulate plans to move through that environment and make decisions as to how to interact with it!

Ok, I'm done.

[Don Alhambra]

Originally Posted by retrow

Not exactly neurosurgery, but very high field magnets (MRI system) can mess with functions of medulla oblongata in a reversible fashion. Several techs who worked on 9.4Tesla system had trouble standing up for a couple of minutes after they stumbled while installing or doing maintenance work on these systems.

Even mice who were scanned in those systems rolled upside down when put back into their cages after studies.

Yep, people I've tested have had vertigo after being moved inside the 7T magnet I worked on in Nottingham. Fun fun.

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Don Alhambra

...Ok, I'm done.

More, more, please!

[Lifelinking]

You can have a stroke, though I wouldn't recommend it.

is that DIY though? I know that some behaviours can increase risk of stroke - but are there not folk who are just plain unlucky enough to have a genetic prediposition?



L

[Master Taran]

The cartoon shows 3 stupid motherfuckers.

[Don Alhambra]

Indeed, there's a continuum there. But eat enough fatty food, smoke and drink too much and don't do any exercise, and assuming the lung cancer and heart attacks don't get you first, stroke is the way to go.

In fact, strokes are the most likely thing to kill you aside from cancer and heart disease, and since the prevalence of those things goes down when you lead a healthy lifestyle you're pretty much fucked either way.

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Lifelinking

is that DIY though?

Not really. Like you said, genetic, accident, bad luck. If susceptible, diet is a big problem. But hey! I DID just think of something.

But you have to be susceptible; it's rare, this one. It is described well in the literature, but so common it's not.

Take too many aspirin. Maybe 8. Maybe do 8 a day for say 3 days. Get aural hallucinations.

I.e., hallucinations, not delusions. The difference is, you know at the time that they are not real.

And aural; you hear them (odd sounds, or voices, or music, so on), and you know they are not real. You don't see or feel anything unusual.

Cure? Stop taking aspirin, and Bob's your uncle. No more problems.

[Don Alhambra]

Oh, I've done that. First week at university, I drank too much and didn't get any sleep and was having aural and visual hallucinations for days. Fun!

[Garnet]

Originally Posted by Don Alhambra

Yep, people I've tested have had vertigo after being moved inside the 7T magnet I worked on in Nottingham. Fun fun.

Too bad those thingamies don't reverse vertigo.

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Garnet

Too bad those thingamies don't reverse vertigo.

They CAN however reverse steel piercings and internal screws. Nastily.

[Master Taran]

Originally Posted by Gurdur

They CAN however reverse steel piercings and internal screws. Nastily.

Say it ain't so. she doesn't need her piercings to reverse.

[retrow]

Originally Posted by Gurdur

They CAN however reverse steel piercings and internal screws. Nastily.

True. If you wanna die painfully, frying from inside and your metal implants/piercings flying off from within you, MRI machines are your best bet. If you have a pacemaker installed, you just need to walk within 1-2 meter radius of the magnet and an arrhythmia is guaranteed! If you have some kind of staples from an earlier head injury, there is a vast array of things that can happen to your head/brain during a scan.

[Don Alhambra]

There are safety forms to fill in so that doesn't happen, btw.

[Gurdur]

Originally Posted by Don Alhambra

There are safety forms to fill in so that doesn't happen, btw.

Bureaucrat. Statist.

[Don Alhambra]

Yes! Everyone should be allowed to take their chances with the big fuck-off magnet!!! Anyone who does not agree hates freedom!!!

[retrow]

Originally Posted by Don Alhambra

There are safety forms to fill in so that doesn't happen, btw.

You'd be surprised how little people know about the implants they've had. There was a (American) Football player who was to be scanned for lumber vertebral damage. He filled out the form and checked 'no' where it asked about implants, and even said no when asked orally by the MRI tech.

Usually, the scan patients are given a button they are supposed to press in case of discomfort.

Now this particular patient goes in the magnet. Usually there is a preliminary scan necessary for proper tuning. As soon as that scan started the patient started pressing that button in a frenzy and screaming like hell. The system was immediately halted and the attending tech rushed in to find this fellow writhing in pain with sweat beads rolling over his forehead. Apparently he had some repair work done on his shoulder from an earlier injury in which wire mesh was used for structural stability.

The strength of changing magnetic field can induce enough currents and generate heat to roast your ribs within a few minutes.

In light of this accident, and several other of similar nature I've heard, it surprising that they don't install metal detectors within MR facilities.

[Don Alhambra]

Originally Posted by retrow

In light of this accident, and several other of similar nature I've heard, it surprising that they don't install metal detectors within MR facilities.

That's a fair point. We don't even let them near it if they've ever had major surgery though. Or colour tattoos (the inks are metallic and can also heat up).

[Master Taran]

Fuckwits like that, with the IQ equal to that of a quarter pound of rock need an X-ray first.

[retrow]

Originally Posted by Master Taran

Fuckwits like that, with the IQ equal to that of a quarter pound of rock need an X-ray first.

He did have an X-ray, but that X-ray covered a field of view covering his lumbar and sacral region and left out the shoulders. He had X-rays from different angles but none of them at shoulder level.

To digress from MR topic -

When I was 8-9 years old, we played football (soccer) in our school. Some kids use to pass out when they headed some high kicks. It was very rare, but it happened once or twice every year.

[Garnet]

Originally Posted by Master Taran

Say it ain't so. she doesn't need her piercings to reverse.

I sure as fuck don't!!! Yikes!!!