The Brain: All Three Pounds of It Need Good Care

              The Shreveport Times
Sunday
November 19, 1978
Lifestyle of The Times
Section Travel
Church News
Consumer News
Page Nine Living
E
The brain
All three pounds of it need good care
By JANIE FLOURNOY
Times Lifestyle Writer
"Treat your brain well—it's deli-
I cate—but use it," said Larry J. Em-bree,
M. D., head of the Department
| of Neurology at the LSU School of
Medicine.
Brains are not really used as much
I as they could be. "We are limited by
time and fatigue," said the young
doctor. "People get tired of being in
a learning situation—and there's
emotional fatigue, too."
But the master organ of the body
does much more than learn, re-member
and think. It controls all
body processes. It is the brain that
sends messages to eyelids to blink;
to the lungs to breathe; to the heart
to beat. The brain's messages con-vey
pain, the sweet smell of Christ-mas,
the excitement of a touchdown.
"The human nervous system is the
product of millions of years," the
professor explained. "In terms of
evolution, it's an example of survival
of the functional—usefulness is the
key thing."
Weighs three pounds
One way the three-pound mass of
nerve cells has adapted to life's
complexities is by increasing its sur-face
area—the gray matter—where
thinking takes place. "It looks like a
lot of folds," Dr. Embree explained.
"Animal brains, in comparison, have
l smooth surfaces."
The brain is attached to the spinal
cord through which messages are
sent all over the body. The nervous
system has influence on all other
organs, and if they fail, that affects
the brain.
Everybody has basically the same
brain, excluding birth defects, said
Dr. Embree. A person has the most
brain cells and the most potential
early in life.
"As you get older, some cells drop
out," the doctor said, "and that
might be good. The process might
leave just the best cells. Or, it can be
undesirable—like the athlete who
just can't move quite so fast as he
approaches his 30s."
Studying regrowth
And, unlike most other parts of the
body, nerves cannot regenerate—
grow back— well. "That's one of the
areas being studied at the VA right
now," Embree said. "They're look-ing
into aging, alcohol and nerve
regeneration."
At the Medical School, Embree is
researching aging and the chemical
changes of the brain that take place.
"We're hoping to find when the
chemical changes take place and
then what to do. There are ways to
correct some of the problems."
People age in two ways, Embree
said. "There are those who age
gracefully and at age 65 look great.
But others look bad—too soon—who
have a pathological aging disease.
Their intellectual system is wiped
out, but their motor system is intact.
It's sad, but it's cute, too," said the
doctor with a smile. "I knew one lady
in the hospital who thought she was
on a Caribbean cruise. Another man
—he was just charming—always
wore his tweed jacket and had his
Wall Street Journal under his arm.
He always made polite conversation,
but didn't know you from one minute
to the next."
Treat it properly
like any living thing, the brain
needs care. "Treat it well nutri-tionally,"
Embree said. "Eat good
foods—stay away from high-fat
diets. It's bad for blood pressure and
therefore the brain."
Alcohol, if abused, can have a
devastating effect on adults. "It can
cause Korsakoff Syndrome which re-sults
in memory impairment—it can
lead you to an institution," Embree
said. "Women who drink (abusively)
during pregnancy can cause their
children to be jittery and nervous
when they are born. Nutritional fac-tors
enter into this, too—they don't
usually eat well when they're drink-ing
too much," Embree explained.
Preservatives - two ways
There are two schools of thought
about the effect of food preservatives
on the behavior of children, Embree
Cerebral work
said. "There are those who re-allythink
that they do, and those who
really think that they don't. I think
food preservatives are a contributing
facjtor—I guess I'm in the middle of
the road."
On jogging—now prescribed by
psychiatrists to combat depression—
Embree says he "can see how it
could be relaxing—but other things
are, too. Of course, it has great
cardiovascular effects, and that's
good."
But no matter how well the brain is
taken care of, damage may occur.
"Trauma can occur when it's
bruised," Embree said. "That's like
a mild injury. It can be torn by
severe injury-by a penetrating
wound, a skull fracture. Or it could
be traumatized by a blood clot."
A stroke, the stoppage of the flow
of blood in the brain, is a sudden
thing. "Boom! It just comes," Em-bree
said. It can produce a drooping
face, partial or permanent paralysis,
speech defects or other effects.
A blowout
An aneurysm is a weakness in the
walls of the blood vessels. "It's like a
tire blowing out—it can be
catastrophic," Embree said.
Tumors are symptomized by pos-sible
seizures, paralysis, or behav-ioral
changes. "Primary tumors ori-ginate
in the brain," Embree ex-plained.
"Secondary tumors usually
start in the lung or breast." Not only
do tumors cause pressure on specific
Parietal Lobe
Occipital
Lobe
Frontal
Lobe
Medial
Thalamus
Hypotihalamus
Cerebellum
:
Pituitary Gland
Spinal Hippocampus
Cord
The brain controls so much
parts of the brain, but also on the
organ as a whole. "There is no extra
space," Embree said.
Tumor removal
Neurosurgery, me method by
which tumors are removed, has im-proved
enormously, the doctor said.
Better equipment is one of the rea-sons.
The use of endorphins during
surgery may be a possibility of the
future. Endorphins are substances
found in the brain' wtyich are like
morphine—the drug which produces
euphoria—the remoVa| of all anx-ieties.
"They're the hottest things in
neurosurgery," Embree said. Doc-tors
are asking questions about en-dorphin
content—will it change with
training? Is that a jvay to psych
yourself up? t j
The future is not so'far away.
Researching the aging process of the brain are
David Jackson (seated), research associate; Dr.
Larry J. Embree deft), head of the Department of
Neurology at LSU med school, and Dr. Isaac
Roubein, clinical associate professor of neurology
at the med school. (Times staff photo)
Cerebral
\Cortex
Limbic System
Thalamus