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Split personalities probed - Two personas trigger different brain networks. 1/9/04
Helen Pearson "Severe trauma as a child can trigger alternative personalities. One human brain can have two different personalities dwelling in it, according to a new imaging study - and each personality seems to use its own network of nerves to help recall or suppress memories. Alternative personalities are typically developed by children who suffer severe trauma or abuse. The condition, called multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder, appears to help people cope by cutting off difficult memories, making them seem as if they happened to someone else. A team led by Simone Reinders of Groningen University Hospital in the Netherlands used positron emission tomography to scan the brains of 11 female multiple-personality patients while they listened to autobiographical stories in each of their two personality states. In one persona, patients recognized the traumatic history as their own, and it triggered emotional centres in their brain. In the other personality, they did not consciously recognize the tale as autobiographical, and it fired up a wider brain network including regions involved in self-awareness or consciousness. These regions would not be expected to be active in people with a single personality hearing stories that are not about themselves. "The brain has to actively suppress the traumatic information," says Reinders. She thinks that these additional brain regions stifle the autobiographical memories and erase them from that personality's perceived past. Showing that patients' brains actively block out their trauma "is a new twist", says psychiatrist James Chu of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Other studies have also shown that different personalities can activate different brain regions, he says....Reinders, A.A.T.S. et al. One brain, two selves. NeuroImage, 20, 2119 - 2125, doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2003.08.021 (2003).
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040105/040105-8.html
NeuroImage Volume 20, Issue 4 , December 2003, Pages 2119-2125 One brain, two selves A. A. T. S. Reinders, , E. R. S. Nijenhuis, A. M. J. Paans, J. Korf, A. T. M. Willemsen and J. A. den Boer Abstract "Having a sense of self is an explicit and high-level functional specialization of the human brain. The anatomical localization of self-awareness and the brain mechanisms involved in consciousness were investigated by functional neuroimaging different emotional mental states of core consciousness in patients with Multiple Personality Disorder (i.e., Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)). We demonstrate specific changes in localized brain activity consistent with their ability to generate at least two distinct mental states of self-awareness, each with its own access to autobiographical trauma-related memory. Our findings reveal the existence of different regional cerebral blood flow patterns for different senses of self. We present evidence for the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and the posterior associative cortices to have an integral role in conscious experience." University Hospital of Groningen, P.O. Box 30001, 9700 RB , Groningen, , The Netherlands. Fax: +31-0-50-36-19132. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WNP-4B0WJW6-7&_coverDate=12%2F31%2F2003&_alid=176001052&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=6968&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=539bb4ed0bdbc968949ded1cbbc36807 www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
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