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Brain Stem facts

While investigating facts about Brain Stem Stroke and Brain Stem Function, I found out little known, but curios details like:

Poo-phoria occurs when your bowel movement stimulates the vagus nerve, which descends from the brain stem to the colon. It takes a particularly "large mass of stool" to trigger poo-phoria and its vagal-nerve-induced feelings of exhilaration, intense relaxation, and goose bumps.

how brain stem is formed?

Menstrual stem cells (found in period blood) could be used to create more tissue types than other adult stem cells, including bone, blood vessel, fat, brain, lung, liver, pancreas, & heart. They grow more readily & rapidly than other types of adult stem cells from bone marrow & umbilical cords.

What brain stem consist of?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what does the brain stem do. Here are 31 of the best facts about Brain Stem Tumor and Brain Stem Injury I managed to collect.

what brain stem controls?

  1. A clinical trial in 2016 held at Stanford University School of Medicine found that injecting modified human stem cells directly into the brains of chronic stroke patients can re-enable patients to walk.

  2. It's possible to be declared brain-dead falsely because most physicians look at the brain stem, which controls heart and lung functions, but not the cortex, which coordinates consciousness

  3. A baby was born with only a brain stem and almost no brain (2% of normal human brain). By age three, his brain had grown to almost 80% he size of a normal human brain. He now enjoys playing Mario Kart.

  4. A chicken named Mike lived for 18 months with no head. When cutting the head off for dinner, the axe missed his jugular and most of his brain stem, allowing him to retain most of his basic motor and reflex functions

  5. The analogy about frogs not jumping out of water that is slowly raised to boiling stems from a 19th-century experiment demonstrating just that ... but the frog previously had its brain removed.

  6. In 1945 a farmer chopped off a chicken's head, missed the jugular vein, a clot formed and some of the brain stem survived, providing basic homeostasis functions. Mike the headless chicken toured in sideshows for 18 months and earned the farmer $4,500/ month at the peak of his popularity

  7. Conjoined twins who share a brain stem. When one is tickled, the other jumps, and putting a pacifier in the mouth of one could cause the other to stop crying. There is evidence that the twins can even see through each other's eyes.

  8. The Director of the Brain Tumor Surgery Program, the Pituitary Surgery Program, and the Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who first worked as a migrant farmer in Fresno California

  9. About a child named Nickolas Coke who survived until age 3 without a brain. Most infants with his condition, who have only a brain stem, typically die within hours.

  10. The brain stem connects the brain to the spinal cord. It is also responsible for all of the things you don"t normally think about (like your heart beating, breathing, and digesting food).

brain stem facts
What is the function of the brain stem?

Brain stem death?

You can easily fact check discuss why the brainstem is under the central nervous system by examining the linked well-known sources.

The brain is made up of three different parts - the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the brain stem.

About Mike the Headless Chicken (1945-1947) that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off, which was confirmed by University of Utah. The axe removed most of the head but missed the jugular, leaving an ear and some of the brain stem intact. He was kept alive feeding via eyedropper. - source

The Caloric Reflex Test is a test used to determine brain stem death and involves irrigating ice cold or warm water or air into the ear canal with a syringe. Reactive eye movements are then monitored. The test is also used to provide temporary pain relief from phantom limb pains in amputees - source

DIPG is a cancer of the brain stem that is 100% fatal and primarily shows up in 5-9 year olds. - source

What happens when brain stem is damaged?

Trevor Waltrip of Louisiana lived without any brain at all save the brain stem.

How many regions make up the brain stem?

Stem cells can implanted to repair/improve Human Brains, not just mice.

Exercise increases the number of neural stem cells in rodent's brains, enhancing their regenerative capacity

We can grow tiny mini-brains from stem cells acquired from skin cells; these mini-brains can replace (some) animal testing and are cheaper too!

Captive bolt pistol - "a penetrating stunner is typically used since it destroys the cerebrum while leaving the brain stem intact; this results in a more consistently reliable stun, and ensures the animal's heart continues to beat during the bleeding process."

A musician, Chris Sands who had been hiccuping for three years finally cured when a doctor removed a tumour on his brain stem

When does the brain stem develop?

About Mike the Headless Chicken. The axe removed the bulk of the head, but missed the jugular vein, leaving one ear and most of the brain stem intact. Mike died 18 months later, choking on a kernel of corn in a motel in Phoenix.

Champion skier Mike May blind since age three lost his skill in the sport and still required a guide dog after stem cell treatment fully repaired his eyes at age 40. His brain had over time re-purposed parts of his brain normally dedicated to sight.

In 1945 Lloyd Olsen, preparing for dinner, cut the head off of a chicken. While the head was mostly severed, the axe missed the jugular vein and brain stem. "Mike The Headless Chicken" lived on, being fed grain and water via eye dropper. He traveled with a circus sideshow until his death in 1947

A man hiccuped an estimated 10 million times over 27 months. His condition, which meant that he could hardly eat or sleep, was discovered to be caused by a tumor on his brain stem pushing on nerves causing him to hiccup every 2 seconds, 12 hours a day. His hiccups stopped following surgery.

There is a cellular signaling pathway called the Sonic Hedgehog (Shh) Pathway. It plays a vital role in normal embryonic development including the brain and the spinal cord. It also controls division and differentiation of stem cell division in adults.

How to shoot your brain stem?

Scientists are using stem cells to grow so-called "mini brains" inside of rat bodies, meaning we are perilously close to a rats of NIMH situation.

Stem cells from a fetus can be transferred to the mother and survive in the Hippocampus: a part of the brain involved in memory formation.

A Sonic hedgehog, a protein named after Sonic the Hedgehog. It is responsible for the division of adult stem cells, and mutations can cause cancer, underdeveloped hemispheres of the brain, and growing organs backwards in the body.

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Brain Stem. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Brain Stem so important!

Editor Veselin Nedev Editor