How to Dissect a Brain
I’m looking for a reference to a story I vaguely remember reading sometime in the last ten years or so. To my recollection, a pair of doctors had dissected a human skull in a new way; i.e. with a new pattern of cuts. In the process they found a completely new organ that had been missed for hundreds of years because the standard pattern of cuts destroyed that organ. Does anyone remember this story, and can point me to a citation for it?
Keep in mind that I could be misremembering any of this. It might not actually be an organ but some other structure within the brain that they discovered. It might even not be the brain at all, though I’m pretty sure it was. It might be only one doctor or it might be three. But I’m hoping that someone with more of a medical background than me will recognize the story I’m talking about and be able to point me at more information. Thanks.
July 2nd, 2006 at 11:46 AM
Do you mean “a story” as in “news item”, or “a story” as in “fiction”?
July 2nd, 2006 at 3:26 PM
News item. I’m pretty sure this, or something very much like it, actually happened. However I can’t come up with the right set of Google search terms to find it.
July 2nd, 2006 at 7:22 PM
Are you sure it was a dissection, and not some new imaging technique? There have been a number of discoveries due to that.
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:03 AM
I’m about 90% certain it was an actual dissection.
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:46 PM
I’m not sure that this is what you were thinking of, but just in case…
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_105441.html
July 5th, 2006 at 11:10 AM
I remember this; it was a muscle, I believe. Suprisingly hard to Google for. This may be it:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/312/7030/528/a
“US dentists find new muscle of mastication”
July 5th, 2006 at 11:52 AM
It doesn’t quite match my recollection, but I know my recollection is fuzzy. That’s almost certainly the story I was thinking of. In any case, it solves my need. (I’ll be using this story at SD Best Practices in Boston in September.) Thanks!