Grey’s Anatomy – Brain Tracking Denny
Regular readers of these posts will recognize a common theme that takes place nowadays in some of the most popular TV shows. I like to call it the "Let’s take a little bit of theoretical science and make it reality" theme. The latest practitioner of this theme is Grey’s Anatomy.
I have to admit, I hesitated to write this one. It meant I would have to admit that I watched the show. I’ll use my wife as an excuse. She loves it and I just watch to fit in. 
In the episode "What a Difference a Day Makes", Izzie becomes convinced that she has a brain tumor because she keeps having visions of her late fiance’ Denny. They don’t find any evidence that the tumor exists. Dr. Shephard comes up with the idea of hooking her up to an EEG machine that will measure her brain waves. He figured that if she starts having the visions, that he’ll be able to use the EEG readings to locate the tumor. The theory is that if she starts to have a vision, they will see increased brain activity at one exact point in the brain and that would be the location of the tumor. Low and behold, it worked like a charm. They not only located the tumor, but were able to go in and remove it as well.
I’ve got Call Bull on that one. There are several problems with this. They are right about one thing; the vision would more than likely result in additional brain activity. After that, the Bull begins! First of all, if tracking thoughts were that easy we’d have mapped the brain decades ago. The brain is a neural-network. There is no single point where a thought originates; it is spread out across the brain. That’s why people are often able to recover from brain injuries. No single point in the brain has complete control of anything.
The second Bull factor is that even if the vision came from a single part of the brain, the lone thought would not create a strong enough electrical current to stand out from all the other brain functions underway. It would get lost in all the other "noise" talking place. You can bet that when the vision started, Izzie’s stress level shot up. That would have created a whole flood of activity in all parts of the brain.
And finally, if the vision could be isolated and measured it still wouldn’t lead them to the tumor. The tumor itself isn’t creating the vision. It’s just changing the chemistry and connections in the brain to make way for the vision. Some other part of the brain is actually making her see Denny.
Once again…WeCallBull. I’ll admit I’m not a brain surgeon and could be totally wrong about all of this. Feel free to comment and prove me wrong.
You are right, you are not a brain surgeon or in the medical field. I will say this…… they were not trying to track Issy’s thoughts, they were trying to track her hallucination. She would see Denny but was still able to know he was not truly there. There is much we do not understand about the brain, but there is still a lot we do. Researchers have found where certain emotions originate from too.You are right about Izzy being under stress and that does show up too, but they were watching the image BEFORE the hallucination started and was able to pinpoint the new area of activity after it started. From there they can get a better understanding of where the pressure is from the tumor and go from there. Brain injuries can not \repair\ themselves, rather they re route themselves. If an area is damaged, it pulls from another area to get the job done. But there is still permanent damage with TMI’s. Damage that is long-term and that will never be repaired. If you research serial killers, in many cases you will find that the killer had frontal lobe damage at some point. That person has forever lost their ability to have a conscience, the ability to reason (cause and effect), and things of that nature. That is never repaired. Here is a relatively new concept, researchers have now linked brain activity with being honest and not. I am sure this will soon prove to be a valuable tool in court cases sooner than we realize.
July 16th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Thanks.. this is exactly the type of discussion I hope to stimulate with this site. I’m not sure how you found it… I haven’t gone public yet. BTW, I still think it is highly unlikely that they would be able to find a tumor that didn’t show up in an earlier MRI by isolating the increased brain activity from the tumor.
July 20th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Not sure why you think that folks may not be getting here… You obviously have several plugins that are running that are pushing out ping information to sites, I am guessing google SEO stuff (getting it in search engines automagically), and not to mention it open and the sign says on even if you have not advertised elsehwere…. And speaking of which – how many plugins do you have on here? I should log out and leave this anon, but I really don’t care… and what is that captcha crap…. hard to read when you have been drinking…<GRIN>
August 12th, 2009 at 8:08 pm