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Mystery of JFK’s ‘Second Brain’
By [Dr.) Gary L. Aguilar
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Yet, perhaps, the most startling discovery became public only on Nov. 9. Douglas Horne, the board's chief analyst for military records, reached a shocking conclusion: that a brain other than Kennedy's had been substituted in the autopsy photos.
In a 32-page report, Horne contended that a second brain was apparently used in one set of the photos to bolster the case for a shot from behind.
"I am 90 to 95 percent certain that the photographs in the [National] Archives are not of President Kennedy's brain," Horne told The Washington Post when asked about his report. "If they aren't, that can mean only one thing -- that there has been a cover-up of the medical evidence." [WP, Nov. 10, 1998]
According to Horne’s findings, the second brain -- which showed an exit wound in the front -- allegedly replaced Kennedy's real brain -- which revealed much greater damage to the rear, consistent with an exit wound and thus evidence of a shot from the front.
Horne, a former Navy officer who also worked as a civilian employee at the Department of the Navy, noted that the second brain in the autopsy photos also revealed far less damage than Kennedy's brain would have sustained.
Horne’s report cited the 1997 testimony of former FBI agent Francis X. O'Neill Jr., who was present for the Bethesda autopsy.
O'Neill recalled, "there was not too much of the brain left" and that "more than half of the brain was missing" when it was removed from Kennedy's skull and placed in a white jar.
O'Neill expressed surprise when shown the official autopsy photos depicting a brain with much less damage. "This looks almost like a complete brain," O'Neill stated in amazement.
O’Neill and funeral home employee Tom Robinson also told the review board that a large amount of tissue was missing from the posterior portion of the brain removed at the autopsy. That again would support the initial opinion of the Parkland doctors who saw evidence of a frontal shot.
The review board uncovered other evidence pointing to a later brain substitution. A 1965 document written by forensics pathologist, Pierre Finck, stated that the brain he saw at the autopsy looked different from the brain he saw at a later supplementary exam.
But the review board could not conduct a new examination of Kennedy's brain because it disappeared sometime after the autopsy, one of the assassination's strangest mysteries.
According to some accounts, the brain was turned over to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for burial with the dead president at Arlington National Cemetery.
But other witnesses testified that pathologists retained it for further examination in late November or early December 1963 -- and that it disappeared later. Horne dated the brain’s disappearance as sometime between April 26, 1965, and Oct. 31, 1966.
The records review board discovered other weaknesses in the autopsy record about Kennedy's wounds. As the review progressed, seven witnesses reported that autopsy photographs -- presumably including those of the real brain -- were missing.
John Stringer, the photographer of record at the autopsy and at a supplementary brain exam, was among those who disavowed the brain photographs that have survived in the official record.
Forensic pathologist Finck declared, too, that key photographs that he took of the internal and external aspects of Kennedy skull wound never made it into the official inventory.
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Researchers have used pulses of light to store the memory of a bad event that never actually happened into the brains of fruit flies. Writing this week in the journal Cell, the researchers describe their success in directly manipulating the activity of individual neurons responsible for associating a certain odor with a bad experience.
By introducing chemicals into those neurons when the odor was present, the researchers found that they could produce flies that 'remembered' experiencing an electric shock connected to the odor, although no actual shock was present. We'll talk about the work and what it means...
Science Friday Archives: Creating Memories
So, Laura Sanders, what do magicians and neuroscientists have in common? I want to know about this.
Ms. SANDERS: Well, yeah, you wouldn't necessarily think of it right off the bat, but they both share a complete fascination with the human brain. Scientists, of course, want to study it and figure out how it works. Magicians, though, want to trick it and make it believe the impossible. So the reason that the magicians were invited to this meeting is that a lot of scientists, and neuroscientists in particular, started realizing that these magicians have a huge wealth of information. And they've honed these tricks over hundreds of years and tested it out in front of audiences all over the world. So they're good. They're good and tricking the brain, and neuroscientists want to know how they do that.
PALCA: Right. So I mean, I guess there's some serious things about consciousness and attention and things that you can learn from tricking the brain.
Ms. SANDERS: Yeah. One of the main things that they talked about, these two magicians that performed, a big, important thing was attention and how they're able to kind of twist your attention and manipulate it. One of the magicians, Apollo Robins(ph), when he started talking, you know, there was this big spotlight on the front of the stage, and he was nowhere to be found. And he said, you know, spotlights point out something that you should be looking at, and that's where your attention goes, but here he was, off in the shadow. I think at that point, he was actually pilfering through the pockets of some of the attendees and stealing their wallets and watches, and yeah…
Science Friday Archives: Neuroscience Meeting Highlights
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:NPR=CIA-Voice of America domestic version...
Monster wrote:What the hell is this thread about.
monster wrote:What the hell is this thread about.
lightningBugout wrote:psychiatrist who rejects the inclusion of DID in the DSM.
lightningBugout wrote:talk about DID as though the phenomena of dissociation is itself controversial which it is most decidedly not.
monster wrote:lightningBugout wrote:talk about DID as though the phenomena of dissociation is itself controversial which it is most decidedly not.
Yeah I think everyone experiences it at some point, to some extent, I mean it seems like I hear about people wandering away in dissociative fugues pretty regularly. But diagnosing DID is really subjective, hopefully they can define it a little better.
We have argued that concluding that posttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) is overdiagnosed is akin to devaluing
a useful concept because of some occasional misuse. In
response to Dr Merskey and Dr Piper, we take inspiration
from a famous quote from Winnicott1 and would like to
emphasize that there is no such thing as a traumatic event.
Rather, people experience dangerous events that may turn out
to be traumatic. More than 13 years ago, the DSM-IV2
acknowledged this notion by moving from a so-called objective
to a more subjective definition of trauma exposure. From
then on, the sterile debate as to which event is worthy of
appearing on the DSM’s list of recognized traumatic stressors
abated. This implied that a large array of previously
nonqualifying events were now considered to have some
traumatogenic potential, inasmuch as they involved a threat to
one’s life or to one’s integrity and if they were experienced
with intense fear, helplessness, or horror. It also meant that
seemingly traumatic events were no longer automatically
considered as such: not all New Yorkers who were in the city
on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks are considered as
having experienced a traumatic event. When Dr Merskey and
Dr Piper argue that the concept of trauma has expanded to
include too many kinds of (trivial) life events, they seem to
forget the fact that trauma is no longer defined as an event. But
most importantly, they fail to recognize that the net effect of
this change in definition on reported rates of trauma exposure
and on the rates of PTSD is negligible.
Project Willow wrote:I didn't hear the NPR piece and hope they will post a transcript...
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