Science Fiction Story about Neuroanatomy - Essay Example

Play Time Barney swallowed the last of his coffee and peered at the scan on screen in front of him. He could just see the tiny motorized nano-wagon as it made its way through the diencephalon. Im winning, he thought, Madpie doesnt stand a chance. He adjusted the scan depth to see where Madpies wagon was. There. Straining away in the myelencephalon, grubbing away round the brainstem. He had already claimed the cerebellum, right after the medulla oblongata. Madpie could have the pons if he wanted. Barney was after the dynamic duo, the thalamus and the hypothalamus. It served Madpie right for being so stuck-up. All week long Barney had had to put up with Madpies "my nano-wagon is superior to your nano-wagon" rubbish. All because Madpie had managed to drive his nano-wagon up a patients olfactory nerve to repair a leak in an internal carotid artery. Afterwards the patient had complained about the drains smelling. What a joke. Fusaki, the head of Neural Repurposing, had publicly congratulated Madpie. After Fusaki left, Madpie managed to crash his nano-wagon into the patients optic chiasm and the poor man had gone cross-eyed for two days. So far, so good. After the hypothalamus, Barneys plan was to stake his claim in the key areas of the telencephalon. The hippocampus was the prize there, although he would prevent Madpie from claiming any of the cerebral cortex if possible. Or the amygdala. Or the basal ganglia. Damn it, he was going to stop Madpie from having anything. The intercom buzzed. It was Fusakis assistant. She wanted to know how the operation was going. And that there had been a strange alert in the system indicating multiple nano-wagons in the patients brain. Had Barney noticed anything unusual. No, said Barney curtly, he had not. He almost said "Talk to Madpie", but that would have given the game away. And the rules were clear. Each one in separate observation cell, separate scans and Fusaki was not to know a thing. He went back to the screen to check on Madpie. Still messing around in the hindbrain. Useless. Afterwards, Barney would tell himself that he should have smelt a rat. The nano-wagon stuck for so long halfway up the rubrospinal tract. Madpie could be stupid on occasions but not that stupid. However, he was too busy navigating around the splenium to get across to the corpus callosum to pay any more attention to it. There was some electrical activity in the vicinity that was making life difficult for his nano-wagon. He would have to wait a minute while the dendrites and axons settled down again. He reached for the pad of paper and the pen by the screen and started to count up his points. He was way ahead. Madpie might score a few more points off the mesencephalon but the tectum and the tegmentum were small fry compared to what Barney was pulling in. The new scoring system also meant he could pick up good points from the olfactory bulb and the olfactory cranial nerve, just as soon as he could get round to them. The nano-wagon was still battling the electrical storm, trying alternative routes as it was programmed to do. Barney looked at his score again and started to map out his next conquests. The forebrain, the frontal lobe, that was where the points were. He wondered if the best thing was to send the nano-wagon off to the occipital lobe and build his score further that way. The problem was that if Madpie got control of the corpus callosum, Barney would be forced to navigate to and fro via the anterior commissure and his score would suffer. He could even find himself forced down towards the pituitary gland, forced to scrabble around for points on the funiculus and other cerebral lowlife. The intercom buzzed again. It was Fusakis assistant. Again. Had Barney checked the dynabase. Because the alert said there were thirteen nano-wagons in the patients brain. Barney sat up with a jolt. He could see the patient through the mirror-glass divider. Her face seemed peaceful under the surgical head covering. He told Fusakis assistant that he was going to investigate. Scanning through different depths, he could hardly believe what he saw. There were nano-wagons stationed on several of the brain arteries, including the anterior and posterior communicating as well as the middle cerebral arteries. He scanned further, exploring outwards along the cranial nerves. Trochlear, facial, glosso-pharyngeal, hypoglossal: there was a nano-wagon in every one. Every one in position to attack. He banged on the wall at the side of the screen. He thought he heard a laugh. He flipped the screen over to visiocom and saw Madpie in the next cell, looking very smug. "What the hell are you doing?" said Barney. "Winning!" Madpie replied. "You idiot! Fusaki had the alerts reset last week. We could have gotten away with two nano-wagons, but thirteen…?" Madpie had stopped looking smug. He was staring at the upper left corner of the screen and Barney guessed he had opened a dynabase window to check. "Weve got to get them out, Madpie. Now" It was a hell of a job. The nano-wagons had to be brought out of the grey matter and onto the external surface of the convolutions in order to get them out quickly enough. Barney told Madpie to drive them out of the brain and hide each one somewhere until they could get the patient out of the operating room. He prayed that Fusaki was still at lunch in the Neuroblast lounge and started each time he thought he heard footsteps coming towards the observation cell. Some of the nano-wagons kept getting bogged down in a mush of astrocytes and neurons. Neuronal depolarization, thought Barney glumly, thats all we need. He could see on the screen that Madpie, on the verge of panicking, was driving some of the nano-wagons down through the autonomic nervous system as a route to the solar plexus. Just as long as he steered clear of any geniculate ganglia, they might just be able to pull this off. Madpie cursed under his breath as he was forced to drive a nano-wagon back up the Circle of Willis because of turbulence in one of the cerebellar arteries. He swore out loud as two other wagons narrowly avoided collision in a decussation. There was a second or two of silence and then Madpie exclaimed "thats torn it". "What has?" asked Barney and synched in to the scan that Madpie was watching. He could see that a further wagon had crushed part of a nerve. Luckily it was the neurilemma that had taken the shock and it was likely the patients natural repair functions would put things to rights. What perturbed him more was that one of the wagons had disappeared somewhere in the limbic system. While Madpie continued to bring the others out of the brain, Barney ran checks on the fornix to see if it had picked up the wagons presence. There was no abnormal signal. He checked the cingulate gyrus, monitoring the patients heart rate and blood pressure, then the hippocampus. The patient stirred on the operating table. Barney saw a smile appear on her face. Gotcha, he thought, youre in the dentate gyrus. The buzzer went again. Fusakis assistant. Again. "Barney, Master Fusaki is…" "Right behind you! Thankyou, Vhairi, Ill be up in ten minutes". Barney turned around in his chair. Fusaki was standing in the doorway. He was a small, balding, japanese man and at this moment he looked unhappy. He wanted a word with Barney about the dynabase. The alerts had been altered in the past weeks, Fusaki had had them reset recently, but it was pure carelessness on somebodys part and Barney was to maintain tighter control of access to the system. Barney said he would. He tried to appear matter of fact, as he wondered where the rogue nano-wagon was now. "Im not against some degree of flexibility for senior staff, but order must be maintained". Barney said yes again and that he would take care of it. Fusaki had moved around the desk and stood with his back to the window. Over Fusakis shoulder Barney saw the patient move her arms in a short, sudden movement. Amygdala, he thought, I hope Madpies picked that up. He could guess what Madpie was doing as the patients face assumed different expressions. Getting a nano-wagon out of the hypothalamus as the patient licked her lips. Working to clear the trigeminal nerve as she pouted. He tried to act as though he was listening to Fusaki, but when the patient sat bolt upright on the operating table with her eyes shut and her mouth open, he thought he was going into shock. He looked fixedly into Fusakis eyes in the wild hope of preventing him from looking at the patient. "Hows the operation going?" Fusaki asked and squinted at the screen as he called up the stored interval autoscans one after the other. "Whats this one here, Barney?" Fusaki tapped the screen with a small, bony finger to draw Barneys attention to a scan of the sulcus where two nano-wagons were vaguely visible. Madpie burst in through the door. "Weve done it. Temporal lobe clear, visual cortex clear, the last ones are on their way down to…" and his voice trailed off into a frozen silence as he saw Fusaki. "Ah, Madpie. Ive just been asking Barney to tackle the problem of the alerts. Ill ask you to do the same as you are both senior staff members. Cant have the juniors playing around, can we?" He turned to look at the patient through the divider and then turned to face Barney and Madpie again before saying: "After all, neural repurposing, its not a game, is it?" References (2000). The Human Nervous System-Human Neurology-Biology Online. Retrieved February 24, 2008 from http://www.biology-online.org/8/1_nervous_system.htm. (2007). Neuroanatomy Atlas- Suny Downstate Medical Center. Retrieved February 24, 2008, from http://ect.downstate.edu/courseware/neuro_atlas/. (2008). Neuroanatomy. Retrieved February 24, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroanatomy. Neuroscience For Kids. Retrieved February 24, 2008, from http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/nsdivide.html. Neuroanatomy Tutorial-Labeled Images. Retrieved February 24, 2008 from http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/HISTHTML/NEURANAT/NEURANCA.html#1 Read More

The nano-wagon was still battling the electrical storm, trying alternative routes as it was programmed to do. Barney looked at his score again and started to map out his next conquests. The forebrain, the frontal lobe, that was where the points were. He wondered if the best thing was to send the nano-wagon off to the occipital lobe and build his score further that way. The problem was that if Madpie got control of the corpus callosum, Barney would be forced to navigate to and fro via the anterior commissure and his score would suffer.

He could even find himself forced down towards the pituitary gland, forced to scrabble around for points on the funiculus and other cerebral lowlife. The intercom buzzed again. It was Fusakis assistant. Again. Had Barney checked the dynabase. Because the alert said there were thirteen nano-wagons in the patients brain. Barney sat up with a jolt. He could see the patient through the mirror-glass divider. Her face seemed peaceful under the surgical head covering. He told Fusakis assistant that he was going to investigate.

Scanning through different depths, he could hardly believe what he saw. There were nano-wagons stationed on several of the brain arteries, including the anterior and posterior communicating as well as the middle cerebral arteries. He scanned further, exploring outwards along the cranial nerves. Trochlear, facial, glosso-pharyngeal, hypoglossal: there was a nano-wagon in every one. Every one in position to attack. He banged on the wall at the side of the screen. He thought he heard a laugh. He flipped the screen over to visiocom and saw Madpie in the next cell, looking very smug.

"What the hell are you doing?" said Barney. "Winning!" Madpie replied. "You idiot! Fusaki had the alerts reset last week. We could have gotten away with two nano-wagons, but thirteen…?" Madpie had stopped looking smug. He was staring at the upper left corner of the screen and Barney guessed he had opened a dynabase window to check. "Weve got to get them out, Madpie. Now" It was a hell of a job. The nano-wagons had to be brought out of the grey matter and onto the external surface of the convolutions in order to get them out quickly enough.

Barney told Madpie to drive them out of the brain and hide each one somewhere until they could get the patient out of the operating room. He prayed that Fusaki was still at lunch in the Neuroblast lounge and started each time he thought he heard footsteps coming towards the observation cell. Some of the nano-wagons kept getting bogged down in a mush of astrocytes and neurons. Neuronal depolarization, thought Barney glumly, thats all we need. He could see on the screen that Madpie, on the verge of panicking, was driving some of the nano-wagons down through the autonomic nervous system as a route to the solar plexus.

Just as long as he steered clear of any geniculate ganglia, they might just be able to pull this off. Madpie cursed under his breath as he was forced to drive a nano-wagon back up the Circle of Willis because of turbulence in one of the cerebellar arteries. He swore out loud as two other wagons narrowly avoided collision in a decussation. There was a second or two of silence and then Madpie exclaimed "thats torn it". "What has?" asked Barney and synched in to the scan that Madpie was watching.

He could see that a further wagon had crushed part of a nerve. Luckily it was the neurilemma that had taken the shock and it was likely the patients natural repair functions would put things to rights. What perturbed him more was that one of the wagons had disappeared somewhere in the limbic system. While Madpie continued to bring the others out of the brain, Barney ran checks on the fornix to see if it had picked up the wagons presence. There was no abnormal signal. He checked the cingulate gyrus, monitoring the patients heart rate and blood pressure, then the hippocampus.

The patient stirred on the operating table. Barney saw a smile appear on her face. Gotcha, he thought, youre in the dentate gyrus.

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