(no subject)

[starkirin]

my neuropsychology professor informed the class
that if you wannted to commit suicide by shooting yourself in the head
to make sure to do it through the mouth (so as to hit the brainstem)
and not at the temple- because youll just destroy the secondary visual processing sytems there-
and then youll be blind

i wonder if this is clinically relevant-
like if someone says to their shrink "im thinking of killing myself"
the shrink, armed with this info, can say "well... if youre going to use a gun, may i recommend..."

its actually a fascinating class
learning about really bizarre disorders
for example- asomatagnosia is caused by a particular placement of a stroke in the parietal lobes
it causes the person to chage their bodily schema so that they no lonnger feel like they have a left side to their body nor did they ever have a left side of their body
if you pinch their left hand- their pain receptors are still intact- so they can feel pain
but they just think its on their right hand
often- these people are hospitalized and are rather unnhappy to be sharing a bed with someone else
they look over and see their left arm or leg and assume that it belongs to someone else
and so push it out of bed and wind up on the floor