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JamesK mentioned trepanation in this posting last summer ("Brain Hacking", ha ha). Just recently I had it on my mind again and tracked down a trailer on YouTube for the infamous hour-long documentary A Hole In The Head, which contains some very graphic footage, I warn you.
I first heard of trepanation in a goth zine I stumbled across years ago; there it was probably being discussed entirely for shock value, and so I am continuing in a similar vein. The most prominent modern Western advocate of trepanation is Bart Huges, but in the 70s Peter Halvorson and Amanda Fielding gained notoriety when he filmed her performing a trepanation on herself with a power drill, and made a short film about it, which they showed to private, invited audiences. According to Wikipedia, the film is now lost, but the documentary has a few clips, so who knows. According to the article I read way back, the original film was bizarre and surreal, featuring a peaceful soundtrack, with scenes of Amanda drilling in her head, blood pouring down her face, interspersed with clips of birds fluttering in the trees and other peaceful imagery.
This newer documentary is much more tame; it aired on Discover and The Learning Channel, but even the trailer is a bit shocking in some places:
The increased blood flow theory is bunk. At least, the claim that mescaline acts by increasing the blood flow to the brain is beyond laughable. I mean, it's likely that the blood flow to the brain increases when one is high, due to increased metabolic demands by hyperactive neurons, but that's an effect, not a cause, and it's a small one at that.
There's a moderately new MRI technique called arterial spin labeling which lets you measure the actual amount of blood flow in the brain. I don't know the figures, but I suspect that the changes from one condition to another are relatively small. I'll let y'all know when I find out more details.
guest : 2008-02-10 11:29:39
As someone who performs this procedure on rats for a living as part of work on a model of traumatic brain injury induced epilepsy, I can't imagine why any person would want to go through with this. I don't really buy that dude's increased blood flow theory. Has anyone actually done any research on the long-term outcome of this procedure?
Scotto : 2008-02-10 05:23:28
Yeah, Wikipedia seems wrong on the topic; Fielding screened a version of that film at MindStates. Insane footage. Off the map. In the film, she's wearing a white gown and goggles to keep the blood out of her eyes. Blood just pours and pours down her front, stark red against the white of the gown. I could barely watch it without losing consciousness, but then, I'm squeamish under normal circumstances.
jamesk : 2008-02-09 22:11:06
I actually met someone at a MindStates conference who had been trepanned(?). It was the year when they showed the infamous film; it may have been Halverson I was talking to, I can't remember now. Anyway, he let me touch the hole in his head. It was about the size of a dime. The skin had grown over it, but I could feel the soft spot where there was no skull. And it was not a perfect little hole either, it had a jagged triangular side where it felt like the skull cracked a way a little. Since I am prone to smacking my head around every now and then I asked him how the hole affected the structural integrity of his skull, and if it could crack farther if he got his bell rung. He conceded that he needed to be careful about what he did so he didn't traumatize the area, but didn't worry about it too much.
It was icky.
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The comments posted here do not reflect the views of the owners of this site.