The Circle of Willis

The Circle of Willis is the glorious name given to the cluster of arteries that feed the base of the brain.

Although I read a lot about the the mechanics of the brain, and spend time kicking rocks and pondering the proto-human's ball of neurons, the miracle of the brain is airy and antiseptic for me.

I much prefer the iconographic version of the Circle of Willis

to the actual picture.



Because while it is amazing that the connections we make with other people get reinforce a set of connections somewhere in the brain, the brain itself is a three pound pink raisin with the consistency of custard. I've only ever seen sheep brains in person and that in many ways is enough for me.

I'm not sure what additional miracles I could glean by sitting in the presence of an actual brain. Maybe as time goes on I'll change my mind.

Before I go, I wanted to add something. There are probably cooler sounding parts of the brain, but they're mostly faux cool, like heavy metal band name cool. For example: the Nodes of Ranvier. Hair metal all the way. .

... and through the magic of Google we find this. Like I suspected, but really, I just now picked the Nodes of Ranvier because I was reading about how the proto-human's spinal cord is myelinating. Maybe they were too, but there is an almost endless supply of Hård Kör names with the [noun] of [super coool sounding proper noun] format.

The Circle of Willis is just sweet.