A Peek Under the Hood: A Brain Surgeon Looks at Life

By W. Lee Warren, MD

The human brain is more than just another organ; it holds your mind and your spirit as well.
Meet real people and see how their neurological problems teach us about how we're wired and how we got here.
Follow brain surgeon W. Lee Warren, MD on a fascinating journey into the nervous system, and into the mind of God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483520889

Book preview

Conclusion

Preface

Congratulations! You made it!

Against all odds, your ancestors managed to evolve and improve over several millennia, and now you’re here. Think of your great-great-and-a-million-more-greats-grandpa, single-celled organism that he was. More ambitious than the cells in his corner of the primordial goo, he pulled himself up by his bootstraps (or whatever type of straps microorganisms pull themselves up by) and mutated his DNA into something a tiny bit better.

And so, all his cell-children had a new doo-dad that made them a little faster, more attractive, and stronger than the normal cells in the soup around them.

Your family tree had an advantage.

Now, millions of years later, here you are, reading this book.

Good job!

You’ve come a long way. You’ve got arms and legs, two lungs, a heart, and a robust musculoskeletal system.

And the best part: you’ve got the most intricate, powerful computer system and communications network in the world inside you. Your nervous system-your brain, spinal cord and nerves- is the best part of you. It makes you who you are, stores up all the memories and stories and unique things about you, and guides your every movement, feeling and thought.

And it all happened because of trillions of beneficial mistakes and adaptive changes in your great-great-grandpappy’s cellular structure and DNA over an almost infinite amount of time.

You are one highly evolved accident of evolution, fortunate to have avoided ice ages and dinosaur attacks and being clubbed in the head by jealous, less-evolved humanoid ancestors.

Isn’t it great?

My grandfather, a small-town Oklahoma rancher, had a word for such a story: Hogwash.

I grew up, went to medical school, and became a brain surgeon. All through my training, I was taught the scientific facts of life, evolution, the origins of man, etc. I answered the test questions, made the A’s, finished at or near the top of every class, learned all the information, and didn’t make waves.

But I always knew the truth.

I knew it the first time I saw the human brain and realized it wasn’t just a three-pound pile of flesh. It was not just an organ, like a heart or a kidney. No, your brain has you inside it. Not just the chemical and electrical signals that move your arms and encode your memories. But it holds who you are, what you believe, how you think and feel and hope and dream. The brain is the only part of you that’s more than the sum of its parts: it is an organ and a mind.

In my case, learning more about the body and the brain made me believe on an even deeper level the things I was taught as a child. Our bodies are wonderfully delicate and complex, and it is unfathomable to me, despite my years of scientific training, that it could all have been an accident.

Even though it may be unpopular in scientific circles to openly believe in an intelligent Creator, I just can’t help it. It seems horribly unscientific to me for someone to acknowledge that everything in nature gets worse over time if left alone, while at the same time claiming that entire organisms could have assembled themselves if you gave them long enough.

I look at the human body and my soul cries out, What an awesome design!

You can read Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and many others who write about how silly it is to believe in God. Some of their books are quite well written and compelling, and I have read many of them. But I just can’t drink the Kool-Aid.

The apostle Paul said in Romans 1: …people are not ignorant about what can be known of God, because He has shown it to them with great clarity. From the beginning, creation in its magnificence enlightens us to His nature. Creation itself makes His undying power and divine identity clear…

I wrote this little book to share some of the unbelievable things I get to see in my work as a neurosurgeon. I want you to experience what I feel when something from my practice illustrates a scriptural truth or provide a spiritual insight.

In the age of instant information, it is easy to stop being amazed by utterly amazing things. When you can type, How many bones are in the human body? into your search engine and instantly find out (two hundred six, on average), it is quite possible to know so much that we fail to appreciate the wonder we should feel at any one particular fact.

So, in this book, I am going to take you on a journey into my world as a brain surgeon, and try to give you some perspective on exactly how remarkable it is that you’re alive. We’re going to focus on what is, in my opinion, the single most fascinating thing ever created: the human nervous system.

I’ve come to realize that no matter how good I am at repairing your brain, I could not make one from scratch. Even if you have different beliefs, you should still be able to agree that the nervous system is fascinating, and you will probably learn some new things. You might even find yourself asking deeper questions.

For some of you, it might be fun to read about the brain and the human body and hear cool stories about surgery. Others, however, may want to come deeper with me. I want to show you things that most people will