2. Macula
CuriosityThis is the story of the macula lutea.
The part of me that embodies curiosity.
This is a yellow spot, a few millimetres across, in the centre of our retina - that’s the layer of cells at
the back of our eye that senses light and sends signals to our brain, so we see.
Your retina is like film in a camera, and the macula at its centre is the most sensitive part. It’s good
design, because it means your vision is keenest in the centre of your gaze, where you need to look
most intently when doing things like reading.
Jesus and Mary: Macula is Latin for spot or stain, and it’s a word that has found its way into lots
of modern-day expressions. A flat spot on our skin is called a macule. Order a macchiato from a
barista and you’ll get an espresso stained with milk. Catholics believe that if you commit a mortal
sin, you get tarnished with a macula - a stain on your soul. On the other hand, immaculate means
spotless, hence the Immaculate Conception, which refers to Mary’s conception, not Jesus’, as many
people mistakenly believe.
Yellow antioxidants: Our macula contains special yellow pigments which are also antioxidants.
They give the macula the other part of its name: lutea is Latin for yellow.
Mothers and greens: Your mother knew what she was talking about when she ordered you to eat
your greens, because they contain high levels of the macula’s antioxidant pigments. Eating veggies
like broccoli and spinach may help our macula stay young, protecting it from macular degeneration,
which affects many of us when we get old.
The Sydney Opera House: People with macular degeneration have problems seeing things they
are focusing most intently on, but can see things in the corner of their eye. It’s the commonest cause
of blindness in the western world - about 30,000 Australians over 50 are blind because of it. Danish
architect Jørn Utzon, who designed the Opera House, is a sufferer.
3. CollaborationThis is the story of the corpus callosum.
The part of my brain that embodies collaboration.
Our brains have their wires crossed - straight up. Each side of our cranial supercomputer is separate
and wired to the opposite side of our body. You could say we have two brains. The one on the left
sends and receive signals to and from your right side, and vice versa for the one on the right. So how
do the two sides of our world join to make a whole? The answer lies in our corpus callosum, a 10
centimetre long brain bridge between its right and left halves.
Saggy brains: Oddly, for such a big bit of brain, little is known about its job. In the 1950s, some
people thought it stopped the two sides from sagging. Now we know it allows them to chat to each
other. That’s important, because they think differently. Generally, the left side is skilled at language
and analytical tasks, like maths; while the flouncy right half excels at music, recognising faces and
navigation. It’s a good system - imagine if both sides controlled talking, you might be able to say
different things out of each side of your mouth simultaneously.
Split brains: Splitting the brain in two by cutting the corpus callosum is a treatment for epilepsy.
A bonus for researchers is that, with the corpus callosum disabled, they can study how it affects
behaviour.
Strange doctors and Nazis: But splitting brains isn’t all beer and skittles. It can cause a freakish
problem, called alien hand syndrome, where one hand takes on a mind of its own. This is how a
woman described the conflict between her split brain’s disconnected halves: “I open the closet door.
I know what I want to wear. But as I reach for something with my right hand, my left comes up and
takes something different. I can’t put it down if it’s in my left hand, I have to call my daughter.” This
handicap is also called Dr Strangelove syndrome. In the 1964 film, Dr Strangelove had a gloved
right hand that kept trying to strangle him, or make a Nazi salute.
Cruelty and corpses: Our corpus callosum got the name because it’s a hard bit of brain. Cal-
losum is from the Latin for hard. In English, a callus is thickened, hard skin; cruel, hard dudes are
callous. Corpus means body - a corpse is a dead one.
corpus callosum
4. TransformationThis is the story of the myometrium.
The part of me that embodies transformation.
The myometrium’s special power is transformation. Its ability to reinvent itself is astounding. You
see it when a woman gets pregnant, because her myometrium is her womb’s muscular wall. It makes
up the bulk of this incredible expanding organ, which gets 15 times heavier during pregnancy and
can swell to hold 2,000 times as much fluid.
Pears: This feat of transformation is achieved thanks to its myometrium, who’s muscle cells stretch
to ten times their pre-pregnancy length. Before conception, the womb (uterus) is pear-shaped ball
of muscle, weighing about 70 grams, with a tiny cavity that holds just 10 millilitres. By the time the
baby is due, it has become a thin-walled balloon that can hold as much as 20 litres, weighs over a
kilogram, and is strong enough to push the baby out with brutally powerful contractions.
Water bottles: Myometrium is from the Greek words mys (muscle) and metra (womb) - the metra
part is related to the word for mother. The word myometrium is like myocardium - your heart mus-
cle - which is where the term myocardial infarction (heart attack) comes from. Incidentally, the word
uterus comes from the name for a leather water bottle Romans swigged from on hot days.
Footballs: One of the body’s commonest tumours grows in the myometrium; it’s a uterine myoma,
aka fibroid. Perhaps more than 50% of women get fibroids, which can be smaller than a pea or
larger than a soccer ball, and can grow to weigh over 20 kilograms. One treatment for them is to
take out the uterus - a hysterectomy. Hyster- is from another Greek word for uterus.
Orgasms: Until recently, hysteria was an illness of the uterus that caused nervous symptoms in
women. Womb-less men didn’t get hysteria, they held their nerve. The ancient Greeks believed the
uterus was an animal that wanted to make babies. If it stayed sterile for too long, the animal got
angry. One remedy involved massaging the “sufferer’s” genitals until she orgasmed. It took skill, a
17th century English medic wrote the technique was “not unlike that game of boys in which they
try to rub their stomachs with one hand and pat their heads with the other”. It wasn’t until the latter
half of the 20th century that the term hysteria fell out of favour with medics.
Myometrium
Uterus
Cervix
Vagina
Ovary
Fallopian tube
5. BrillianceThis is the story of neurones and astrocytes.
They are the cells in my brain that embody brilliance.
The human brain is the most sophisticated microprocessor on the planet. Weighing just
1.4 kilograms, it creates as much power as a small light bulb, with a battery that lasts a life time.
PCs and Macs are Stone Age by comparison. After all, the brains behind Apple and IBM is the
genius of the human brain and its billions of neurons. These are the interconnected nerve cells that
transmit electrical impulses and mastermind the way we think, create and invent. But neurons are
only a small part of our brain’s story, because they are heavily outnumbered by a family of much
less well-known brain cells, called glia. Astrocytes are the commonest type of glia.
Brain stars: Astrocytes have arms that radiate out like bicycle spokes and attach to neurons and
small blood vessels. Their arms make them look like stars - the word astrocyte comes from the Greek
for cell (kytos) and star (astron). Other star-related words with the same origin are: astronomy, as-
trology, and astronaut.
Glue: The 19th century German doctor Rudolf Virchow believed glia were just dumb cells that
provided a support network for your clever neurons. He called them nerve glue - glia is Greek for
glue.
Myths busted: It’s often said we use just one tenth of our brain capacity. The implication being
that the spare nine tenths of our brain power is sitting inside our head, kicking its heels idly while
we miserably fail to fulfill our intellectual potential. It’s a myth designed to make most of us feel
inadequate. It may well have arisen because astrocytes and the other glia outnumber neurons by
about 10 to one. This latter fact was probably distorted into the former fallacy.
Aryans unstuck: Virchow’s notions about glia stuck, like glue. Only recently have scientists begun
to realise that astrocytes do more than provide the scaffolding for neurons. It seems they work in
partnership with neurons, influencing and maybe even directing neuron activity. Virchow did lots
of stuff right though. He conducted a study among millions of German school kids and concluded
there wasn’t a pure Aryan master race. Something other Germans, a few decades later, failed to
appreciate.
Astrocyte
Capillary
Nerve
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ART
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CURATED BY AILEEN ROBALINO FEATURING
LOCAL ARTISTS • DJ SETS BY DJ SETS BY
JONNY TURCINSKISAND TEO TRELOAR
LIMITED SPOTS STILL AVAILABLE. TO BOOK CONTACT AAROBALINO@GMAIL.COM
CURATED BY AILEEN ROBALINO FEATURING
LOCAL ARTISTS • DJ SETS BY DJ SETS BY
JONNY TURCINSKISAND TEO TRELOAR
LIMITED SPOTS STILL AVAILABLE. TO BOOK CONTACT AAROBALINO@GMAIL.COM
CURATED BY AILEEN ROBALINO FEATURING
LOCAL ARTISTS • DJ SETS BY DJ SETS BY
JONNY TURCINSKISAND TEO TRELOAR
LIMITED SPOTS STILL AVAILABLE. TO BOOK CONTACT AAROBALINO@GMAIL.COM
