Plague Doctor

Whoops, the examination bed moved towards the ring magnet. Gu Jun remained motionless, relaxing his mind and not thinking about anything, letting the equipment take a picture of his control state first.

While the fMRI machine was running, Professor Ma, Dr. Shen and others were looking at the images on several computer screens in front of the operating workbench in the front room.

At this time, the blood flow in Gu Jun's brain is displayed in the image, but only professionals can understand the signal meanings of the different colors and color brightness in different brain areas, as well as the mr value, te value, t2 value and other parameters Disclosed information.

Not to mention Wu Shiyu, Cai Zixuan could only look at it and sigh.

"Ajun's state is normal." Dr. Shen told them.

After a while, after recording enough contrast state image data, Professor Ma said to Gu Jun through the loudspeaker in the examination room: "Ajun, let's do the stimulation tasks next, from light to heavy. First, I will talk about the abnormal things. ", please listen carefully. If you feel a headache, don't hold it in, use your voice to let us know the severity of your situation. If you can't stand it anymore, be sure to tell me to stop immediately."

"Okay." Gu Jun responded in the examination room, "Professor Ma, you go ahead."

Professor Ma had a calm middle-aged face, and he began to speak out the names one by one in a prepared manner: "Spell, deep diver, strange banyan disease, strange banyan tree in the human body..."

Following Professor Ma's words, the color brightness of the brain image on the screen suddenly increased, and the neuron activity in Gu Jun's brain became more active.

"Special scale disease, ritual, Dagon, Tian Yiqing..." The more Professor Ma spoke, the brighter the image became, and the more nervous everyone became.

"Ah!" Gu Jun suddenly let out a cry of pain. He felt the dull pain in his head turn into bursts of severe pain, which made his body become a little stiff.

This is his stress state and the task state of this inspection. By subtracting the blood flow map of the control state from the blood flow map of the task state, the computer can discover the brain parts related to the unique mental operations in the task state, and now a screen displays the real-time comparison results.

Dr. Shen was naturally able to understand images. He frowned when he saw it and whispered to Wu Shiyu and Wu Shiyu: "The blood flow in these three places has increased significantly, including the prefrontal lobe, amygdala, and hippocampus."

Cai Zixuan couldn't help but sigh and scratched his bald forehead. These three places were not a good thing...

He has read some research literature on PTSD. One of the main research results of brain imaging of PTSD is that it is found that patients have functional abnormalities in the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus, amygdala, prefrontal lobe, etc., so there is "prefrontal lobe-amygdala- Hippocampal circuit" pathological hypothesis.

That is, damage to the prefrontal lobe leads to weakened functions, thereby weakening the regulation and control of the amygdala, causing the amygdala to over-react to terror. Damage to the hippocampus itself and imbalance in the connection with the prefrontal lobe and amygdala are also involved. The process of damaging the patient's memory.

Now Haojun's blood flow change measurement results are consistent with the typical manifestations of local brain activity of this hypothesis.

The location of Haojun's previous brain hemorrhage was the right prefrontal lobe. If that injury and related surgeries caused abnormal function of the prefrontal lobe, the cause would be found.

"Arjun, now increase the stimulation. Think back to what happened on that island." Professor Ma added, "Stop once you can't stand it anymore. Don't force it."

Gu Jun complied and completed this exciting task. The pain in his head was so painful that he could hardly bear it, and his breathing turned into wheezing.

Next came the heaviest task. The nurse next to the fmri machine gave him a document, which contained pictures of abnormal things such as the corpses of deep divers and patients with strange banyan disease. Gu Jun only looked at two or three pictures before his head felt so painful that he showed signs of involuntary muscle twitching like before an epileptic attack. He immediately closed his eyes and stopped.

The exciting task of this examination ended here, but Gu Jun did not leave the examination bed for the time being, letting the machine continue to record the changes in blood flow in his brain during his recovery process.

On the other side, Professor Ma and Dr. Shen looked at the comparison images on the computer, their expressions became increasingly ugly, and they were also a little surprised...

When Gu Jun recalled the traumatic scene, his blood flow continued to increase; and when he viewed the stress pictures, he experienced drastic changes in hemodynamics, not just in the three brain regions of the prefrontal lobe, amygdala, and hippocampus, but The blood flow of the whole brain increases dramatically, and this physiological response is much stronger than that of ordinary PTSD patients when they are stressed.

Moreover, such rapid whole-brain congestion is very dangerous, causing a sudden increase in blood pressure, which can easily rupture the capillaries in the brain and cause bleeding.

Considering that Gu Jun also has a history of cerebral hemorrhage and craniotomy, this level of stress is fatal to him.

"Not optimistic, really not optimistic..." Dr. Shen muttered. He was not a pessimistic person, but he felt helpless at this moment.

After Gu Jun came out of the examination room, he knew the situation was not optimistic as soon as he saw their expressions.

When he saw those imaging results, he felt a little confused. Was it functional abnormality caused by damage to the prefrontal lobe? This would be difficult to treat...

"Xian Jun." Wu Shiyu patted his shoulder, "You were in a coma more than half a month ago. You will get better gradually."

"Yes." Gu Jun nodded to her and said to Professor Ma: "Professor Ma, I want to do the MRI and Mrs. to find out more clearly."

MRI is a magnetic resonance imaging, which is used in brain function examination and belongs to brain morphometry. MRS is an in-vivo magnetic resonance spectroscopy, which can measure the volume of the hippocampus and evaluate whether hippocampal neurons are lost or damaged. Because changes in hippocampal structure are typical symptoms of PTSD patients.

Both of these tests require

The radioactive substance, that is, the contrast agent, must be injected first. Previously, it was not easy to use due to concerns about side effects on his body.

Now that it was Gu Jun's request and the bold-fmri could not show the structural condition of his hippocampus, Professor Ma and Dr. Shen agreed to conduct the examination after some discussion, but first let Gu Jun rest in the laboratory for three hours. Then the nurse gave him a contrast agent, and then he completed the MRI and MS examinations successively.

MRI presents anatomical images, while MRS records the synthesis of all chemical signals in the individual being measured, and the measurement result is a spectrum of multiple spectral lines.

Gu Jun's MRI images showed indirect signs of hippocampal volume reduction - the temporal horn of his lateral ventricle was enlarged, and the shallow groove in the head of the hippocampus disappeared.

The mrs results also showed that there was a signal of decrease in the number of neurons in his hippocampus.

On this day, Gu Jun also did some other tests, such as drawing blood to measure BDNF levels (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). BDNF levels in PTSD patients are usually lower than normal people. But now his bdnf level is low, and it has dropped significantly compared with the results of the last physical examination.

Research data from the Tianji Bureau shows that people with high gnosis have higher BDNF levels than normal people, which may also be the source of their gnosis.

Now it seems that Gu Jun has not only lost his high gnosis, but also has the neuroendocrine characteristics of PTSD pathology.

Putting all these examination results together, Professor Ma and the others knew what the answer was... Gu Jun's brain shape had indeed changed.

"Ajun, you go back and have a good rest first, relax, don't think too much, we will discuss a treatment plan that is most suitable for you." Dr. Shen pretended to be relaxed and comforted, and sent Gu Jun and the others out of the laboratory.

Then, Dr. Shen and Professor Ma went to the nearby conference room to hold a remote meeting. Tong Ye, Yao Shinian, the director and others were all waiting for the inspection report.

Love the Plague Doctor.