Twins in The Media
Throughout history, the fascination about craniopagus twins has continually increased as neurobiology and the field of neuroscience has become more interesting to the public. Recently in 2011, The New York Times covered a story of two craniopagus twin girls who share a brain and seem to show all different kinds of physiological and emotional responses due to their condition. Krista and Tatiana Hogan, who are now 5 years old, live life just like other 5 year old do. Although seemingly sharing a brain, the two girls showed distinct personalities and behavior. One example was when Krista started drinking her juice Tatiana felt it physically going through her body. In any other set of twins the natural conclusion about the two events would be that Krista's drinking and Tatiana's reaction would be coincidental. But because Krista and Tatiana are connected at their heads, whatever the girls do they do it together. In this case, brain images revealed that there was an attenuated line stretching between the two brains and forming a "thalamic bridge", a bridge connecting the two thalami. Knowing that the thalamus acts as a major control panel within the body, it is believed that the girls share part of this control panel and so when one girl drinks the other one feels it. This along with many other cases, has advanced social media and neurological related research concerning this kind of link between craniopagus twins. Unfortunately, no controlled studies have been done because the twins are so young and their brains are still very maleable and plastic.
Read more about this topic: Craniopagus Twins
Famous quotes containing the words twins in, twins and/or media:
“What if there are not only two nostrils, two eyes, two lobes, and so forth, but two psyches as well, and they are separately equipped? They go through life like Siamese twins inside one person.... They can be just a little different, like identical twins, or they can be vastly different, like good and evil.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“There is absolutely no evidence—developmental or otherwise—to support separating twins in school as a general policy. . . . The best policy seems to be no policy at all, which means that each year, you and your children need to decide what will work best for you.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)