Yesterday a number of us toddled to the Ontario Science Centre to see the BodyWorlds 2 show. It features actual human cadavers, preserved through plastinization, in various stages of muscular, nervous and skeletal undress and posed to show various aspects of anatomy, disease, and dynamic motion.

Almost everybody who went had a background in some aspect of what was only display: Laura’s sister Tamiko works with pathologists, Laura’s mom is a retired lab tech who has created plastinized biological samples (albeit on a much smaller scale), Laura’s aunt Michiko was a nurse, and Laura and I studied brain and behaviour (including surgery on, and post-preparation of, rat brains).

I had heard that there were about 25 cadavers and lots of body parts, and I went thinking the latter were filler. In fact, I now think that the bits and pieces were key to understanding and focusing on what was going on. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the whole-sized bodies became repetitive, but by the end the subtleties in the differences of the way they were displayed were more likely to be appreciated by an anatomist.

And no matter how comfortable you are with the concept of these latter-day Visible Men and Women (and occasional ungulates), we were all emotionally drained by the show. Is it coming face-to-face with the reality of the anatomy or of my own mortality in this fragile frame of bone and meat? For me it was the one-two punch of the two together.

And apropos of our visit (since he doesn’t know about the show), Jon suggested we sing Pinky and the Brain’s Brainstem song as we went up the stairs for dinner. How very fitting!

Sung to the tune of Camptown Races, lyrics by Tom Minton. In this evening’s performance, the role of Pinky was played by Jonathan, and the role of the Brain was played by Daddy.

Brain: Neo-cortex, frontal lobe
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Hippocampus, neural node
Right hemisphere.

Brain: Pons and cortex visual
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Sylvian fissure, pineal
Left hemisphere.

Brain: Cerebellum left!
Cerebellum right!
Synapse, hypothalamus
Striatum, dendrite.

Brain: Axon fibers, matter gray
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Central tegmental pathway
Temporal lobe.

Brain: White core matter, forebrain, skull
Pinky: Brainstem! Brainstem!
Brain: Central fissure, cord spinal
Parietal.

Brain: Pia mater!
Meningeal vein!
Medulla oblongata and lobe limbic
Micro-electrodes…
Pinky: Naaarf!
P+B : THE BRAIN!!!