Soleum: Brain, esophagus, eyes, ears, stomach...

What we hold to be a self-evident truth was not always so. There was a time when the self was not understood and experienced as though it were ensconced within the blood-brain barrier. For instance, the Hebrew word sarefet means both “diaphragm” and “thought”; similarly, the ancient Greek word phren means both “diaphragm” and “mind.” Those examples indicate that the mind and its thinking were experienced in the diaphragm. - Philip Shepherd, New Self, New World

Olafur Eliasson, “Iris” lamp, 2016,

Stainless steel, aluminium, bulb and iris diaphragms,

The Lung View

In 1971, Wimbledon in London became home to an imaging revolution – the world’s first CT scan on a patient. CT scans are now commonplace, creating 3D images of organs by capturing multiple X-ray images from different angles. This makes imaging moving organs difficult. In mouse studies of lung disease, researchers have overcome this using retrospective gating (RG), capturing more images of the lungs and grouping them into breathing phases, each reconstructed separately – this takes longer. The organ’s function has been measured using another technique – X-ray-based lung function measurement (XLF). Now, a new faster technique has been developed, RG-based XLF, which measures lung anatomy and function simultaneously. Testing it in healthy and mdx mice, which model Duchenne muscular dystrophy, proved successful. Function and anatomy data (pictured) were captured in just 34 seconds. For example, the abnormal shape and position of the diaphragm in mdx mice (right) was identified when compared with healthy lungs (left).

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Image from work by Christian Dullin and colleagues

Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Medical Center Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Scientific Reports, August 2022

Symptoms may include:

abdominal pain

heart palpitations

pain in the left shoulder or left side of the chest

respiratory distress

coughing and shortness of breath

upset stomach or other gastrointestinal symptoms

nausea/vomiting

if a diaphragmatic injury is not treated quickly, serious complications may occur, including:

Diaphragmatic hernia - when organs in the abdominal cavity (such as the intestines) start to poke through a tear or hole in the diaphragm. This may lead to the blood flow to the intestines being cut off, resulting in the death of the intestinal tissues.

Gastric volvulus - when the stomach twists, potentially blocking the normal flow of food and other materials.

Tension gastrothorax - when the stomach protrudes through a tear in the diaphragm. This is a potentially life-threatening condition.

There is no antivenom for a blue-ringed octopus bite. The only treatment is to be hooked up to a ventilator for 15 hours while the tetrodotoxin wears off so your diaphragm is no longer paralyzed. – WTF Fun Facts