Do Zombies Eating Brains Get Smarter?

September 16, 2011

Inquiring Minds Want To Know

I just got an email from my boss at the Science Channel website. She recently commissioned some research to see what unusual science-related keywords Web users were typing into search engines, and the results were a little perplexing -- or perhaps, disturbing. As it turns out, people aren't as curious as I might have suspected about whether or not the Higgs boson -- the so-called God particle that some physicists have theorized triggered the creation of our universe -- actually exists, or whether fertilizing the oceans with iron dust would slow global warming more effectively than surrounding the Earth with giant orbital mirrors to reflect sunlight. And they're nowhere near as concerned as I would have thought about rumors of spontaneous human combustion or the somewhat better documented exploding head syndrome, which does not involve actual exploding heads but rather aural hallucinations that sound similar to a bomb being detonated. 

No, as it turns out, this is the burning question that perplexes the multitudes: "Does eating brains make zombies smarter?"

Since I've written about the undead before -- here's my 2009 blog post on preparedness for zombie attacks -- I was tasked with looking into this matter as well. At first, I was a little unclear about how I would fit it into the blog's rhetorical format, which usually calls for me to offer some outlandish, provocative proposal. Should I advocate brain-eating or oppose it? I wondered. And if I took a position, would I risk offending some segment of our deeply divided, increasingly prickly society, in which even these hollowed-out husks of former humanity have been politicized? (That's evidenced by the recent emergence of a "Zombies Against Michelle Bachmann" Facebook page. In the final analysis, I decided the safest route was simply to tap into my inner Cecil Adams, and simply answer the question.

 

Would NIH Fund a Study on Zombies?

So here goes. But keep in mind a caveat. There isn't a lot of reliable research on this subject, since the ethics committees at most research universities no doubt would take a grim view of any proposed study. And even if they didn't, I imagine it would be difficult to recruit research subjects willing to allow their brains to be eaten. And how would one measure zombies' intelligence? They're notoriously nonverbal, not to mention uncooperative, and I don't think anyone has done a regression analysis to look for test bias against reanimated corpses.

Nevertheless, I'm going to go out on a limb here and state my learned conclusion. No, I don't think that eating brains makes zombies any smarter -- any more, at least, than it makes cannibalistic humans suddenly understand the subtext of Finnegans Wake or sketch out designs for cold fusion reactors in their campfire ashes.

In fact, before we probe too deeply into whether eating brains would make zombies smarter, we might want to examine whether zombies would actually crave brains, like they're depicted as doing in all those zombie jokes floating around. As George Romero, director of the seminal zombie movie Night of the Living Dead (1968),told Vanity Fair in 2010:

I've never had a zombie eat a brain! I don't know where that comes from. Who says zombies eat brains?

... Whenever I sign autographs, they always ask me, "Write ‘Eat Brains'!" I don't understand what that means. I've never had a zombie eat a brain. But it's become this landmark thing.

Indeed, on the hit cable TV series The Walking Dead, the zombies seem to have largely intact heads and faces. Perhaps the undead should organize an American Zombie Anti-Defamation League to decry this stereotype.

 

The Historical Precedent

If a zombie spokesperson appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor," he/she/it might also point out that humans ought not to be pointing the finger, since they have a long history of using each other's craniums for casserole dishes. There's archaeological evidence that early humans were cannibalistic, and a 2003 study found genetic evidence that some humans developed immunities to deadly brain diseases such as kuru, which can be contracted from eating brain tissue. (Another study published in 2006, it should be mentioned, claims to debunk that conclusion.) As Joseph Cummins describes in his book "Cannibals: Shocking True Tales of the Last Taboo on Land and at Sea," early inhabitants of what is now New Mexico apparently even had a brain-roasting technique, in which a decapitated head was placed face up on a fire so that the brain would cook inside the skull.

And as author-folklorist Zora Neale Hurston documented in the 1930s, and Harvard anthropologist-ethnobotanist Wade Davis further substantiated in his 1985 book The Serpent and the Rainbow, zombie-ism isn't a sci-fi horror fantasy but an actual phenomenon in Haiti, where Vodoun priests have used a powerful neurotoxin gleaned from puffer fish to paralyze unwitting victims and create a death-like state. The priests then revived the victims and fooled them into thinking they had died and were now walking corpses. But instead of dining on brains, Haitian zombies were force-fed a paste made from sweet potatoes and a plant called datura, which has hallucinogenic properties, to reinforce the illusion and make them more docile.

 

Are Brains Nutritious?

But let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that zombies actually do walk the Earth craving a nice juicy cerebral cortex. Presuming that the undead have the same digestive system that they had in their previous lives, this system would break down a victim's brain into chemical components. The brain's fat content would dissolve in the eater's watery abdominal cavity and be converted into smaller molecules (fatty acids and cholesterol). The brain's protein would be broken down by enzymes in the stomach and small intestine into smaller molecules of amino acids. Those nutrients would be distributed by the bloodstream throughout the zombie's body, not routed exclusively to the brain.

That chemical conversion, one would assume, would destroy the neurons upon which the human brain's data is encoded -- so all that data would probably be wiped out, as surely as if you chewed up and ate a flash drive. However, an ample supply of amino acids is critical for brain functioning, so presumably eating a brain would help to meet those needs. On the other hand, so would a bowl of rice mixed with beans, and it wouldn't squirm as you tried to eat it.

So does that resolve the matter for you? Express your opinion below.

Image Credits: Mudrats Alexandra/ITAR-TASS Photo/Corbis | iStockphoto/Thinkstock |