The Brain and The Common Vein

Ashley Davidoff MD

The Common Vein Copyright 2010

Introduction

The concept of The Common Vein is to build complexity from simplicity using common biological principles, and provide a learning environment rich in imagery.  We start with the simple word “brain” and advance the word by defining its essence.

Within the word “brain” there is an encycopedia of information.  What path should one take to go from the word to the encyclopedia?

The Common Vein approaches this problem by a series of small progressive steps, mostly in the hope of building the first of many foundation layers to evolve in the future.

From the word, a sentence is built which is by its nature the definition. The “essence” of the brain should be captured in the definition.  In the context of medicine, the definition in order to be true to the word  should crystallize the 5 basic tenets of medicine including structure function, diseases, diagnostic methods and treatments.  We have called these tennets of medcine the pentad of medical principles.

From the Word to the Sentence

The word “brain” has an encyclopedic amount of information. In order to advance from the word to the encyclopedic volume, small progressive steps have to be taken. The first step from the word is the sentence (definition) that is true to the word and it therefore should contain the essence of its character in biology (as pertains to medicine). The definition should thus crystallise the structure, function, disease diagnosis and treatment of the brain.

Davidoff art Copyright 2010 The Common Vein Al rights reseerved Courtesy Ashley Davidoff MD 10357ab11b04.7s

The next step is a paragraph which tackles each of the elements of the pentad in the definition and advances the complexity by a small step so that the volume equivalent is a paragraph.  The step of advancement should be small.  This step is  then followed by advancing each of the elements of the pentad to a paragraph, to a chapter, and then to the level of the textbook, with the potential to advance in similar progressive arborising fashion to encyclopedic levels. Using this method, a solid foundation is laid onto which complexity can be added. We believe this method creates a pathway to thorough understanding.

The Advance of Information in Uniform Progressive Fashion

The word advances to a paragraph of information maintaining the categories of structure function disease diagnosis and treatment. This enables a uniformity and consistency of concept remaining true to the tenets. The next step is to a chapters worth of the information with the same uniformity and so on. The inverted cone of information with an open top has continued potential to grow.

Davidoff art Copyright 2010 The Common Vein Al rights reseerved Courtesy Ashley Davidoff MD 10357ab10.8s