or from the side

There's something magical about looking at a picture of the soft tissues in your head. It's a privilege to be able to see inside—not only so you can know that you don't have a brain tumor (in all likelihood), but just to see it at all. To see the whorls and scallops, the runnels and apparent passageways, the randomness that derives from outside influences—the shape of my skull, childhood trauma, usage and predilection—paired with the incredible similarity to other ordinary human brains.

But it's also odd and baffling and a little alienating. Consider the distance of this picture from the feeling of having a functioning brain. It's impossible to associate what it feels like inside my head with this mass of inert-looking tissue. How can you relate the richness and complexity of the content with the utter simplicity of the structure? What does it make sense to feel when you find out you have a cyst in your brain 2 inches across--pure undifferentiated fluid where consciousness ought to be?

The only thing that actually makes sense is to move right along and forget it. This is so primitive, it is in fact no help at all.