How can we better understand the interplay of nature and nurture in determining our personalities, behavior, and vulnerability to disease? Perhaps we should be looking at
identical twins.
(National Geographic January 2012 cover story) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 19, 2011 -
89 comments
Tatiana and Krista Hogan are 4 year old twin girls who are
joined at the head. Amazingly, their brains are interconnected and share the thalamus, the section of the brain that is responsible for relaying physical sensation and motor function to the cerebral cortex. As a result, it is believed that they can experience one another’s sensations, including
seeing though each other's eyes.
posted by jpdoane
on Nov 5, 2010 -
43 comments
FACTUM. To produce the series of works collectively titled FACTUM (2010), Candice Breitz conducted intensive interviews with seven pairs of identical twins and a single set of identical triplets in and around Toronto during the summer of 2009, footage from which she then edited seven dual-channel video installations (and one tri-channel video installation). Like Robert Rauschenberg's near-identical paintings FACTUM I and FACTUM II (both 1957), from which the series borrows its title, each interviewee in FACTUM is an imperfect facsimile of their twin: their apparent identicality is soon disrupted by a host of subtle differences. FACTUM KANG,
FACTUM TREMBLAY,
FACTUM MISERICORDIA,
FACTUM TANG,
FACTUM McNAMARA.
posted by shakespeherian
on Aug 16, 2010 -
11 comments
Gene Stories. "If your parents kept on having children, they’d have to visit the maternity hospital another million billion times to stand a chance of producing another child with your genes" (unless you're an identical twin of course).
posted by lola
on Sep 19, 2003 -
5 comments
Twins Reunite After 20 Years You need free registration to get this story but it is well worth the slight effort. Twins, adopted, born in Mexico, one becomes Catholic and the other Jewish. Both register at same college and meet up. A story that will warm your heart and, at the same time, perhaps tell us a bit about Nature and Nurture.
posted by Postroad
on Mar 3, 2003 -
2 comments
Abigail and Brittany Hensel are in the 6th grade and continue to defy the odds. After the initial struggle with the personal pronoun (her? their?), one is left with both curiosity and sympathy. The greater issue is how to assimilate the truly miraculous.
posted by kablam
on Nov 11, 2002 -
22 comments
Some twins share thoughts, dreams, clothes, but these two have shared sooo much more. Quite possibly the most bizarre thing I have seen in a while.
posted by dancu
on Nov 12, 2001 -
17 comments
Conjoined twins separated. But while that operation is always challenging, this one was particularly bad. The girls were
joined at the top of the head, and their brains were merged -- and shared common blood vessels. It took
eight-eight hours of surgery to separate them, most of which was spent rerouting blood vessels. Both girls survived the operation. This is only the sixth time this operation has been attempted and only the second time that it has succeeded. (Vertical craniopagus is, mercifully, exceedingly rare.)
The operation was only possible at all because the surgeons have spent the last four months practicing it with virtual-reality software on computers (presumably using models based on MRI). Anyone have any idea what software package they used?
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Apr 10, 2001 -
14 comments
Who do you root for when everyone's a villain? It turns out that
everyone involved in the "
Internet Twins" fiasco is scum. Sure as hell the biological mother is (she gave the babies up
twice and now wants them back; I wouldn't trust her to care for my cat); the
woman from the UK is, and now the
man in the US is. A plague on all their houses.
Now the biological father,
Aaron Wecker, has begun proceedings to gain custody of the babies. I hope he isn't as despicable as everyone else involved. Let's hope this circus doesn't follow the girls around for the rest of their lives. If there's any sort of lesson in this, I wish someone would tell me what it is.
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Mar 2, 2001 -
4 comments
Now this is really evil. A woman put her twin babies up for adoption through a "private agency" in California and the agency was paid by an American couple here who adopted them. Then after two months the biological mother asked for a chance for one last good-bye with the babies alone, was granted it, and delivered the babies to a British couple who had also paid the "agency", who then took them to Arkansas and adopted them there, and then returned to Wales. Now the biological mother says she wants them back. The American couple wants them back. The Welsh couple wants them, too. British authorities have taken them away and they're being cared for in foster care. Some judge is going to have a real problem. Probably the "agency", actually a woman working out of her home via a web site, is going to have legal problems -- quite possibly including criminal charges.
Here's another account.
posted by Steven Den Beste
on Jan 18, 2001 -
20 comments
