godfather of surgery

Chapter 1303 An Absurd Topic

Although it was difficult, Yang Ping did not give up. His strong curiosity drove him to tirelessly seek the truth.

Yang Ping now deeply understands how important curiosity is to a researcher. Without curiosity, there is no passion or motivation. Without excitement and drive, there is no longer a desire to explore new worlds. From a research perspective, a person becomes numb and rigid, and will no longer have the motivation to innovate.

Yang Ping tentatively called this potential target the ultimate target. He began to sort out the process of K therapy in treating osteosarcoma. In fact, the K factor came first, and then the target came later. That is, the K factor could find its own matching target. At that time, there was no need for him to search for it.

If there is a K factor, there must be a target, but if there is a target, there is not necessarily a K factor.

Now it's the other way around. If we really find the ultimate target for pancreatic cancer cells, we need to design the K factor based on this target, which is very difficult.

"Professor, do you think my discovery is reliable? Can it be approved as a research project?" Zhang Lin had been hovering around me for the past few days, bringing up this matter whenever he had the chance to speak.

"What are you saying?" Yang Ping had no time to pay attention to him.

Professor, your memory is terrible! You forgot something so important. Zhang Lin had to repeat it: "Regarding the hand seals for cultivating immortality and refining Qi, pinching your thumb and forefinger into a ring initiates chest breathing, while pinching your thumb and ring finger into a ring switches to abdominal breathing. I've been wondering how posture can control the way you breathe. The two seem completely unrelated. What is their connection? Professor, if I were to unravel this mystery, wouldn't it be considered an original discovery?"

“Hmm, I think you should explore this. There are Nobel Prizes for researching why chili peppers are spicy, and for using transparent tape to stick graphite. If you can use modern biomedical knowledge to crack the mechanism, it will definitely be a world-shaking discovery, and you might even win a Nobel Prize. But first you need to confirm whether this is really true and you need to do further preliminary research.” Yang Ping pondered his discovery and said to him.

Zhang Lin felt a surge of joy. The professor's affirmation of his discovery meant there was potential. He decided to discuss with his old partner, Xiao Wu, when to officially launch the project.

Griffin stood next to Yang Ping, frowning. He couldn't understand why Zhang Lin's idea could be put on the table as a research topic.

Griffin was relatively low-key in the group, and he remained so when he arrived at Sanbo Hospital. After the first training course at Sanbo, he could have graduated and gone back to carry out K therapy, but he was in no hurry. He had come all this way to China, and now he wanted to learn from Yang Ping properly. Besides, the topic that Yang Ping was currently researching was within his area of ​​expertise.

He was quite tall and thin, standing at over 1.9 meters, like a bamboo pole. He was of English descent and looked a bit like a stretched-out adult Harry Potter, so he was quite popular in the department.

“Where were we? Let’s continue!” Yang Ping said to Griffin.

“To verify whether PANC-ID1 and the protein complex are the identity key for pancreatic cancer, we need to collect a lot of pancreatic cancer cell samples for analysis. We’re busy and it will take time.” Griffin, who was standing next to Yang Ping and taller than him, could only speak with his head down and chest hunched over, trying not to appear condescending.

Yang Ping told him, "Collecting samples is not difficult. Song Ziming has already gone to the Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Nandu Medical University to collect samples. There are many cancer patients there. It is estimated that the samples can be collected in a few days."

Griffin greatly admired this Chinese speed; in the United States, it would take months or even a year or two to collect them all.

A few days later, Song Ziming, Tang Shun and others had drawn the first version of the "identity map".

Yang Ping, Song Ziming, Xu Zhiliang, Tang Shun, and Lu Xiaolu stood around the screen, their expressions highly focused. They were currently studying the "Identity Graph" version 1.0 report.

“It covers 95% of common clinical pancreatic cancer samples,” Lu Xiaolu pointed to the overlay map. “The conservation of this ‘lock’ is astonishing. Even in subgroups of different molecular subtypes such as KRAS mutants and TP53 deletions, the core structure of PANC-ID1 and the complex remains stable. The only variation lies in the individual phosphorylation site of the unknown protein in the complex, but this does not affect its overall function or its feasibility as a target.”

“This means,” Song Ziming concluded, “that we may have truly found the Achilles’ heel of pancreatic cancer. The K factor designed to target it should theoretically be effective against all pancreatic cancer cells, no matter how they disguise themselves.”

“Well, but designing a new K factor isn’t that easy,” Tang Shun said.

Just then, the lab door was pushed open with a bang and then quickly closed. Zhang Lin rushed in like a gust of wind, a marker in his hand, his face flushed with excitement, and his glasses askew on his nose without him bothering to adjust them.

It is him again!
"Professor! Major discovery! I may really... really have found the key to modern medicine for unlocking the secrets of immortal cultivation, internal alchemy, and the art of cultivating qi!" His voice was not quiet, and it sounded particularly abrupt in the quiet laboratory.

Everyone turned their heads, their expressions instantly shifting from focused to varying degrees of astonishment and suppressed laughter.

Yang Ping remained calm, raising his chin: "Speak!"

Zhang Lin strode to a small whiteboard and quickly drew two simple hand diagrams.

"Look, this is pinching with the thumb and forefinger," he said, demonstrating with his right hand, his thumb and forefinger pinching loosely like a hand grasping something. "Keep this gesture, breathe naturally, and feel whether you are mainly using your chest to rise and fall? Chest breathing!"

Several young researchers subconsciously tried it out, and it seemed to work a little?
"Then!" Zhang Lin's eyes lit up. He changed his hand gesture, pinching his thumb and ring finger together. "Now, using this gesture, breathe again... Pay attention! Do you feel your breathing automatically switch to abdominal breathing? Primarily relying on the rise and fall of your abdomen?"

Everyone changed their hand gestures with some skepticism, and a soft sound of trying to adjust their breathing filled the lab. Xu Zhiliang tried a few times and muttered, "It seems... a little... different?" Tang Shun frowned and sensed it: "Is it just psychological?"

“Absolutely not!” Zhang Lin stated firmly. “I’ve tested this with many students, more than twenty samples, and the correlation is significant! Moreover, there are subtle differences in breathing patterns when using the thumb and index, middle, ring, and little fingers in sequence! When doing it from the thumb to the little finger, the muscles involved in breathing clearly move downwards. If you pinch your little finger with your thumb, you will experience obvious lower abdominal breathing. There must be an undiscovered neural reflex pathway involved here. It may be the contraction of specific muscle groups in the hand, which, through some kind of linkage in the spinal cord or peripheral nerves, affects the tension distribution of the intercostal muscles, diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and even pelvic floor muscles. If we study it in depth, it may reveal the ancient code between intention, gestures, breathing, and autonomic nervous system regulation. This might be the material basis for the ability of Taoist hand gestures, Buddhist mudras, and yoga mudras to influence the physical and mental state. Deciphering this could not only optimize respiratory rehabilitation and anxiety treatment, but might even allow us to glimpse the essence of Qigong.”

He became more and more excited as he spoke, and the whiteboard was already covered with scribbled neural reflex arcs and question marks.

A few seconds of silence filled the lab. Then, someone chuckled, followed by several suppressed laughs. Even Lu Xiaolu, usually so serious, twitched at the corner of his mouth. Song Ziming stroked his chin with interest, seemingly genuinely considering the possibility.

However, everyone just tried it and it really worked like him. I don't know if it's a psychological effect or a preconceived notion.

Yang Ping's face was expressionless. He walked up to Zhang Lin, looked at the whiteboard, and then at Zhang Lin's eyes, which were sparkling with excitement.

“The phenomenon has been observed, and the hypothesis has been proposed. How do we verify it?” Yang Ping asked calmly. “Is it simply psychological suggestion and attention diversion, or does a specific neuromuscular-respiratory reflex pathway actually exist? If it is the latter, where is the reflex center, what is the transmission medium, how much individual difference is there, and can it be deliberately strengthened or weakened through training? These all require designing experiments, collecting data, and repeatedly verifying them.”

Zhang Lin opened his mouth, his excitement cooling slightly, but a new flame immediately ignited: "Yes! Yes! We need to conduct experiments! I'm designing it now, and I just want to ask you, Professor. I plan to do this—use surface electromyography to simultaneously record the activity of specific muscle groups in the hand and respiratory muscle groups; use functional near-infrared spectroscopy or simplified electroencephalography to examine changes in the brain's attention areas; set up a double-blind controlled trial, allowing subjects to try the gesture without knowing its meaning, thus eliminating psychological suggestion; and also study the differences in sensitivity to this reflex among people from different cultural backgrounds and with different training experiences, such as those who practice yoga or Tai Chi for a long time..."

Once his mind is set in motion, it's like a wild horse breaking free, instantly listing seven or eight directions to explore.

Yang Ping nodded, then turned to Tang Shun and said, "Give him an ethical permit for a small-scale observational study, with a budget of around 200,000 yuan. Clear out an empty sleep monitoring room for him as the test site, and we can coordinate to borrow the relevant non-invasive equipment." He then looked at Zhang Lin, "Let's do a small-sample preliminary experiment first, confirm the phenomenon, and control the confounding variables as much as possible. Once we have reliable data, we can discuss the next step."

"Yes, Professor Yang!" Zhang Lin was so excited he almost jumped up. He straightened his glasses, grabbed a marker, and was about to rush out to write the proposal.

“Wait a minute,” Yang Ping called out to him, “Don’t write ‘Cracking the Cultivation of Immortality and Qi’ in the title of your research project. Write ‘Preliminary Observation and Exploration of the Mechanism of the Influence of Specific Hand Postures on Spontaneous Breathing Patterns’.”

"Understood!" Zhang Lin answered loudly, and dashed off like the wind.

The laboratory fell silent, then a burst of lighthearted laughter rang out.

"Only you would seriously allocate resources for him to research this." Song Ziming shook his head with a smile.

“Observing phenomena is the first step in science. Although Zhang Lin’s ideas are wildly imaginative, his observation skills are sometimes very sharp. His ideas may seem absurd, but he is serious about thinking and doing things.” Yang Ping sat back down in his seat. “Moreover, respiratory regulation itself is a complex system involving the central nervous system, peripheral nerves, muscles, and humoral feedback. Studying the potential effects of gestures on it, even if it is ultimately proven to be mainly psychological, can provide some interesting cases for the study of mind-body interaction. Science needs to solve big problems like cancer, but it also needs people to be curious about why breathing while pinching your fingers feels different.”

These words caused the researchers, who had been laughing moments before, to stop their mockery and reveal thoughtful expressions. Yang Ping's vision always seemed to penetrate the absurdity of specific research topics, revealing the deeper scientific principles they might be connected to.

In just a few days, Zhang Lin’s research made “breakthrough” progress—if it can be called a breakthrough.

He successfully recruited thirty volunteers, mainly interns and support staff from the institute, and completed the first round of experiments in a makeshift sleep monitoring room. The subjects were blindfolded, fitted with chest and abdominal breathing sensors and hand electromyography patches, and asked to randomly perform several different hand-clamping movements while breathing naturally, without knowing the purpose of the experiment.

The result was interesting.

Data shows that different hand postures are indeed accompanied by statistically significant changes in breathing patterns, the ratio of chest and abdominal breathing, the involvement of various muscles, respiratory depth, and rhythm. Simultaneously recorded electroencephalograms (EEGs) revealed a slight increase in activity in attention-related areas of the prefrontal cortex when subjects made relatively unfamiliar gestures that required some concentration to maintain, such as pinching the thumb and ring finger together. At the same time, electromyography (EMG) of the hand showed activation of specific muscle groups.

Zhang Lin's analysis concludes that specific gestures affect breathing through two main pathways:

Attention allocation and sensory feedback: Unusual gestures require more attention to maintain, and this inward focus may indirectly reduce voluntary control over breathing, making a more autonomous diaphragmatic breathing pattern more likely to emerge. At the same time, the tactile and proprioceptive feedback from the special hand posture may subtly affect the regulation of the brainstem respiratory center through ascending sensory pathways in the spinal cord.

Remote neuromuscular coupling? Evidence for this is weak, but certain gestures appear to have a weak but synchronous tendency with the electromyographic activity of the diaphragm or intercostal muscles, suggesting the possible existence of undefined, cross-segmental neural reflexes or co-activation patterns, but their intensity is far from sufficient to explain the major respiratory changes.

"Therefore, it's not a cultivation secret, but more like an indirect regulation of autonomic nervous system function by attention and sensory feedback."

Zhang Lin summarized.

When he reported the progress to Yang Ping, everyone smiled kindly. Yang Ping nodded: "The data is solid, and the conclusions are reasonable. Write the paper and submit it to journals like *Behavioral Neuroscience* or *Assistive Medical Research*. Also, you could consider whether this approach of regulating internal physiological states through simple external movements can be applied to psychiatry or clinical psychology. For example, you could design a set of simple hand gestures to help patients relax, relieve anxiety, and improve sleep."

Zhang Lin's eyes lit up again: "That's right! This is useful! I'll go check the literature right now!"