Tiny brain no obstacle to French civil servant

Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 7/19/07 | Reuters

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A man with an unusually tiny brain managed to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, caused by a fluid buildup in his skull, French researchers reported on Thursday.

Scans of the 44-year-old man's brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue.

"He was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant," Dr. Lionel Feuillet and colleagues at the Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille wrote in a letter to the Lancet medical journal.

The man went to a hospital after he had mild weakness in his left leg. When Feuillet's staff took his medical history, they learned he had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away hydrocephalus -- water on the brain -- as an infant.

The shunt was removed when he was 14.

So the researchers did a computed tomography (CT) scan and another type of scan called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They were astonished to see "massive enlargement" of the lateral ventricles -- usually tiny chambers that hold the cerebrospinal fluid that cushions the brain.

Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled, either.

"What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life," commented Dr. Max Muenke, a paediatric brain defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute.

"If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side," added Muenke, who was not involved in the case.

[NormsRevenge]

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans of a 44-year-old man's brain show a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle taking up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue, in this handout image released by French researchers July 19, 2007. The man with the unusually tiny brain has managed to live an entirely normal life as a married civil servant with two children despite his condition, according to the researchers. REUTERS/Lionel Feuillet, Jean Pelletier and Henry Dufour-Universite de la Mediterranee/Handout

[ConservaTexan]

Tiny brain no obstacle to French civil servant

Chirac????

[Philistone]

Nope. Not gonna touch this one.

WAAAAAYYYY too easy...

[RegulatorCountry]

This confirms a suspicion that I’ve long held about government “workers.”

[Arthur McGowan]

I'm surprised to see an IQ of 75 described as no big deal. That may not be "profoundly retarded," but it's definitely not smart.

[NormsRevenge]

[Nachoman]

He could work for the TSA if his present gig doesn’t work out.

[americanophile]

...talk about reinforcing a stereotype.

[silverleaf]

Why, that man should have immediately been denied food and water and left to die a euphoric death. The scientific data show a a walking case of PVS.

sarc

[ChurtleDawg]

at least the government didn’t starve this guy to death

[MHGinTN]

Terri Schiavo had more brain tissue than this man. Do ya suppose he better stay away from Florida?

[VOA]

He could work for the TSA if his present gig doesn’t work out.

Nah. His IQ means he'd be over-qualified.
(/sarc)

But seriously, the TSA folks at my local airport (Columbia, MO)
must have the best job in the world.
Low traffic levels, none of that 24-hr. a day operations.
Looks like it could be a decent union job.
Dealing with boredom appears to be about the only occupational hazard.

[rbosque]

Doesn’t stop the Democrats.

[silverleaf]

If this guy’s wife gets ticked off at him, he better hope she doesn’t call George Felos.

[RegulatorCountry]

Terri Schiavo had more brain tissue than this man. Do ya suppose he better stay away from Florida?

Just so long as he can putter down the interstate in the left lane, Florida isn't all that worried about the actual quantity of brain tissue, from what I've seen. Don't get bedridden and unable to speak for yourself, though.

[jackibutterfly]

"This confirms a suspicion that I’ve long held about government “workers.”

Heeeey! Watch it! :-)

[TheZMan]

Good catch.

Either way the story is pretty amazing. Yeah, certainly, human beings as a species were entirely by accident and had nothing to do with a creator. Sure.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Quite interesting. One would hardly expect an IQ of even 75 with so little brain tissue.

Although, I dispute the assertion that 75 is not retarded. It may be mildly retarded, but it is retarded.

[D Rider]

Didn’t Terry Shiavo have more brain than that?

[GovernmentShrinker]

The shunt was removed when he was 14.

Can't say I know much about the French medical care system. However, it sounds like 1) removing the shunt was a mistake, and 2) there was a mind-boggling failure to monitor the results of removing the shunt. Just makes no sense to take out a brain shunt that's been in a kid from infancy to age 14, and then just assume everything will be fine without checking to see if it actually is.

I believe 70 is generally considered the lowest "normal" IQ, with 69 qualifying as retarded, and the testing isn't all that precise. It would have been clear that everything wasn't hunky-dory inside his head, but despite the shunt history, apparently nobody thought to check what was going on in there.