Posted on 07/20/2007 3:05:49 PM PDT by blam
Man with tiny brain shocks doctors
12:17 20 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service
New Scientist and Reuters
The large black space shows the fluid that replaced much of the patient’s brain (left). For comparison, the images (right) show a typical brain without any abnormalities (Images: Feuillet et al./The Lancet)
A man with an unusually tiny brain manages to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, which was caused by a fluid build-up in his skull.
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.
“It is hard for me [to say] exactly the percentage of reduction of the brain, since we did not use software to measure its volume. But visually, it is more than a 50% to 75% reduction,” says Lionel Feuillet, a neurologist at the Mediterranean University in Marseille, France.
Feuillet and his colleagues describe the case of this patient in The Lancet. He is a married father of two children, and works as a civil servant.
Not retarded
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 that, as an infant, he had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away hydrocephalus – water on the brain.
The shunt was removed when he was 14. But the researchers decided to check the condition of his brain using computed tomography (CT) scanning technology 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Much of the loss here seems to be in the white matter and not the gray matter. White matter is predominantly axonal tracts that tie in the different gray matter regions. So a person with this defect can think and hear and see normally or nearly so, but might have considerable difficulty in associating sensory inputs with specific memories, or in making the connections among the senses and their higher level processing in order to form those memories. So for example, a person with this kind of defect might see numbers or hear numbers spoken to him, but have difficulty in using the numbers in a math problem. On the other hand, this person might do well in math when numbers are internally generated in his mind. It is hard to predict specific behavior though just from images of the brain - this is a generalization based on anatomy. The brain is remarkable in its ability to adapt.
Strange as it may seem, I would really like to meet this guy and try to convince him not to go into Politics, we have enough brainless wannabe leaders there already (If that is
Senator Bidens Brain Scan I retract the I wanna meet part)
TT
So true!
John Kerry on dog fighting:
“Kerry added that he planned to introduce legislation aimed at eliminating dogfighting, which he said is illegal but still far too common.”
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6819205
[po]
Those were my thoughts when I saw the post, they used her brain scan to “justify” murdering her.
can’t [/po] !
I thought John Kerry was older than that.
SHOCK?, I could name plenty that suffer from this dibilitating disease: Kerry, Ried,Pelosi, Ted, OK 99.9% of the democratic party! Lets throw in a few lapdog GOP’ers for good measure. This guy has plenty of company when it comes to small minds.
The images (slices) shown for comparison are not of the same area of the brain. It’s like interpreting an elbow x-ray for a fractured wrist.
Perhaps! :-)
I think this guy is my ex-wife's eHarmony match.
When he moves his head, does it “slush”?
But Sicko looks like a flop so the docs will get over it.
I have to jump in and agree with you. I wonder? Shows you that science is always subject to interpretation.
Humans, no matter how bright they they think they are, really do not know much.
I thought that as soon as I saw the CT scan. It looks like Mrs. Schiavo's scan. Which makes me wonder whether she indeed heard, understood, and/or experienced everything that was done to her when they were killing her.
I can see it.
As Jeff Chandler would say, "it's a no-brainer"
Civil Servant LOL. Works for the government. LOL
ping...
African Grays?
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