Is this for real? Anyone know more details about this case?
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…
3 responses to “Man missing most of his brain is still conscious and functional”
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The title and article are rather misleading, but yes, there was a 2007 paper by French physicians in The Lancet (the British equivalent of The New England Journal of Medicine) entitled, "The Brain of a White Collar Worker." (Which, you have to admit, has a lot more éclat than "Man Missing Most of His Brain"–chapeau to the French!) The original paper can be found in the first link in the article, which makes two major misrepresentations: one, he's not "missing" his brain, and two, he's certainly not "normal," let alone living "a rich and unhindered life."
According to the Lancet piece, this unfortunate 44-year old man, who works as a civil servant, presented to his physicians with left leg weakness after a history of hydrocephalus of unknown cause during infancy, at which point he received a shunt to drain the excess fluid. At 14 years of age he developed ataxia because the shunt failed and there was mounting pressure in the cerebellum (shunt revision fixed the problem). So he's had a long history of pressure within the brain and it appears that the shunt failed again, leading to the reappearance of lower limb ataxia and paresis. Decades of excess fluid has swelled the ventricles and compressed the brain tissue to an astonishing degree, but it's inaccurate to say that he's "missing" most of his brain. As for normalcy, his neuropsychological testing revealed an IQ of 75–that is clearly compromised functioning. Surgery to once again revise the shunt cured the ataxia/leg weakness, but there was no apparent improvement of cognitive function.
A sad case, really, that says more about resilience and cognitive reserve than consciousness.
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I forgot to mention: decades ago my neuroscience professor mentioned a case from the 19th c. of a mathematician who was found to be 'missing' almost an entire cerebral hemisphere. It's so long ago that I couldn't remember the reference, but a little digging did turn up this article, which does a much better job of explaining such cases, often actually due to hydrocephalus, than the original article above:
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/remarkable-story-of-maths-genius-who-had-almost-no-brain-1.1026845
For a more detailed discussion, curious readers should visit this:
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/half-a-brain/ -
Thank you very much V.L. for these very helpful posts and corrections.
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