The Patient with half a brain

One patient at a hospital in France got the most unlikely of shocks when he went for a check-up on a leg injury - to be told he was missing half of his brain.The 44-year-old father-of-two, who has not been identified, amazed doctors who could not believe he had survived.

The bizarre diagnosis has only just been brought to light in the respected medical journal, The Lancet, but actually happened in 2007.

Lionel Feuillet, who studied the man’s brain, told the New Scientist: "The whole brain was reduced frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes — on both left and right sides.
"These regions control motion, sensibility, language, vision, audition, and emotional, and cognitive functions."


X-rays showed up to 75% of the man's brain was missing
Doctors discovered that the man had suffered post-natal hydrocephalus- or water on the brain - as a child
Shunts applied to his head were removed when he was 14 and it is thought for the next 30 years fluid continued to build in his brain and slowly break down brain matter until he lost between 50% to 75%.

Now, after an eight year study, scientists believe the man survived because his brain reorganised itself over time.

Most of the brain fluid has now been drained and the man lives a normal life with a job in the civil service.
Scientists writing in the Lancet have therefore reached the conclusion that a person’s intelligence and brain size are not as related as once thought.
They believe that as bits of the brain died, other parts took on the jobs the dead bits used to do.


UK Mirror