The man manages to lead an entirely everyday life despite having a brain that is incredibly small for his size. A fluid buildup in his skull caused his condition.
Only a thin strip of brain tissue was visible, as a large chamber occupied most of the 44-year-old man’s skull in the brain called a ventricle.
I struggle to pinpoint precisely what proportion of the brain has been reduced because we didn’t use software to measure the brain’s volume.
According to Lionel Feuillet, a neurologist at the Mediterranean University in Marseille, France, “but optically, it is more than a 50–75 percent reduction.”
Feuillet and his colleagues discuss this patient’s case in The Lancet. He works for the government and is married with two children.
Tremendous growth.
The man went to the hospital because he had a slight weakness in his left leg. Feuillet’s staff obtained his medical history and found that a shunt was implanted in his head to relieve hydrocephalus, or water, on the brain when he was a baby.
The shunt was taken out when he was fourteen. The researchers used the MRI of his brain to assess its condition, along with computed tomography (CT) scanning. They were astounded by the “massively enlarged” lateral ventricles, usually tiny chambers that store the cerebrospinal fluid that protects the brain.
The man had an IQ of 75, below the average of 100 but is not considered mentally retarded or impaired.
All of the brain’s lobes, including the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital ones, were smaller on both the left and right sides of the body. These regions control language, vision, hearing, and motion, according to Feuillet. They also control emotional and cognitive processes.
The research demonstrates that, with the appropriate care, “the brain is quite malleable and may adapt to inevitable brain damage occurring in the pre- and postnatal period. “
Max Muenke, a pediatric brain defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, US, says, “What I find surprising to this day is how the brain can deal with something that you think should not be compatible with life. “.
Muenke, who was not involved in the case, claimed that “if something happens very slowly over quite a long time, perhaps over decades, the other areas of the brain take up functions that would typically be done by the part that is pushed to the side.”
