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Patient Revives After 19 Years By Rewiring Brain
dylanduck writes "A study of the recovery of a man who spent 19 years in a minimally conscious state has revealed the likely cause of his regained consciousness - his brain rewired itself around the injured areas into totally novel structures. It suggests the human brain shows far greater potential for recovery and regeneration then ever suspected." From the article: "There were ... significant changes between scans taken just two months after the recovery, and the most recent, at 18 months. Some of the new pathways had receded again, while others seem to have strengthened and taken over as Wallis continued to improve."
Terri Schiavo ... was unavailable for comment.
Thanks for taking one for team and saying what everyone else was thinking. But just in case anyone is really thinking there's an important parallel there or anything, remember that her case was substantially different: most of her brain was literally dead and gone - actually a mush of fluid. Rewiring "around" an injured area (as in the case cited) depends upon having surrounding brain material that's still viable. She was coasting on real low-level left-overs, and there simply wasn't a platform for that sort of recovery.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
He's four years old now, and I would love if my son, at any age, woke up one day and started to learn the things he's missed (talking, crawling and then walking, etc). My wife and I read a lot about brain injury and the possibility of his recovery. The nature of his injury always gives me hope that because the damaged areas are so small, it may be easier for his brain to compensate.
Unfortunately, because of the state of medical research in the USA (stem cell especially), My family is probably going to have to travel to another country to take advantage of any treatments that may be developed in the next few years.
I hate to feed the troll, but Terri Schiavo's brain was destroyed. She was blind, brain dead, and for all intents and purposes, a shell. There's a huge difference between her case, and this one.
You are referring to an urban legend that is not true. It results from a mis-quotation around the idea that for any one task you use about 10% of your brain - but for a variety of different tasks you use all of it.
See http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm for more info.
I couldn't find the actual published study that the New Scientist article (sort of) referenced (maybe it hasn't been accepted for publication yet?). However, I did find this article by the auther mentioned, which is a very readable look at a few cases of brain-damaged patients (including an explanation as to why Terry Schaivo isn't in the same category at all). Unfortunately it doesn't go very in depth into the details of how Willis' brain rewired itself, which I was interested in. Still, very informative reading.
It hardly defies our current knowledge of the brain. Rewiring happens in stroke victims, for instance. Mrs. Schiavo's forebrain was missing entirely, replaced by cerebral fluid. Rewiring is one thing, but the only thing that would have made her better would have been regrowing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
the young woman who was, like this gentleman, in what many people called a "persistent vegetative state".
While Schiavo was in a vegetative state and had no hope for recovery, this man was in a minimally conscious state. If this man had been in a persistent vegetative state, he would not be recovering (albeit very slowly and with little hope of his former abilities) today. It is a significant mistake to equate these two states.
Would there ever be a chance S[c]hiavo could've recovered like this man did?
No.
Except that a hemispherectomy isn't recoverable once your brain is developed. Although the wikipedia entry does not explicitly say so, it does suggest from the pediatric links and occasional use of the world 'child' that hemispherectomies only work on very young children, before their brains have developed to be reliant on both hemispheres.
Random and weird software I've written.
A hemispherectomy is not a half brain lobotomy. At a (very) high level your brain consists of four major anatomical regions, the brain stem, cerebellum and the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. The cerebellum is known to handle coordinated motions and looks like it's involved in memory too. The brain stem is the oldest part and takes care of all the vital functions like breathing. The cerebrum is where most of the interesting stuff happens, like personality, intelligence, voluntary movement and processing of sensory information.
A hemispherectomy removes up to half of the cerebrum. To be technically alive you only need an operating brain stem. The brain stem isn't plastic though -- it won't rewire itself to make you conscious again. Only the cerebrum can do that.
So the difference between Terri Schiavo and this guy is that Ms. Schiavo had a devastated cerebrum and enough brian stem left to keep her sort of alive. This guy had some localized damage that happened to be in a critical area.
Terry woke up three years ago, and the story was rather widely reported back then. In fact, Terri Schiavo has, in her time, often been compared to Terry - in fact, their medical cases share almost no similarities.
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The story itself has woken up in 2006, for reasons unknown. You can find a better article than the one of the front page at http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060703/full/06070
This everything2 article is probably the best I found about Terry, including updates from 2004: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=14758
Also, some updates on the family's fight with health services, from 2005: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/6/2