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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."
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.
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.
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