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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."
Not funny anymore.
While Schiavo in particular was indeed gorked beyond ungorking, its a little misleading to show laypeople that scan and claim that it dramatically demonstrates the point. There are actually people walking around today with CT scans that are similarly horrifying in the huge spaces. There are people making do okay with some very abnormal brains. The difference with Schiavo is that the spaces were caused by particular sorts of massive brain inujries and the complete atrophy of particular areas of the brain. But you can't tell that directly from a CT, especially as a layperson. For all a layperson knows, the critical areas could simply be moved around and squished but still functioning to some degree. In Schiavo they were not, but a layperson just can't tell so dramatically as looking at one CT.
It's also important to remember that the brain is not ALL just undifferentiated mush, but has all sort of specialized areas that cannot be replaced by other specialized areas. The guy in this article has damage to some of those areas, and more importantly ther breaking of important connections BETWEEN areas, but not a total loss of any area: they still had functioning sections that rewired and worked overtime to compensate. However, if both of your hippocampi die, it's not like your amygdala is suddenly going to switch over and start performing their functions.
This case has been paraded around because of the Schiavo case, but in doing so its only illuminated how medically ignorant some people are: they don't care about the specifics, or learning about how the brain works, and they lump together uncertainties about one area of knowledge about the brain (its ability to create new connections to repair damage, which contrary to the sort of hyperbolic claims of the article, we've always known is pretty plastic and this is just an extreme example) and try to pretend that raise questions about a completely different area of knowledge: all without acknowledging that there are any key differences or even thinking about them.
I believe the difference between this case and something like Terry Schiavo is that there was still measurable brain activity in this guy so he wasn't brain dead.
But I agree it would be pretty shitty to wake up and find half your body gone to organ donation. The recent successful face transplant in France used part of the face of a brain dead patient. Imagine waking up to be told you'd had your face removed and given to someone else!
Keeping him on support all this time must have been (or will be) an incredible financial drain on his family. I'd imagine that the medical bill was ludicrous, so hopefully he comes from a family with money. Being alive is great, but life sure isn't going to be easy considering:
a) When he looks into a mirror his face will be 19 years older... from 19 to 38 kinda sucks
b) His muscle mass will be negligable. After being in a cast for only 3-4 weeks after an ankle break my leg muscles had shrunk and strength decreased noticably
c) He's got a lot of educational catching up to do. Hopefully he worked as a carpenter, plumber, or some other job where old skills are still useful with some upgrading (if he was into computers 19 years ago he's gonna be way behind)
d) Likely there's still a bit of other funkiness with his body after 19 years and major brain damage.
e) Scientists are going to poke and prod him to research this regeneration.
On the plus side:
a) Medicine should be a bit better than it was then
b) Technology in many cases will be pretty cool. Even if he's bedridden for a long time it'll likely be a wonder for him to try out a modern console
c) That first post-vegetitive shower is going to be really nice
d) Add to that a real dinner after being on hospital food and drips for 19 years...
e) Somebody with a brain that regenerates that well will be of interest to science, which is annoying but possibly good for paying the bills.
Now there is this case of a man who was declared by experts to be in a permanent minimally-conscious state waking up after 19 years. Makes me wonder if letting treatment continue wouldn't be such a bad idea. What if you got a second chance to live?
Blow that for a game of soldiers. If I woke up after 19 years in a coma, my first question would be why didn't someone hadn't pulled the plug/ removed the tube yet.
A full recovery never happens, except in movies. People don't just wake up from a coma. The damage affects them for the rest of their lives. After 19 years, the person you knew would be a stranger to you anyway, and there's not much of that person left.
I wouldn't want anyone close to me to waste their lives praying over a vegetable for 19 years in the hope that a half-me will wake up to be taken care of in much the same way. There comes a point when modern medicine stops saving people's lives and is simply prolonging suffering, both for the victim and their family. It's not easy to gauge when that line gets crossed, but when it has been, its time to let go.
May the Maths Be with you!
Again, this is the problem when people use grand generalizations about complex things like the brain without knowing specifically what they are talking about. Hemispheres have basic redundancies built into their structures. That's just not the same thing as removing key structures entirely, from both hemispheres.
Axons can regrow if the neuron itself is still alive. Neurons don't normally (there are notable exceptions) reproduce so once you kill the cell it's gone.
Your friend's case is sort of like spontaneously repairing a cut trace on the motherboard of a computer. This case is more like the extra floating point unit in the processor reconfiguring itself to replace a damaged instruction decoder.