Slashdot Mirror
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."
Neuroscientists in the epilepsy and learning and memory communities have known for years about the nervous systems ability to rewire and remodel in response to deafferentation. In fact, the reluctance to believe in this by other members of the neuroscience community (vision community) led to some two decades of misunderstanding of retinal degenerative diseases until we came along and demonstrated conclusively in the retina that remodeling also occurs. The deal is that neurons need input. They either get it via glutamatergic signaling or calcium mediated signaling in normal circumstances. When those signaling mechanisms are disturbed, neurons either rewire seeking additional input, or they die.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Must be this hour of the morning (9am here)
I should be in my bed sleeping!
In any case, is amazing how the brain can repair itself and regain funcionality lost. Much better than any other wiring. And to think we only use around 10% of it. What a waste. We need a different file system!!
I would like to know what limits the rewiring rate in such a state? Is it metabolic? Or does the rate of new axon growth and synapse formation follow the normal growth rate of neural cells late in life - which, as I recall, is fairly slow?. This was obviously a long process, but was there a certain "critical point" reached during the rewiring that, once passed, assured recovery of functions? Is this subconscious dreaming or thinking that manipulates signaling, and could simple brain simulaion methods achieve a similar goal in the absence of such a process? Hopefully such a case generates academic interest that will help progress this area of brain research.
Well, this is absolutley incredible news, but I am curious if some would see it as being a survival mechinism?
Except for Rip Van Winkle, I don't think that a 19 year period of repair and adaption would really lend itself to survival. Not to say that this isn't miraculous, but, I'm sure the recovery time will be significant.
Besides, would you really want to wake up 20 years older, with years of rehabilitation to look forward to? I would be more concerned with the ethics of keeping someone alive for that long.
I was in a real bad wreck in 1976, my brain hardly worked for a year or more, but I got better. I wonder what a scan of it would look like? Would it be wierdly wired like this guy's?
Few people I know would be surprised to find my brain was wired wierd.
Since then, the thought has occurred to me that I could have actually gone into a coma and the last forty years could have been a dream. But then, any of you could have had an accident and not know it, and be dreaming this. So there's little point in not behaving as if reality is real, especially considering the incredibly high probability that this IS real.
I wonder if he dreamed?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Early intervention might have saved her though, her brain would have turned to mush over time. 15 years later the horse had really bolted.
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
Not to harsh on you (especially since you wrote in at 9am), but I'd love it if the 'we only use 10% of our brains' meme would die, die, die!!!! already. It's not even superficially true; what is true is that a very large part of the brain structure is used for wiring instead of for information storage, but how would one get a functional device if all it had was memory and no processing circuits? The structure itself, one might imagine, is where the the lower order (and probably some higher order) information processing algorithms are 'stored'; that these structures only take up approximately 90% of the total machine is astonishing.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
We keep hearing stories about people who regain consciousness in spite of the fact that the 'experts' say they can't. It worries me a lot that the doctors are quick to pronounce somebody brain dead so they can rip out the organs. Often, as was the case here, relatives will insist on keeping someone alive over the objections of the doctors.
Of course the other reason I'm against organ transplants is that the Chinese harvest organs from prisoners.
Anyway, staying on topic, this kind of thing happens too often. The experts say they totally understand brain death but I don't quite believe them. I also don't trust them to tell me the truth after I found out that they have their own definition of "heroic measures". There is nothing heroic about "heroic measures". They ask you: "Should we take heroic measures?" and you being young and naive, reply that they shouldn't. So, on that basis, ask me if I trust the medical community about brain death. I don't.
One of the most amazing abilities of the brain is to redirect specific task from one damaged/unexistant part of the brain to another. Lost part of your brain that relates to your speech? No problem, other zone will take over in time, and you'll be able to speak again. But I have my doubts on the vision zone, because is directly connected to eye's nerves. I don't know if that can be fixed.
I mean think about it, last time he was awake was in 1987. The world has changed ALOT since then... I wonder how I'd feel?
"Internet? What's that? Computers, those are the huge things that big businesses and the government use, right?"
There was a mexican movie (ficticious) about a 19-yo guy who went into coma in 1971 and woke up in 1992, having to cope with a grown up family, an older (and remarried) wife, and of course, new political times.
It was called "El bulto" (the bag). Very interesting movie.
Actually small children can have at least half of their brain removed and still function normally in later life. It's pretty amazing! I once read about a man who had had to take a brain scan. The scan revealed that the only brain tissue he had, only covered the inner surface of his skull, apparently he was born like that, and he functioned normally. Of course I cannot find any documentation about it now, but the link I've provided describes a "normal" procedure. It can cure rare epeleptic disorders and other things. ;)
Mind boggling
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
This google search reveals lots more info on hemisperectomy.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
I saw a TV show about this guy some time ago (PBS? Discovery? National Geographic?). Yes, he is awake, but the poor guy is in very bad shape. He has very limited use of his body; his brain is unable to store any new information for more than a few seconds; and his frontal lobe is basically gone so he has no sense of boundaries when communicating with people. His 20-year old daughter is his primary caretaker, and since he thinks he's a 19 year-old and is unable to remember that she is his daughter, he keeps asking her for sexual favors and groping her any chance he has. He is also very verbally abusive towards her and pretty much everyone else.
Yes, he's no longer in a coma, but he is far from functional.
Yeah, that was my feeling. When a relative of mine was in a similair state a number of years back, all the doctors that we talked to pretty much said the same thing - coming back from a coma was possible, although very rare if they didn't wake up within a few months. But at a certain point, there's nothing left to repair... it's the difference between a puncture wound and amputation.
On a side note... It wasn't until after the whole Schiavo thing blew over that I figured out why it bothered me so much. The very same people who go on about the sanctity of marriage were trying to take away the right of a spouse to make medical decisions for a incapitated spouse. Isn't that a much worse precedent that my two female neigbors?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?