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Patient Revives After 19 Years By Rewiring Brain

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-favorite-organ dept.

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."

2 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Neuronal remodeling by BWJones · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  2. TV Show? by Joao · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.