WE NEED ONLY 10% OF OUR BRAINS

NORMAl BRAIN SCAN. Compare with C image -below- in which LV=Left Ventricule.

IMAGE C. A thin layer of brain tissue run paralell to the inner part of the cranium.

What will say now, doctors and judges who ordered the retirement (1990), of the nasogástric tube that during some years served to feed and to maintain with life to Terry Schiavo, an adult american woman who remained many years in bed as a result of a severe brain damage that led her to a PVS (persistent vegetative state). The arguments to retire her the nasogastric feeding tube, was based on images provided by a brain scan (cerebral atrophy : brain mass : 641 grs =40%, cerebral ventricles very expanded). Retrospectively the subject interests, because this week the Lancet (Friday, July/20/2007), magazine displays the case of a French adult male, married with 2 daughters, employee of a state office, with social conduct and motor activity relatively normal, throughout his 44 years of life and a brain scan, exhibiting a cerebral mass of hardly 10% (in relation to adult usual standards), to consequence of a progressive neonatal hydrocephalus.

Showing that much brain mass is not needed in order that a human being will function normally (only if the brain be completely developed when being born), as in cases of hidrocephalus, event that does not happen in anencephaly (defect in the closure of the neural tube = non-developed brains), or in acrania where the cerebral mass is quickly deteriorated, by absence of armored decks (skull and others). Obviously these small brains, must have sufficient neural circuits to be connected to all human body. In the medical praxis, it is usual to see patients (to whom a kidney or a lung is extirpated), compensating their deficiencies enlarging to the maximum their non-extirpated kidneys or lungs, opening new physiologically routes non-used normally. It is hipothetized that these small brains must have circuits and neurons densely packed. That is right. The event gives opportunity to see the possibility of seeding with focused stem cells, niches of brains widely damaged with the aim to establish sufficient neuronal circuits.