A New Case of Very Large Brain Damage and Normal Mental Function

In this blog I have discussed many cases of normal or near-normal mental function despite massive brain damage. For example, in the post here and the posts here and here you can read about people who had normal function after removal of half of their brain in hemispherectomy operations. At those links you can also read about people who had normal mental function despite losing far more than half of their brain because of disease.  The scientific paper here describes a patient (P.G.) who scored 142 on an IQ test, even though the right hemisphere of the brain had been removed (as well as a patient D.W. who scored 100 on an IQ test after the left hemisphere of the brain had been removed). 

There has just been reported a new case of someone with normal or almost normal mental function despite having massive brain damage. I found the case on the science subreddit of reddit.com (https://www.reddit.com/r/science). The original link goes to a science journal letter to the editor behind a paywall, a letter entitled "A case of extreme hydrocephalus in a 67-year-old man whose professional and social lives were normal." But one of the reddit users has quoted the letter to the editor, so we can see the details of the case by using the link here and pressing the blue "View Entire Discussion" button to see all comments. At that link we read this quotation from the letter to the editor:

"A male patient first consulted when he was 67 for gait disorders related to Parkinson's disease. The cerebral MRI performed on this occasion showed a very large tetra-ventricular hydrocephalus...His education was completed without remarkable difficulty, he obtained a Vocational Training Certificate and worked in an insurance company. He retired after 40 years and 3 months of work. He has always been very active during his professional life without ceasing work for any disease. According to his brothers, he was very curious, interested in history and had an excellent memory. During his first medical visit, the clinical examination showed both pyramidal and extra-pyramidal syndromes. Occipito-frontal circumference (OFC) was 64 cm (+5 SD). Mini-mental state examination (MMSE) was 27/30 (recall was perturbed), Frontal Assessment battery (FAB) was 17/18 (verbal fluidity was slightly impaired). Cerebral MRI showed a massive communicating hydrocephalus (figure 1A) predominating on the frontal lobes (figure 1B). On FLAIR sequences, hypersignals were noted in the periventricular regions. Furthermore, ruptured septa or pseudo-septa were present on both sides predominating on the left ventricle (figure 1 C and D). In the frontal region, the hemispherical wall was very thin (from 3.4 to 3.8 mm) with an overlying cortex totally unfolded (Figure 1 B and D). The corpus callosum was very thin, stretched by ventricular dilation (Figure 1A). ...Both the clinical history as told by his family and macrocephaly suggest that this hydrocephalus developed very early during the life of this patient....Despite this major hydrocephalus, patient’s professional life was normal. There was only a delay of motor acquisitions and language; this delay vanished during his adolescence."

The disease suffered by this man is hydrocephalus, in which there can arise very large fluid-filled cavities in the brain. If you go to the page here showing the letter to the editor (behind a paywall) you can see four thumbnail images showing this man's brain.  We can see gigantic fluid-filled cavities in the man's brain, which appear as dark holes in the images. An image from one angle seems to show about 75% or more of the brain tissue missing (although a view from another angle makes it look more like about 50% of the brain tissue missing). 

We read that the very brain-damaged subject (age 67) had a score of 27 out of 30 on the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), which is a good score that you or me might get (you have to score 24 or lower for a doctor to regard the score as evidence of dementia).  According to the link here, the average MMSE score for people between 65 and 74 is 22.4. The very brain-damaged subject had a score of 17 out of 18 on the Frontal Assessment Battery test (FAB), which is higher than average for persons of his age (according to the link here, the average score for people in their sixties is 16). 

In a similar vein, the paper here describes tests on a person born without a left temporal lobe of the brain. We are told "she performed within normal range on all language assessment tasks" and that she "performed within normal range on both general cognitive assessments."

Once again, we have evidence that people can have normal minds despite the most massive brain damage. Clinging stubbornly to their unwarranted dogma that the brain is the source of the mind, our neuroscientists continue to avoid putting "two and two together" by realizing the implications of such findings of very high brain damage and normal mental function, just as they avoid putting "two and two together" by failing to realize the implications of very common out-of-body experiences in which people report viewing their bodies while floating outside of their bodies. The data from "very heavy brain damage" medical case histories and the data from parapsychology case histories tell us the same thing: that your brain is not the source of your mind.