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Category: Medicine & Health
Posted on: October 1, 2008 10:45 AM, by Mo
These X-rays show a knife plunged into the skull of a 16-year-old boy from southeast London. Fortunately, his injuries were nowhere near as serious as they might have been - according to a police officer quoted in The Times, "the blade was a kitchen knife and because of that it was flexible and went around the bone." He has, however, started walking with a limp, and his reaction times have slowed.
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Comments
1) I'm happy I don't live in London.
2) Any further tests of cognitive performance, or any fMRIs to show the degree of damage done to the tissue? I am sure that many neuropsychologists would like to see the effects of a Phineas Gage imitator.
:P
Posted by: Encefalus | October 2, 2008 8:43 AM
I'm sure he must have been referred to a neuropsych unit, but the news story is all I have to go on.
I don't think his injury is very similar to Gage's - the knife appears not to have penetrated the brain at all, but instead scraped the outer surface.
Posted by: Mo | October 2, 2008 8:52 AM
Ow. That has completely given me the willies. I think it's actually extra freaky that the knife bent on his skull, although it no doubt saved him a great deal of cognitive functionality.
Posted by: Jessica Palmer | October 2, 2008 10:47 PM
Fortunately, the skull protected his brain (which is what a skull is supposed to do). It's interesting that the victim is walking with a limp. Is that due to damage to the motor cortex or is something else going on?
Posted by: Romeo Vitelli | October 5, 2008 7:21 PM