Although I haven't seen the journal article about the case yet (it was published in the Journal of Clinical Research, I believe) , its already been reported on CNN and other news venues. A crash victim who has been barely conscious for over 20 years suddenly regained speech and movement after his damaged brain spontaneously repaired itself. This is an extremely unusual case, but an important one due to the fact that now that we know it CAN be done, we can gain a better understanding of how to induce it in other more mundane injuries. (More under the fold.)
Severe head injuries resulting in brain damage almost never, ever recover. This is because the brain become much less plastic (ie, ability to change and repair) as we get older. But Terry Willis, a 42 year old man who was involved in a crash when we was 20, has begun to speak, move, and count again. He has complete amnesia, and until recently was insisting that he was still 20 years old.
"Right now these cases are like winning the lottery," said Dr. Ross Zafonte, rehabilitation chief at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. "I wouldn't want to overenthuse family members or folks who think now we have a cure for this."
This case is fascinating because it shows that, in very rare cases, the adult human brain can repair itself after an extremely severe injury. Yes, it is rare. But the fact that it can happen means that some molecular mechanism of regeneration can most likely be manipulated (clinically, or through drugs, etc) to help repair traumatic brain injuries. This sort of "cure" is many years down the road. But its cases like this that make me excited to be in the field of neuroscience. We try to take the best case scenarios, and make them common.
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Wow, this is going to bring the pro-terri schiavo people out of the woodwork. even though it wouldn't hold for someone with her level of damage (I expect).
Hmm. Actually, this isn't the first example, though the most extreme, of something like this happening. The real problem is that *usually*, when normal function of the brain is disrupted enough to disconnect it from what it normally dealt with, that part of the brain re-wires itself into nearby regions, effectively permanently losing its original purpose. This is what happens with motor function and sensation in limbs, when on is lost, the brain re-wires the responses into those for the cheak, which is the closests set of nuerons in the brain, thus producing the whole phantom limb effect. The function isn't lost, so much as reassigned to something else that "is" active. This case may be rare both in the end result and "why" it was even possible in this case.
Robert- We don't need those Schaivo nuts coming back outta the woodwork!! :) This case is one in a million, and i doubt it could be used as convincing evidence in a court, etc.
Good points about the phantom limb syndrome, Kagehi. It is amazing that somehow *this* patients' sheared neurons knew the correct targets to grow towards. Since the injury happened when he was relatively young (20, I believe) his brain was probably more able to recover than if it had happened at 40. Its a start, though.