5
A Man Gets A Brain Scan And Finds Out That Most Of His Brain Is Missing
Imagine your left leg has been feeling kind of weak lately. You've had a similar problem before, and the doctors fixed you right up then. Why is this time any different? You head on down to the hospital, they do a brain scan, and they find the problem: Your brain's missing. Well, most of it.
Dr. Lionel Feuillet, MD, Henry Dufour, PhD
, Jean Pelletier, PhD“This might also explain the rattling sound you’ve been hearing whenever you move your head.”
As reported in The Lancet, that's exactly what happened to a 44-year-old French civil servant who had been living a completely normal life until the day he found out he was a Simpsons plot. He was married with two kids, and while his IQ was below average, it wasn't in the range of someone with a mental disability. He was also, as you might have gathered by now, not as dead as you'd expect someone without most of their brain to be (that is to say, fully dead).
It turned out that as a kid, the man had been diagnosed with hydrocephalus, which meant that his brain had a buildup of excess fluid. The fluid had been drained, but it was now back with a vengeance, having taken up most of the space where his cerebral cortex should have been. Only a thin layer of brain tissue remained. But because the displacement happened over the course of several years, experts believe his brain tissue either adapted to take on new functions or had been compressed into that thin layer. Note, however, that when the fluid was drained again, his brain didn't magically spring back into place. But hey, the leg thing was fixed, so there's a win.
4
A Guy Gets A Root Canal And Loses The Ability To Create New Memories
In 2005, William sat down in a dentist's chair for a root canal, and that's the last thing he can remember. No, seriously. Somehow, the procedure robbed him of the ability to create new memories, meaning that every day, he has to relearn that his children are no longer kids, he's no longer in the army, and that "reality TV host > leader of the free world" is now a viable career trajectory.
Instead of going the Memento body tattoo route, William simply has a file on his phone with information about everything that happened since the inexplicable incident. Huh. Bet Mark Memento wishes he'd thought of that.
Newmarket Films"... Shit."
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