The Civil Servant

In 2003, a story was published in “The Lancet”, about an unnamed French citizen.  He was a married man, with two kids, who worked as a civil servant in Marseille.  One day, his left leg felt rather weak, so he visited a local hospital.  As the doctors ran through his medical history, they learned that when this man was a baby, he had suffered from hydrocephalus, which is a buildup of liquid inside the brain.  The liquid had long been drained away, but the doctors decided to take a few scans and see if this problem was neurological in nature.  What they found astonished them.  The majority of this man’s head was filled with fluid. 

Normally, the human brain is protected by lateral ventricles, which are structures filled with cerebrospinal fluid that act as a cushion for our gray cells.  Liquid flows through these chambers all the time, but in the man’s case, the fluids were not draining.  Over time, the buildup caused his lateral ventricles to swell so much that his brain had been flattened to a thin sheet.  Doctors estimated that his brain mass had been reduced by 50 to 70%, affecting the areas in charge of motion, language, emotion, amongst other things. 

The interesting part about this all was that while his IQ was only 75, he was not mentally challenged.  He held a steady job, raised a family, and did not have trouble interacting with others.  Over time, his brain had adapted to all that pressure, and even though he had fewer neurons than most, the man was, for all intents, a fully functioning member of society.  And his leg was fine.  Once doctors inserted a shunt and drained the fluid, his limb returned to normal.  However, his brain is still pretty small, showing that it does not take much brains to work in the civil service.