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Is it possible to live without a brain?
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
The recent news from Salk University that a group of researchers managed to create human brain cells in the lab has shaken up the scientific community, but some experts continue to ask the question: is the brain as important for a person as is believed? This question arose after the scientific community learned about an unusual guy from France who considered himself quite normal, lived and worked as a civil servant, raised children and was no different from most of his peers until he found out that he had practically no brain. The Frenchman’s peculiarity was revealed completely by chance during a routine examination, which is often prescribed in the hospital.
Matthew learned about his uniqueness at the age of 44, when he went to see a doctor complaining of pain in his legs, which had been going on for more than 10 days.
At that time, neither the examination nor the diagnostics of the patient's legs revealed any pathologies. Then the doctors prescribed a full examination and after Matiu's brain was scanned, the doctors were, to put it mildly, shocked - the size of the patient's brain turned out to be so small that they did not even examine it at first.
Further examination of the unusual patient revealed that the absence of the brain was due to the skull being filled with cerebrospinal fluid, leaving only part of the grey matter.
Matthew developed excess cerebrospinal fluid after he suffered from hydrocephalus (fluid buildup in the brain) as a child.
But when Matthew turned 44, the disease reminded him of itself with pain in his legs, and doctors have been trying to find a way to cure the unusual patient for 8 years.
For a long time, experts could not understand how a person could live with a brain of this size.
The examination of the unique patient showed that his mental and neurological condition is normal, there were no serious health problems throughout his life. Neuropsychological research showed that the Frenchman has a slightly low level of intelligence (75 with the norm of 85), but this did not affect the life and work of Mathieu. Also, the unique Frenchman has two children and has been happily married for many years, while his children have a normal brain and develop according to their age, so experts ruled out a hereditary factor.
Scientists suggest that neither Matthew himself nor scientists would have ever known about this if it were not for the pain in his leg with which the Frenchman came to the hospital.
While the question of whether the brain is important for humans or not is being decided, specialists from different countries continue to study this unique organ. In Ohio, a team of scientists was able to create an analogue of the brain of a 5-month-old human embryo in the laboratory, which is considered the most complete model (previously, it was possible to create only some areas, and not the entire organ).
Such developments are extremely important for researchers, because they will allow us to better understand the relationships and establish the causes of the development of certain diseases, such as Alzheimer's, which modern medicine, unfortunately, is unable to cure.
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