Man with Half a Head Arrested in Miami.

I smiled in a mughot : D
I figured well, I'm here in jail, damned if I'll sit here looking like a pathetic schmiuck. I'm going to look like a schmuck who's having fun, lol!

Now that you put it that way, it sounds sort of endearing (in your case, not his.) That is, of course, assuming you weren't arrested for something extremely malevolent.

I would think he's a bit simple- he might smile all the time.

This isn't frontal lobe "damage". It looks like the guy is missing his entire frontal lobe as well as half the lobe that's in back of it. I can't imagine how an individual like this could live, never mind function.

I think he still has a small portion of his frontal lobes, and some of his brain matter may have been compressed and moved rather than destroyed in his accident. We in fact now very little about the brain, witness the following:

Is the Brain Really Necessary?

This was the question asked by British neurologist John Lorber when he addressed a conference of pædiatricians in 1980. Such a frivolous sounding question was sparked by case studies Lorber had been involved in since the mid-60s. The case studies involve victims of an ailment known as hydrocephalus, more commonly known as water on the brain. The condition results from an abnormal build up of cerebrospinal fluid and can cause severe retardation and death if not treated.

Two young children with hydrocephalus referred to Lorber presented with normal mental development for their age. In both children, there was no evidence of a cerebral cortex. One of the children died at age 3 months, the second at 12 months. He was still following a normal development profile with the exception of the apparent lack of cerebral tissue shown by repeated medical testing. An account of the children was published in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology.

Later, a colleague at Sheffield University became aware of a young man with a larger than normal head. He was referred to Lorber even though it had not caused him any difficulty. Although the boy had an IQ of 126 and had a first class honours degree in mathematics, he had "virtually no brain". A noninvasive measurement of radio density known as CAT scan showed the boy's skull was lined with a thin layer of brain cells to a millimeter in thickness. The rest of his skull was filled with cerebrospinal fluid. The young man continues a normal life with the exception of his knowledge that he has no brain.

Although anecdotal accounts may be found in medical literature, Lorber is the first to provide a systematic study of such cases. He has documented over 600 scans of people with hydrocephalus and has broken them into four groups:

* those with nearly normal brains

* those with 50-70% of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal fluid

* those with 70-90% of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal fluid

* and the most severe group with 95% of the cranial cavity filled with cerebrospinal fluid.

Of the last group, which comprised less than 10% of the study, half were profoundly retarded. The remaining half had IQs greater than 100. Skeptics have claimed that it was an error of interpretation of the scans themselves. Lorber himself admits that reading a CAT scan can be tricky. He also has said that he would not make such a claim without evidence. In answer to attacks that he has not precisely quantified the amount of brain tissue missing, he added, "I can't say whether the mathematics student has a brain weighing 50 grams or 150 grams, but it is clear that it is nowhere near the normal 1.5 kilograms."

Many neurologists feel that this is a tribute to the brain's redundancy and its ability to reassign functions. Others, however, are not so sure. Patrick Wall, professor of anatomy at University College, London states "To talk of redundancy is a cop-out to get around something you don't understand."

Norman Geschwind, a neurologist at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital agrees: "Certainly the brain has a remarkable capacity for reassigning functions following trauma, but you can usually pick up some kind of deficit with the right tests, even after apparently full recovery."

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/is_the_brain_really_necessary.htm

Prostitution laws have NEVER made sense to me. I mean you can stand on the corner and GIVE it away all day long, but as soon as you receive as much as a quarter you go to jail.

Wrong, he was picked up on a charge of allegedly soliciting prostitution, he was not prostituting himself.

It'll blow your mind, man!
Literally!

No, he was drunk and disorderly, and solicited a prostitute.

But considering the circumstances, I'd say give him a break!

He had like a big dent on to top going down into his head, kinda like this dude but only about half as bad.

That's what I thought. If I were missing a large portion of my head, I'd probably be a pretty glum sort of person.

Unless you were missing that very part of your head in which glumness can manifest!

True. Missing the glumness part of the brain seems nice, at first glance. Being happy go lucky all of the time..

But, then, I can imagine that his cheeks probably always hurt him from smiling, his best friend is pissed at him for wearing a big grin to match his black jacket and tie at his friend's mother's funeral, and he gets beaten up numerous times a year for baring his teeth unabashedly at people on the streets. Poor guy.

That would explain a lot if it is him!

LOL!!!

ROFL!

I agree, we see them.....brain damaged Liberals are everywhere.

Since when does a young hispanic from South Florida exemplify conservatism?
Does your mom know you're online?

amazing he lived, pathetic that our country doesn't do more to support people like this, rather than leaving them to trades like prostitution....for whatever reason.

Maybe he was born like that?
...And I'm not sure, but somehow I think that making a fake dome for the crushed in area would probably be pretty dangerous. What would you fill it with?
Would is just go over the existing skull and have the scalp stretched and stitched over it like a baseball?

There was a child that was shot in the head a few years back. they ended up removing one entire lobe of his brain. Eventually they made a prosthetic piece and used it basically as a spacer to fill the void and stitched the scalp back over it. There was some controversy as one of the nurses caring for him asked to be relieved because she said the site of it was so disturbing that it was causing her emotional distress.

My God, how incredibly insensitive some are to the plight of fellow humans. I can only assume this stems from a lack of understanding of medical conditions that might lead someone to look "different" than you and I.

Pollo_Loco, I know you're cracking wise (playing off the Miranda rights that are read to suspects when arrested), but he doesn't have a "right" to remain "freakishly deformed": he has no other choice! I imagine his life is no bed of roses, having to deal with the snickers, looks of disgust, the pointing fingers of small children who ask, "Mommy, why is that man missing the top of his head?".

Some here have said he should avoid that by wearing a hat, etc, and for all you know, he probably does: a moment's thought should make all the armchair quarterbacks here realize that suspects are made to remove hats for their booking photo.

UtopianSky, you ask what kind of "quack doctor" would leave him looking like that: since you're disparaging the skills of the neurosurgeon who treated him, then what kind of reconstructive skull procedure would YOU recommend for a patient who possesses so little remaining bone to work with? Uh-huh....