In 1945 a farmer in Colorado went out to his yard to grab a chicken to eat for dinner, the farmer took his axes and beheaded the chicken yet something strange and unnatural happened. The chicken was still walking around even with its lack of head. It turns out that when the farmer axed the chicken, it was in a way that he missed the jugular vein and the brain stem, and a blood clot formed where it had been beheaded, allowing it to stay alive. This chicken called Mike the headless chicken ended up living for another 18 months and died due to choking. Yet there have been humans living with only the brain stem as well. Trevor Waltrip was a boy born with only the brain stem as he had a serious condition called hydranencephaly where the cerebral hemispheres are missing and instead the brain is filled with cerebrospinal fluid. He lived for 12 years which beat the odds doctors gave him and passed away in 2014. As seen the brain stem is essential to life but what even is the brain stem?
The brain stem connects the brain to the spinal cord, it’s at the bottom of the brain and is part of the central nervous system. You could not live without one since without one, your brain couldn’t send electrical signals to the rest of your body and vice versa. The brain stem helps control some of the most vital bodily functions like heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing but also helps with reflexes and coordination. There are three parts to the brain stem the midbrain, the pons, and the Medulla oblongata. The medulla oblongata sits at the bottom of the brain stem and directly connects to the spinal cord, controlling some of the functions of the heart and lungs and blood vessel dilation. Then the pons in the middle control breathing, swallowing, sleep, and the senses like taste and hearing. Lastly, the midbrain at the top of the brain stem between the pons and thalamus controls visual and auditory processing, eye movement, temperature regulation, and alertness. All these parts work together to form one of the most important parts of the brain and the human body.
Boy Born Without A Brain, Trevor Judge Waltrip, Dies After Living For 12 Years With Hydranencephaly (medicaldaily.com) Assessed and Endorsed by the MedReport Medical Review Board