Beyond the bullet: Watching Giffords' brain injury for signs of luck and persistence
Odds say a shot to the head should be fatal. Those who survive face a host of challenges as they try to rebuild their lives.The spectral images, reproduced in neurosurgery journals and textbooks, could be captioned "Beauty and the Beast." Captured by X-ray and CT scan, the human brain is pierced by a bullet, nail, pool cue or chunk of razor-sharp debris. The intruding object has ripped a jagged vortex of destruction through the brain's gelatinous lobes and forged an even wider path of quivering shock. ¶ If the projectile came in hard and fast, shards of broken skull will be scattered through the delicate tissue. The bullet might have ricocheted off bone and tumbled wildly in the cavity, bursting blood vessels and carving uneven holes where, only moments before, healthy brain cells had hummed. ¶ Such havoc, you would think, would put an abrupt end to the brain's...