• Question: can your brain ever fall out of any external holes or can it brake inside your skull

    Asked by tilly1999 to Ben, James, Jen, Michael, Susanna on 12 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by jennydsc2000, oscarhlionface.
    • Photo: Susanna Martin

      Susanna Martin answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      The brain could break in lots of ways, it could be affected by illness like dementia which stop it working, or if you hit your head you might damage it. I’m not sure that it could fall out of a hole, but I know sometimes the fluid around your brain can leak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_cerebrospinal_fluid_leak .

    • Photo: Michael Craig

      Michael Craig answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Hi Tilly,

      No your brain cannot fall out of your head. Our skull is there to protect it and make sure this doesn’t happen! You can still damage your brain when it is protected within the skull though. Getting a bang to the head can cause brain injury that can cause anything from memory loss to being very dangerous and causing bleeds within the brain that can be fatal. If the damage isn’t too bad, a lot of the problems are caused by inflammation in the brain, this is where the brain is damaged and the body is trying to repair it. Once the body has repaired the brain and it is healthy, problems with the person’s memory or whichever part is affected can go away and they be back to normal. Although if the damage is bad, this can sometimes lead to areas of the brain dying and their memory could be affected permanently. Hope that helps.

      Michael

    • Photo: Jen Todd Jones

      Jen Todd Jones answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      Hi Tilly

      I’m glad you asked this question, this is actually what I studied for a whole year during my Masters degree! Your brain is all in one piece and is far too big to fall out of your eyes or nose or mouth, and your skull is there to protect it against external knocks and bumps.

      It is possible for your brain to break inside your skull, with a hard enough knock the brain actually rocks and twists inside the skull causing damage all over it unfortunately! It can be damaged particularly badly on the inside at the front of your brain where the skull above your eyes has some sharp edges (these parts of the skull are called the sphenoid wing and anterior fossa, above the circled areas here ).

      Sometimes damage to the brain can be caused by blood, this is where the many layers that cover the brain before you even get to the skull get filled with blood and swell, pushing down on the brain. This is called a haematoma, and can actually cause you to die but is thankfully very rare!

      The brain can also be damaged through dementia, this happens when we’re older starting at around 60 or 70 years old. Dementia means that cells in the brain breakdown or die and no longer function properly, this happens across the whole brain and affects memory, movement and a lot of other functions of the brain.

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