Birth Defect of the Skull and Face Without Brain or Learning Disorder: A Psychological and Pedagogical Report

Abstract

A 13-year-old boy has congenital hypoplasia of the left facial bones, absence of the left external ear and left eye, and flattening of the cranium from the frontal to the pos-teroparietal area, inclusive of the left temporal area. Intelligence is average and other neuropsychological functions are within the normal range, with the exception of left-handedness and color-blindness. Learning disability is conspicuous by its absence. It may have been expected as either a primary defect resultant from direct brain involvement, or as secondary to the emotional burden of his life's dilemma. The same might apply to the boy's short stature and delayed pubertal development. The idea of correlating psychological findings during life with a study of the brain itself at the time of death is proposed. An administrative organization, modeled after the Medic-Alert system, is suggested as the mechanism necessary to insure correlation of in vivo psychological findings with post-mortem brain research.

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