CNN.com/Asia
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The baby, Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Except for her ears, all of Lali’s facial features are duplicated — she has two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes.
“My daughter is fine — like any other child,” said Vinod Singh, 23, a poor farm worker.
Lali has caused a sensation in the dusty village of Saini Sunpura, 25 miles east of New Delhi. When she left the hospital, eight hours after a normal delivery on March 11, she was swarmed by villagers, said Sabir Ali, the director of Saifi Hospital.
Up to 100 people have been visiting Lali at her home every day to touch her feet out of respect, offer money and receive blessings, Singh told AP.
“She drinks milk from her two mouths and opens and shuts all the four eyes at one time,” Ali said.
If this baby survives, she will certainly have an extraordinary life. What if she had been born in the U.S. where superstitious tradition is not as strong as in India?
She will make a great politician one day.
They are referring to her as one child. I immediately wondered if there are two minds. The article says she shuts all four eyes at one time so I guess there is only one mind in control.
It will be interesting to see occasional updates on her progress over the years.
I hope she lives long and well.
I wonder if the visual cortex of her brain will blank out the images from two of her eyes.
#1 – McCullough,
Guess I wasn’t fast enough.
#4. It needed to be said.
Will make for fascinating science.
What I want to know is, does she have 24 pairs of cranial nerves instead of the usual 12? If not, how are they arranged?
Is the brain bifurcated in the front?
Wow.
#3 – hhopper,
That’s a very interesting question. I have no idea. I also wonder, since she is obviously the result of a split cell and is an extreme case of a conjoined twin, or would be if the cell had split a bit farther. I wonder if she has two visual cortices. I believe, since the visual cortex is in the back of the head, that she likely does not. I have no idea how a single visual cortex will deal with four images, two pairs of each will be looking in different directions. She may be able to use either pair of eyes and tune out the other. I have met people who did not have binocular vision, despite having two functional eyes.
Was just looking at a diagram of the cranial nerves to refresh myself as to their arrangement & it appears that nerves I thru VII are probably duplicated but the other five are not. She doesn’t need number VIII duplicated because she has two ears like a “normal” human, not four. I ain’t no doctor though.
Fascinating stuff.
If her parents don’t let the doctors do a CT scan on her, all these questions might turn out to be moot. She could have many other congenital problems that are not apparent.
cute dimples
“…the U.S. where superstitious tradition is not as strong as in India?”
I’m going to disagree with this premise.
Of course I have no idea, so I will say it is more likely the brain would “meld” the images from the four eyes just as it does for the two eyes????
She’d make a good guard at the school for children with special talents?
If I understood this correctly in my local paper, this deformity happens when the dna segment that controls the width of the face gets out of wack. It’s supposedly very unusual to get a full duplication of two faces – more often, it’s a bifurcated nose or two noses and very broadly spaced eyes. It will really be fascinating if the child has normal intelligence and can tell us, later in life, what her visual perceptions, etc. are.
#13 – lynn,
That would be interesting. I hope we get the chance to hear about it. More importantly, I hope that we can leave her alone most of the time so that she can have a normal life and not feel like a side-show freak.
According to Wikipedia, this condition is caused by Sonic the Hedgehog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diprosopus
It is so refreshing to hear she is a “Goddess” in that country. No mention of “deformity” as would be diagnosed by American doctors.
Photos like that are one reason to hate the Internet.
For those wondering about her vision… seeing as the eyes are not all pointing in the same direction, I’m going to assume that it’s similar to what may happen in people with strabismus [this is assuming there is an optic nerve that goes from each eye, back to the chiasm (and what a strange chiasm that must be!), and continues on through the visual pathway]. The normally binocular cells in the cortex (which may be tetrocular? or quadrocular? in this case), will have a greater amount of input from either just one or two of the eyes, rather than three or four. In addition, there will be suppression of either set of eyes, depending on where the child’s attention is directed. The visual system doesn’t like diplopia (seeing double), and so in a normal person, if one eye is troping (basically, not pointing in the same direction as the fixating eye), the brain will ignore the image that comes from it; the same thing will happen in the case of triplopia or tetroplia (can’t decide if it’s tetroplia or quadroplia). In any case, the child is destined to have amblyopia in at least two of the eyes (the vision just won’t develop as well in those eyes, even if the other eyes are occluded). My recommendation in this case would be to constantly patch the pair of eyes that seem the least useful. It couldn’t possibly be good for the child’s visual acuity to have to split the visual pathway and cortex between two separate sets of eyes.
#18–Al==”It couldn’t possibly be good?”
Boy, you really are striking at the heart of the Nouveau Homo Genome Project. We’re thinking of doubling every organ in the human body, kinda like an internal savings account balance==when one organ goes bad, cut if off and slide the extra one over.
No cloning, no abortion. We are hoping to fill an unrealized need.
“What if she had been born in the U.S. where superstitious tradition is not as strong as in India?”
She would be immediately given cosmetic surgery to reconstruct her face and brain because she wouldn’t be ‘normal’
On the plus side, if her brain turns out to be capable of processing four image sets at once; you would have a hard time sneaking up on her wouldn’t you?
All is well no matter what if India’s idea of reincarnation turns out to be right.
“If this baby survives, she will certainly have an extraordinary life. What if she had been born in the U.S. where superstitious tradition is not as strong as in India?”
Just have to get that mini pro-atheist rant in there don’t ya hhopper?
[Excuse me, what? – ed.]
WTF is up with India and their birth defects? Who spilled the nuke waste out there…
Also when she misbehaves, which face do you slap? You’d have to pull off a 3 stooges and slap both at the same time.
If she had been born in the west (not just the US), she would most likely be cosmetically corrected.
While it is easy for the superstitious to suggest she is a goddess, we know better. We also know the stares and behind the back comments that will inevitably come with the condition here. If, as those who worship her, one finds something supernatural in her then fine. On the other hand, if you believe she deserves as normal a life as anyone else, then she should be corrected.
I’m sure those that wish to worship her haven’t thought out the possible complications besides just vision. For example, what will happen when she coughs? Or tries to eat and breathe? Or talk?
Oh ya, and on which side will she part her hair?
Yeah, the brain wiring has to be interesting.
She should be safe enough in Hindu or Budhist areas. The Moslems will kill her in a heartbeat.
That’s Karl Rove’s baby picture.
Interesting comments, but almost guaranteed, she wouldn’t have survived the 1st trimester here.
#28, JimR
… she wouldn’t have survived the 1st trimester here.
Really? Gee, I didn’t know an ultrasound was being routinely done at that stage or that they would be sophisticated enough to determine the problem. I guess that is why it is an almost guarantee.
That’s exactly why Mr. Mustard. Ultrasounds would have been done by that stage, and upon discovering such a severs deformity, the baby would have been aborted almost certainly.