Skull structure affect brain activites?

[mistay]

Hi, when I was a baby I was in between a domestic situation and had an aluminum can put a permanent indentation in my skull, it obviously was when the tissue was still soft....now that I am grown up, does this indentation limit my brain growth or crowd it all? Will this have any emotional or physical effects on me in the long run? I have always had deep eye pain, and extreme neck pain... Thanks.

[DrNoopurMD]

Hi,

How are you?
It is very unlikely that the indentation would have affected brain growth and development and it will not cause any physical and emotional defect.
The deep eye pain can be due to sinusitis. Migraine also cannot be ruled out.
Is it one sided or occurs bilaterally? Please elaborate.

[midasrex]

Hi,
Almost certainly not. The brain is remarkably good at accomodating depressed skull fractures. Given that you are now 21 and your injury was hence 20 years ago you probably had just an xray of the skull rather than a CT scan then but it would have shown whether you had a significantly depressed fracture and presumerably you didn't otherwise it would probably have been repaired. But even significantly depressed fractures in babies (under 1) will usually remodel and heal far closer to the original round shape of the skull than it might in an adult because the bones are young and soft and still growing, so as they grow they grow back closer to the right shape.

For a depressed skull fracture to cause persistent neurological symptoms it would need to be very large and you would probably have had problems since the event. Alternatively you might have a small bit of brain that is irritated by the area and hence be getting partial seizures from it - but for it to cause eye and neck pain is a little difficult to imagine. You won't really get to find out of course because unless the skull deformity you have now is very large indeed (I'm sure it's not) no neurosurgeon would offer you an operation to try to improve it. So the bottom line is your symptoms are almost certainly unrelated and you're not going to find they become serious in the future either. Your skull will be perfectly strong in this area as well.

Best wishes