Culturebox: Your Head on My Shoulder

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twins Your Head on My Shoulder Parasitic twins and other half-formed siblings. By Jesse Bering Updated Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011, at 6:54 AM ET In a small village in India, not far from Mumbai, there is a young man upon whose head sits the malformed head of his own stone-faced twin. If one imagines, say, a woman balancing a jug of water perfectly upright on the top of her skull, this is the basic configuration of the man's gross anatomy--a cranial redundancy with both heads facing forward. "As the patient had grown up," observed physician Ritesh Kansal and his colleagues when the double-headed 20-year-old first stepped into their outpatient facility, "the additional head had [similarly] grown in size." I've seen photos, and while the extra head is scarcely human in appearance, it does possess a fully developed nose, mouth, and ears. (Its eyes are closed.) In fact--and I'm loath to admit this, given the rampant superstition already surrounding the case--the second face bears a faint resemblance to a stereotypical smiling Buddha. The young man appears to have gotten the lion's share of the looks in the pair, but given the circumstances, even a handsome face isn't much consolation. Still, as the physicians reported in 2010, he refused to have an MRI to explore surgical removal of the extra head, not because he'd grown attached to it--ahem--or because he was afraid of disrupting the shared vasculature, but rather because of his religious convictions. (Without the benefit of imaging, it's unclear whether this particular extra head held any brain matter, as certain others do.) To continue reading, click here. Jesse Bering teaches at Wells College and is the author of The Belief Instinct. He is a frequent contributor to Slate and writes the "Bering in Mind" column for scientificamerican.com. His next book will be on the curiously scandalous science of human sexuality. Follow him on Twitter @JesseBering or try adding him on Facebook. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Do the Sons of Dictators Get Punished for Their Father's Sins? The Most Elaborate and Mesmerizing Farms on FarmVille Don't Get Intimidated by Kids and Their Internet Savvy	Advertisement
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