Mutations in the progranulin (GRN) gene are commonly associated with FTD, which results in damage to the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.
As long as they are mutually compatible, Anne could receive lobes from Brian's and Charlie's fathers, Brian could get transplants from Anne's and Charlie's mothers, and Charlie could breathe through the lungs of Anne's dad and Brian's mum (see figure).
Healthy people have five lung lobes: two in the left lung and three in the right.
Most patients suffering from cystic fibrosis have two failing lung lobes that need to be replaced.
Anne's parents give their lung lobes to Brian, Brian's to Anne, and they both live to run the marathon.But what if Anne and Brian are only compatible with one of the other's parents, but there is another patient, Charlie?
In March the American government is expected to launch an attempt to solve biology's most mysterious problem: how the brain works.The Brain Activity Map, as this project seems likely to be called, will study how the brain is wired up at all levels, from the connections between individual nerve cells to the neuronal superhighways between its various lobes and ganglia.
But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure.
But brain images taken during testing showed "hyperactivation and hypoconnectivity" in the retired players' frontal lobes, correlated with how many times the players had been removed from games.
The various lobes of a real brain sport different mixtures of neurons.
Scoville himself had performed frontal lobotomies, though he was dissatisfied with the way they blunted his patients' emotions.In some ways H.M. was a product of that dissatisfaction, because Scoville had been working on a new, experimental operation, and he decided to try it on H.M. He would remove his medial temporal lobes (one on each side of the brain), the presumed origin of his seizures.
Lung exchange is an odd market: instead of money, patients look to swap their donors' lung lobes for more acceptable ones.
