If you watched Kim Kardashian’s latest health update and felt a jolt at the phrase “holes on the brain”, you were not alone. It is a term that sounds catastrophic. Yet on the type of scan she had, a hole does not mean missing tissue. It signals a region working at a lower level because it is receiving less blood and oxygen, often due to age, stress or other long-term influences. That distinction matters. True holes look very different and usually arise from severe disease.
In footage from her reality show The Kardashians, her doctor points out “holes” on a brain scan, describing them as areas of “low activity”. These were found on a single-photon emission tomography, or Spect, scan, which uses a small dose of radioactive tracer and a specialised camera to show how well different parts of the brain are functioning. Around the same time she was also diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, discovered during an MRI scan. The aneurysm is a structural weakness in a blood vessel and is unrelated to the low-activity patches seen on Spect.
