These two young people are delightful young girls from th USA .Are they one soul with two brains or two souls sharing the same body?      This article or section contains too much jargon and may need simplification or further explanation.
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Abigail and Brittany Hensel

Brittany kisses Abigail on the cheek in this photo on this 1996 cover of LIFE.
Born      March 7, 1990 (1990-03-07) (age 18)
Carver County, Minnesota, U.S.A.

Abigail "Abby" Loraine Hensel and Brittany "Britty" Lee Hensel (born 7 March 1990, Carver County, Minnesota, United States), are highly symmetric dicephalic parapagus conjoined twins, and further, tribrachius, bipedus. They have two spines and separate half-sacrums, which converge distally within a slightly broad pelvis. They each control and sense their corresponding arm and leg; a third, rudimentary central arm was amputated in infancy.

They are two well-adjusted, vigorous and even athletic people whose complicated but high-functioning anatomy precludes separation. They show a remarkable degree of overall proprioception and they have a strong sense of selfhood, with a balanced blend of individualism and teamwork.
Contents
[hide]

   * 1 Biography
         o 1.1 Media appearances
   * 2 Adulthood
   * 3 Inventory of organ distribution
   * 4 Filmography
   * 5 References

[edit] Biography

Abigail and Brittany Hensel's parents are Patty (a registered nurse) and Mike Hensel (a carpenter and landscaper). The twins have a younger brother named Dakota (Koty) and a younger sister named Morgan. Brittany's head is about 15 degrees laterally outward, while Abby's head tilts laterally outward about 5 degrees, causing Brittany to appear to be of slightly less stature. They were raised in New Germany, Minnesota and attend Lutheran High School affiliated with the Missouri Synod in Mayer, Minnesota. At age 12, they underwent surgery at Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare to correct scoliosis and to expand their chest cavity to prevent future difficulties with breathing.[1]

Each of the twins manages one side of their conjoined body and they are uncannily ambidextrous and coordinated in both their arms and legs when both hands or both legs are required. By coordinating their efforts, they are able to walk, run and ride a bicycle normally — all tasks that they learned at a normal speed. They each write with their corresponding hand. They can together type on a computer keyboard at a normal speed. Their sense of touch is partitioned each to their own body half which shades off at the midsagittal plane such that there is a small amount of overlap at their midline. They enjoy hobbies and sports including volleyball, kickball, swimming, basketball, and cycling. They also play the piano and are avid computer users. They enjoy softball, digital photography, the internet, social networking, and talking on the telephone. When they go to the cinema, they pay for two tickets.[2]

[edit] Media appearances

In April 1996, they appeared in Joined for Life, a documentary produced by Advanced Medical, distributed on the Discovery Health Channel. They also appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on April 8 and April 29, 1996. In April 1996, the twins were featured on the cover of Life under the caption "One Body, Two Souls", and their daily lifestyle was depicted in the corresponding article titled The Hensels' Summer. Life followed up with another story in September 1998. In 2003, an updated story of them at age 11 (filmed in 2001) was published in Time and again in Life. They appeared in a follow-up documentary on The Learning Channel on December 17, 2006 filmed around the time of their 16th birthday, in which they discuss dealing with puberty and getting their driver's licenses. In the summer of 2006 they had a holiday in Texas at the home of a family whose dicephalus twin girls had died at a few hours old.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

[edit] Adulthood

They both successfully passed their driver's license exam, both the written and driving tests. They had to take the tests twice, once for each twin. Abby controls the pedals, radio, heat, defogger etc., Brittany controls the turn signal and lights and together they control the steering wheel. They are both on track to graduate in 2008.

In conversation, they are clearly distinct persons, with distinct likes and dislikes. Despite sharing a body, the twins preferences in food, clothing color, etc. differ. Some of their clothes are altered by their seamstress so that they have two separate necklines in order to emphasize their individuality. They negotiate what they will wear each day. They will usually have separate meals, but sometimes will share a single meal for the sake of convenience (e.g., each takes a bite of the same hamburger). Abigail is better at math and Brittany better at spelling. For tasks such as responding to e-mail, they type and respond as one, anticipating each other’s feelings with little verbal communication between them. In such cases as the latter, their choice of grammatical person is to use the first person singular out of habit when they agree, but when their responses do differ, they use their names in the third person singular.

Their continued good health is of some concern because only four known sets of conjoined twins who share an undivided torso and two legs have ever survived into adulthood, and most have congenital heart defects or other organ anomalies. None have shown up in the Hensels' case. They have so far had no desire to make themselves available for any medical studies. They intend to make a rather limited number of media appearances in the future, primarily just to appease the world's curiosity and to reduce the number of people who might otherwise be taken aback by their novel body configuration. They would prefer not to be stared at or photographed by strangers while going about their private lives. They expect to date, get married and have children. They hope that by providing some information about themselves they will be able to lead otherwise fairly typical social lives as together they continue to make new friends.[10][11]

[edit] Inventory of organ distribution

Most of Abigail's and Brittany's shared organs are located at or below the level of the navel and their merging coccyx.

   * 2 heads
   * 2 completely separate spinal cords
   * 2 spines with ribs bridging the two columns
   * 2 arms—originally 3, but rudimentary central arm was surgically removed, leaving central shoulder blade in place
   * 1 broad ribcage, with surgery to correct scoliosis and expand the pleural cavities
   * 2 breasts
   * 2 highly fused sternums, traces of bridging ribs
   * 3 lungs (medial lungs moderately fused, not involving Brittany's upper right lobe); three pleural cavities
   * 1 diaphragm with well-coordinated involuntary breathing, slight central defect
   * 2 hearts in a shared circulatory system— nutrition, respiration, medicine taken by either affects both
   * 2 stomachs
   * 2 gallbladders
   * 1 liver - enlarged and elongated right lobe
   * Y-shaped small intestine which experiences a slightly spastic double peristalsis at the juncture
   * 1 large intestine with one colon
   * 2 left kidneys, 1 right kidney
   * 1 bladder
   * 1 set of reproductive organs
   * 2 separate half-sacrums, which converge distally
   * 1 slightly broad pelvis
   * 2 legs

Note: the term diprosopus is sometimes equated with parapagus, but this can lead to confusion because, obviously, there is no craniofacial nor neck involvement in the Hensels' lateral fusion

Greetings,

The state where I live had two celebrities of the same type early in the 1900's. These two men lived to an old age, had families, careers, and homes of their own. They took turns living at one home or the other. Importantly they had emotional support from their communities.
Their minds were clear and they realized their joint fate. When the first one died, the second went into seclusion and died shortly afterward.

We have been discussing the brain as a receiver or recepter of information from Universal Mind. Since these cases of conjoined twoins, each had their own brain and were loved , and so avoided the emotional trauma that might have distorted their souls, then it seems that they are two souls, successfully dealing with an unusual predicament.

I think all brave souls are given an opportunity to show others new possibilities,
to broaden human thought so that it doesn't get too narrowed into common, narrow channels. There's lots of ways of doing this ---through creativity (invent or design a needed something 'outside the box,') or by overcoming limitations that others accept as disastrous.
:-? I can think of alot more ways I'd try before I'd have the courage to try this one.
Much PUL to the Hensel twins.  :)

Bets

What profoundly cooperative spirits, to lovingly inhabit one body, offering each other a complete life, functioning both independently and as a unit. I am completely speechless (almost).

I am reminded that human beings are incredibly adaptable. When recently reading about the passing of a woman who had inhabited an iron lung all her life until she died in her 60's I was astonished at her bright, clear spirit as she spoke of what a good life she had experienced -- and she could not move her body at all. She was basically a living mind, except that she enjoyed dinner parties and other pleasures one might not have anticipated. She had many friends.

I feel awed when I read about these individuals and their caretakers. If we look around, we can see many examples of such creative, brave and pioneering people. They are all around us, when we notice them.

love, blink

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hensel_twins2.jpg

Here is the link to their photo