Tatiana and Krista Hogan are twin sisters, who are currently four years old. The first thing most people would notice about these two girls is that they are conjoined at the head. Despite this, they each have a very distinct and separate personality from each other. There is some talk that the girls may, someday, be featured on a reality television show, based on their family.
The term conjoined twin is relatively new. In the past, the most commonly used term for this condition was “Siamese twins”. This could be in reference to two famous brothers, Chang and Eng. They were born in Siam, (which is now called Thailand), and were connected to each other by a band of skin that attached to two brothers together at their sternum. Today, the more correct term, conjoined twins, is used.
Conjoined twins are statistically rare. This only happens in one out of every 50,000 pregnancies. Not all of those pregnancies result in live births, which changes the number of conjoined twins to 1 in 250,000. In some cases, the parents of the twins make the decision to surgically separate the twins, so they can physically live as two, separate, individuals, but this comes at the risk of losing one or both twins. It can also result in having one twin become paralyzed. There are some conjoined twins that cannot be surgically separated at all.
Tatiana and Krista Hogan are craniopagus twins, which means that they are conjoined at their heads. There are only around 2.5 million twins of this type, and most do not survive for very long (often due to heart problems).
The girls have a unique neural anatomy. Scans of their brains reveal what appears to be an attenuated line that stretches between the brain of one girl, and the brain of her sister. This has been called a “thalamic bridge”. There are some signs that the girls are sharing sensory input with each other.
One can see the television, and the other giggles at the images her sister sees. One eats food that the other can taste, too. If one of the girls has her eyes covered, and her sister is shown a toy, the girl who cannot physically see the toy with her own two eyes can identify what the toy is, when asked. Also, like many other conjoined twins, Tatiana and Krista seem to have developed some system that helps them figure out who is “in charge” at any given time.
The twins, who will be starting kindergarten in the fall, are living with a house full of relatives. They have a younger sister, an older brother, and an older sister. The siblings live with their mother, and the father of the twins. Their maternal grandparents, three cousins, an aunt, and an uncle also share the same home.
A talent manager named Chuck Harris has been helping the Hogan family to pursue a reality television show that would be based on the entire family, (not just Tatiana and Krista). This could, potentially, help the family with their financial difficulties. In the past, National Geographic featured the girls in a documentary that followed them through the first year of their lives.
Image by puuikibeach on Flickr