How The Zika Virus Damages The Brain

A few weeks ago, Dr. James Bale saw a series of MRI images in a medical journal of MRI scans of babies infected with Zika in the womb. They scans showed something Bale had seen only a few times in his 30-year career: a phenomenon called fetal brain disruption sequence.

 As the fetus's brain starts to grow, it creates pressure, which pushes on the skull and causes it to grow. But if something stops brain growth — such as a virus — pressure on the skull drops. And the skull can collapse down onto the brain. The skin around the head continues to grow, Bale says. So the baby is born with wrinkles of skin at the back of the neck and a tiny skull. In some cases, the baby's head is as small as an orange, or about half the size of a healthy baby's head.

"It's quite remarkable what the Zika virus is doing to the brain of young infants," Bale says...
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/05/11/477648872/how-the-zika-virus-damages-the-brain?ft=nprml&f=1001