Despite having lost much of his brain, this child retains all his abilities

The brain has a great ability to adapt, what is called neuroplasticity; proof is the case of a child who, four years ago, removed a large part of his brain and, despite this, managed to retain all his abilities.

The child in question, whose initials you are, a third of his right cerebral hemisphere has been removed, including structures that are of great importance to the sense of sight.

However, according to researchers, from the University of Washington, the left hemisphere of his brain was able to assume the visual functions normally associated with the right side of the brain.

Suddenly, you began to have seizures at the age of four, which progressively worsened; taking into account that the pharmacological treatment and other therapies did not seem to have any effect, they performed a lobectomy.

This surgery, in which the right lobe of the brain was removed, was performed when the child was 7 years old; in particular, they removed one-third of its right hemisphere, including the occipital lobe, where visual stimuli are processed in the brain, and most of its temporal lobe, where auditory stimuli are treated.

The child is almost 11 years old and no longer has convulsions, however, he is unable to see the left side of his field of perception. This therefore takes into account cerebral laterality, that is, the left hemisphere is responsible for the treatment of the stimuli on the right side, while the left hemisphere processes the stimuli coming from the right side. .

Therefore, you do not do it. Having the right side of your occipital lobe, you have to move your eyes and your head to capture the visual stimuli coming from the left side, so that your brain can treat what you observe.

On this, according to Marlene Behrmann, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, since none of her eyes have a real problem, she can still get information from the left side, however, missing a good deal of the right hemisphere, this information is lost, since there is nowhere

To evaluate this situation, three years after the surgery, the researchers performed behavioral tests, such as searching for specific objects. ICEs in disordered images and detect subtle changes between images, while observing the functioning of the brain through a functional MRI.

Beyond the inability of the child to see the left side of his world, scientists have concluded that his brain works as well as any child of his age, keeping intact its cognitive functions and the processing of visual stimuli.

In fact, no change was observed in his ability to visual recognition, as his performance was consistent with what is expected for his age. On the other hand, reading proficiency remained above average for their age, before and after surgery.

On this point, the experts explain that there are structures of the cerebral system that develop early, remaining stable in the

In this sense, both hemispheres have the ability to detect objects, so that their right hemisphere retains these tasks despite the absence of the right hemisphere. However, each hemisphere has certain peculiarities, while the right specializes in the detection of faces, the left leads the processing of texts.

But, in the case of the UD, it was discovered that its left hemisphere assumed the task of detection

Thus, in functional magnetic resonance images, it was observed that both functions appeared side by side. side by side in the hemisphere. left brain

This is an excellent example of brain plasticity, as it represents important evidence of how neurons form new connections in the brain, assuming that new tasks depend on the demands of adaptation.

Many things remain to be studied, however, it is known that neurons are beginning to develop new ways to interact to compensate for losses, as in the case of You, in which the left hemisphere has assumed tasks typically associated with the left hemisphere of the brain.

Therefore, scientists recommend to develop future research to study this phenomenon at the cellular level, taking into account, in addition, the differences of

Reference: Successful reorganization of the selective visual cortex of category after occipito-temporal lobectomy in the child, (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2018.06.099