A boy with only one-sixth of his brain left shows normal cognitive function and an "above average" reading level.
One of the greatest ironies of science is how little we understand our own brains. In the last century, amazing advances have been made in the field of neuroscience, but the work of the "big melon" remains very mysterious.
One such mystery is whether this “big melon” is really responsible for everything, whether our brain is a generator of consciousness or an amplifier, or it simply has some level of executive function.
A fascinating aspect of the human brain is the theory of neuroplasticity: our brains can reroute neurons and form new connections in response to repetitive stimuli or injury. Different parts of the human brain are responsible for different tasks, we have the main upper level, divided in our brain into the right and left hemispheres.
As we learned, our right hemisphere is responsible for the left side of our motor functions and our left eye, as well as for the creative or abstract side of our thinking, while our left hemisphere is responsible for the right side of our motor functions and our logical, analytical way of thinking. … There are other departments, different areas of the brain with different functions, everything is well and logically structured.
But what happens when a part of the brain is damaged or even removed? There are countless tragic stories of people who have suffered brain damage and have decreased cognitive function or nearly disappeared. Less well known are the stories of people with traumatic brain injury, whose brains compensated for their neuroplasticity and transferred the damaged parts of the brain to other areas. Such an incident happened to a boy who is referred to as UD
According to a study published in the journal Cell Reports, U. D began to suffer from seizures when he was four years old. The seizures got worse. Medicines and various other treatments did not help him, and his parents were forced to resort to drastic measures.
Three years ago in the United States, an operation known as a lobectomy was performed and a third of his right hemisphere, the region responsible for processing the left side of his vision, was removed. His seizures were gone. He now has a blind spot on his left side, due to the removal of the brain, but, surprisingly, nothing else seems to have suffered.
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Three years after this surgery, UD is showing normal cognitive function and he maintains his “above average” reading level. Thanks to neuroplasticity, the left hemisphere of his brain took over the work of the remote part of his brain. Even the additional load taken by his left hemisphere does not interfere with his normal work.
The left / right brain split extends to how we process visual information. Our left brain vision center processes words and other data-like information, while our right brain vision center processes how we read faces and emotional information.
Doctors were concerned that the UD brain would have to choose between processing words or processing faces because one lobe does twice the work, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The left lobe of his brain can do the job twice as fast without losing efficiency, and doctors don't know why.
According to Marlene Behrmann, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, when asked how it works:
“I would like to answer at the cellular level. [Neurons] can interact with neighboring neurons in new ways, [they] can grow new connections.”
Doctors are unsure if the young age of the UD is responsible for this extreme example of neuroplasticity, but they suspect it has something to do with the process. It is well known that young brains are more malleable than old ones and can form new connections more quickly and easily. However, it is a testament to how powerful the human brain is and how much we have yet to learn.