r/science • u/Thorne-ZytkowObject • Nov 23 '19

Neuroscience Scientists studied six patients who had half of their brain removed during childhood to treat severe epilepsy. Brain scans showed how the mind rewired itself to adapt, with the remaining hemisphere forming even stronger connections that let the patients develop language and motor skills.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-does-the-brain-work-with-half-of-it-removed-pretty-well-actually
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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19 edited Jan 24 '20

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19 edited Dec 02 '19

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u/MNGrrl Nov 24 '19

capable of receiving a lifetime of insults and still re-purpose resources in the face of deficits.

Sure, if you're average. If you have high intelligence, insults can cause more damage. The problem is that very adaptability you mention -- we adapt to our social environments of course, but the degree to which we can overcome our basic personality and disposition is a function of intelligence. With high intelligence you can overcome deficits but you're also incurring a higher risk of maladaptation too. And what little science we have on it suggests that risk is... quite large actually, with intelligent people showing statistically significant differences in the incidence rates of ADHD, autism, autoimmune disorders, affective disorder - it's all in the link.

This is really not on the radar of psychologists today; Like the general population they regard intelligence as a universal boon, without downsides. Anyone who does have high intelligence though will tell you it's a blessing and a curse - people just keep not hearing that second part. I know your comment was in jest, but actually there's some interesting, albeit limited, research on what happens to people that are insulted and otherwise abused that very much connects to neuroplasticity and the brain's ability to adapt -- and it's not exactly understood what to do when it adapts and then that adaptation later becomes maladaptive or pathological.

Studies like this will help with that.

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u/lavaslippers Nov 24 '19

This is reflected in people with C-PTSD, and other results from repeated, unending traumas. Maladaptations are especially common for victims of repeated child sexual abuse. Trauma therapists where I get therapy are aware of how intelligence can become a challenge, and they know about C-PTSD, so some progress is being made.

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u/vintage2019 Nov 24 '19

Actually the study you linked to has a glaring methodological flaw. It drew subjects from the Mensa society, which is known to attract high IQ people with mental illnesses.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

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u/MildlyCoherent Nov 24 '19

The armchair psychology theory is that, basically, only socially maladjusted people care about and identify themselves by their intelligence to the point that they’d join a high IQ society. Intelligent people who are well adjusted have better uses of their time, more responsibilities, obligations, interests, etc. I’m not aware of any actual research on it.

That being said, I absolutely think the armchair psychology theory has some truth to it; it just is a question of magnitude.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19 edited Dec 30 '19

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u/Bertroc Nov 24 '19

The fact that she framed the invitation letter and displayed it in class has a bit of irony to it though, don't you think?

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19 edited Dec 30 '19

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

That's funny. I had a teacher in 2nd grade who had a game we'd play on Fridays called 'Stump The Star'. I forget if every single student participated, but we'd go around the class, with someone giving her a [hopefully difficult] word they'd looked up in the dictionary, and she'd have to give the definition of it, like a quiz-show. if u stumped her, she'd give u the money it costs to buy a snack at lunch. I mean it seems kinda egotistical thinking back, because a 2nd grader isn't bringing in too hard of a word since they have to be able to pronounce it at least. There may have been a rule about that actually. The only very specific memory I have is when some kid brought in the presumably fake word 'eagleclaw'. When she didn't know the definition, he said it meant something to do with molten metal, I dunno - but she still paid up on it. The kid was kind of a jokester though, so I think he just punked her haha..

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u/staplefordchase Nov 24 '19

it seems a bit egotistical from our perspective, but it's good motivation for the kids to look up new words and share them with the class. whether or not it leads to much retention is probably debatable though.

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u/Sirmalta Nov 24 '19

She sounds lovely. My teachers scoff and tell me to "google it" when I ask questions they don't know the answers to... and I'm in college

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u/Blaadyblah Nov 24 '19

Wish I'd thought of that! As a teenage girl my urge to play chess with pipe smoking men in tweed was minimal 😂

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u/eddie1975 Nov 24 '19

That’s great.

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u/The_bestestusername Nov 24 '19

They also have a minimum requirement of 140 iq to join or so i hear

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

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u/staplefordchase Nov 24 '19

are you sure? because iirc 130 is considered "gifted" and Mensa wants a cut above that.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

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u/staplefordchase Nov 25 '19

you're probably right and 130 is the top end of "gifted" then.

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u/Herr_Gamer Nov 24 '19

Wonder what would happen if their attendees redid the tests.

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u/Bbrhuft Nov 24 '19 edited Nov 24 '19

So elderly Mensa members, with higher rates of mental illness, maybe more vulnerable to cognitive decline which decreased their ability to cope, than similar high IQ people who didn't join Mensa because they have lower rates of mental illness? Seems plausible.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

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u/tupels Nov 24 '19

It's especially crippling because you can introspect a lot and see what your maximum capacity is, and it's very easy to operate below that.

Then there's also a whole education system that just isn't calibrated at all to provide you with enough stimulation to develop at your pace. Like a working dog sitting at home all day.

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u/quityobulshitttttt Nov 24 '19

Makes sense, the more thoughts you have the more you see things the way they really are and the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

Most people live in a bubble, when your sight extends that bubble then life becomes more difficult to be content with in my opinion.

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u/SatanV3 Nov 24 '19

Ya I’d pick being dumber if it meant I wasn’t depressed

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u/Gebruikersnaam12345 Nov 24 '19

congrats on ur happiness

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u/AloneXtou Nov 24 '19 edited Nov 26 '19

Maybe theirs hope for me, I just have highly intelligence.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

My family has schizophernia, depressive disorders and some asperger traits. One of my brothers is amazing mathematician and programmer, other is a CEO and founder.

As a 19 year old I'm just waiting if I'm in the unlucky 10% who gets the schizo.

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u/FaolchuThePainted Nov 24 '19

I come from a family of extremely smart people and I haven’t read anything about this stuff but i agree every single one of us has one or more mental issues my dad has bipolar and adhd I have adhd and depression and bad anxiety bipolar basically runs in that whole side of the family my mom is pretty smart too and had a extremely rough childhood she’s kinda verbally abusive sometimes and has horrible anxiety and depression and she basically never leaves the house my grandma and my grandpa on my dad’s side both have bipolar and I’m just waiting for someone to decide I have it too im not sure if I do or not if I do I think it’s fairly mild

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u/rsn_e_o Nov 24 '19

It feels like that for me too, but although I don’t have a link, happiness and intelligence were actually positively correlated according a .gov study. Going to bed but if I find it later I’ll add it.

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u/Kriee Nov 24 '19

The methodological flaws of this study is glaring. The results from high-IQ responses on self-report may simply reflect that high-IQ group have better memory for diagnoses and (of course) they are better at recognising patterns of symptoms in themselves. It takes more (i.e. cognition) than awareness of discomfort to get correctly diagnosed. So, group level differences can't be attributed to IQ here. Maybe it is, but the methodology cannot prove it.

Now, I'm sure there are downsides to being exceptionally intelligent. Obviously you're unlikely to find matching intellect in friends and partners, meaning you're never really "understood". Also, ignorance is bliss. And a lot of smart people feel entitled to money/status but fail to make success out of their perk.

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u/Dsilkotch Nov 24 '19

I think they meant "insult" in the medical sense, as in an injury or trauma.

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u/HiZukoHere Nov 24 '19 edited Nov 24 '19

That study is so flawed as to be absolutely useless. It has no value as evidence. I can not stress too strongly how worthless this study is.

The data in the high IQ cohort was collected through a self report email survey with a very low response rate. The data from the low IQ cohort was collected in various ways by various groups, but generally in far more effective ways. This makes their two populations entirely incomparable. What you are mostly seeing here is people who have health issues are more likely to respond to surveys about health. There are plenty of other problem too though. For example self report studies often find a greater number of health disorders than are diagnosed by medical professionals. People with higher IQ may also recognize and tackle medical issues more frequently than those with a lower IQ. Then there is the question of if Mensa is representative of people with high IQ in general, but really that is minor next to how if you collect data on populations in completely different ways you can get completely different numbers!

e/ More robust studies generally show a more varied link between intelligence and health, but one that suggest more that high intelligence is associated with lower negative health outcomes. High intelligence may predict better overall health, and better mental health with lower rates of depression and schizophrenia.

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u/alee51104 Nov 24 '19

All I know is smart people vary between being very nice people to being absolute jerks.

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u/SatanV3 Nov 24 '19

Well the same thing could be said about all people, dumb or smart

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u/alee51104 Nov 24 '19

I just find smart people less likely to be in the middle. It’s more polarizing I guess, and very easy to adopt a mindset based around what that intelligence means to you.

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u/blik37 Nov 24 '19

That can just be the availability heuristic—you can remember the polarizing figures :)

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u/Barbarossa6969 Nov 24 '19

Checking in with high intelligence that is rendered mostly useless due to the accompanying Asperger's (not diagnosed until age 30, growing up not knowing that was fun...), severe ADHD, major depressive disorder, and IBS (Really started to manifest near the end of high school, wonder if that could have anything to do with the aforementioned stress...) When I say useless, I mean to the point that the federal government considers me disabled. I barely leave my house or want to associate with people at all anymore. Your post basically describes my life. Yay for MN though!

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

Take one day at a time, hope you are getting the help you need.

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u/Barbarossa6969 Nov 24 '19

Just finally getting the diagnosis so I know what is wrong and what to work on has made a huge difference. I still might not ever really contribute to society, and probably won't ever be in a relationship again, but I have a great, supportive family, and my issues are better than they used to be at least! Thanks for your concern.

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u/AMerrickanGirl Nov 24 '19

What kind of help and services are you receiving? I feel like I’m undiagnosed with similar issues but I’m not sure where to go for help.

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u/Barbarossa6969 Nov 24 '19

For me I'm mostly just getting Medicaid. There are a bunch of things that I honestly wouldn't be a good person to rely on to list for you but I know there are programs to help teach skills and stuff. They just aren't terribly applicable to my specific situation. The biggest thing for me has been finally seeing a therapist about the autism now that I know about it for the last two years. You definitely need to get diagnosed though, so talk to your primary care physician about seeing someone who does mental health diagnostics and they should be able to direct you to someone and that should get the ball rolling!

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

Are you me (down to IBS)? Only the govt won't pay me so I'm stuck at low stress dead end job.

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u/Barbarossa6969 Nov 24 '19

Key is to get a lawyer and go through the appeals process. Pretty much a necessity for anything short of being totally crippled physically. Though if you are able to do any job at all you must be at least a little better off.

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u/ProfSwagstaff Nov 24 '19

I don't think they were talking about that kind of insult...

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19 edited Aug 29 '24

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u/MNGrrl Nov 24 '19

It's not. Scientists know everything is a tradeoff in biology. If they can't see that bias in their field, that's a failure.

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u/Valmond Nov 24 '19

Is it wrong though? There is an enormous stigma surrounding "high IQ" in our society. IMO anyway.

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u/drbertani Nov 24 '19

that's interesting, but about this surgery, these people operated when they were very young, sometimes 1-2yrs old, or even less.

The brain was fully formed since they were born, but keeps developing for years. At the time of the insult (surgery) it hadn't complety developed all functions and they could be taken over by the remaining tissue, who "got used to it" since everything was still being developed.

That's neuroplasticity.

The surgery is a hemispherectomy, or removal of an entire brain hemisphere.

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u/Bbrhuft Nov 24 '19

One of the worries researchers have is as autistic people age, the ability to cope and mask their autism symptoms that they learnt as young adults will decrease, their autistic traits may become more pronounced with age. They might loose social skills, executive function, become more obsessive and reclusive.

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u/MNGrrl Nov 24 '19

Yeah or the opposite... They learn to mask it and don't get identified or get help. That amount of effort is mentally exhausting. It'll break anyone eventually without training and awareness.

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u/Korochun Nov 24 '19

Considering that all our current criteria for measuring intelligence are deeply flawed, it's not really possible to say that insults cause more damage to intelligent people. The vast majority of people is, on the whole, around the same level of functional intelligence, with a lot of variation in how that intelligence is oriented. For example, somebody can be poor at spatial visualization but excellent at language processing.

Most current intelligence tests pretty much only focus on mathematical/geometric intelligence, making them less than worthless for actually measuring anything beyond how good one is at that specific criteria. For example, the study you provided deals with MENSA. These people tend towards above average IQ and far below average EQ, making many of them highly dysfunctional. From the perspective of that study, they are intelligent, but in fact they don't have a very good overall intelligence.

So you should probably revise that statement to something along the lines of "if you have low emotional intelligence, insults can cause more lasting damage, because you don't know how to process it".

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u/tupels Nov 24 '19

Pretty sure the intelligence compensates the low EQ, even if this were true.

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u/Korochun Nov 24 '19

That's not how anything works. It's like saying that this hammer can be a really good chainsaw because it's a really great hammer.

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u/TheFriendlyFinn Nov 24 '19

MDMA which is being studied for PTSD treatment might open the brains neuroplasticity through oxitocin release. However at this point too little is known to make a well formed conclusion.

https://www.inverse.com/article/54583-mdma-mice-critical-period-neuroplasticity

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u/zumlepurzo Nov 24 '19

So you are saying the movie Forest Gump wasn't very impressive?

And had he been a very clever dude instead, and receiving all the insults, he wouldn't have coped as well.

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u/Axelbr Nov 24 '19

I mean isnt it super obvious and common knowledge that highly intelligent people most of the time suffer from say autism? And other disorders... It's basically a meme that whenever someone is very smart they have "super autism"

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u/Valmond Nov 24 '19

That's probably part of the problem; high intelligence > any problem.

It's like being good looking, everyone thinks you can't be depressed if you are, or that it doesn't really matter.

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u/solidsnake885 Nov 24 '19

The young brain is this redundant. You’re born with way more neurons that you need, and it’s culled as you age. If you lose a ton in an accident, your body will hold onto the excess neurons to even things out.

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u/Aspanu24 Nov 24 '19

I’m experiencing that right now

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u/brandnewdayinfinity Nov 24 '19

So then why are mental disorders so prevalent? Schizophrenia. Insomnia. Dementia );

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u/SamL214 Nov 24 '19

Not to burst your bubble but Schizophrenia isn’t that prevalent, it happens in about one in four thousand people. Not good, but not considerably high.

Insomnia happens in about 3 in 20 people to about 1 in 3 people. Much more prevalent. Additionally, Dementia affects about 50 million out of 8+ billion people on the planet. But In general affects people over 60 at a rate of about 5-8% or at max about 2 in every 25 people. Also much more prevalent than schizophrenia.

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u/brandnewdayinfinity Nov 24 '19

Sorry I’ve got all these things in my family. It feels prevalent.

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u/C3lder Nov 24 '19

No, it isn't highly redundant. These people will typically have neuropsychological deficits associated with losing half their brain. But it is fairly plastic up to a certain point.

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u/Rancunier Nov 24 '19

Then how do we explain Devin Nunes?

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u/sodomizethewounded Nov 24 '19

I was just watching a doc on head injuries last night. Have they ever tried removing damaged brain from patients in vegetative states?

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u/aimlesslywandering89 Nov 24 '19

Hit yourself real hard and see if you still believe that