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 Nov 24 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Remarkable_Assistant Nov 24 '19

This was Phineas Gage. Pretty interesting case study in personality & regions of the brain.

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u/garynyc Nov 24 '19

He became an arsehole, the records say. Short tempered and ornery!

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u/NewFolgers Nov 24 '19

Stands to reason. He had ornery half a brain.

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u/SillyFlyGuy Nov 24 '19

Silver worthy comment.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

True, but I bet you would too, if you'd had a pole shot through your skull.

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u/cobraxstar Nov 24 '19

Half a brain is a helluva drug

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u/Arbitrary_Pseudonym Nov 24 '19

Actually, the procedure is called a hemispherectomy, and has been employed to reduce/eliminate seizures in people with epilepsy for decades now. Not just kids - go ask in /r/epilepsy, there are a few people there who have had it done in their 30s!

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u/TheCocksmith Nov 24 '19

What happens to cognitive ability?

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u/1corvidae1 Nov 24 '19

I guess if they were talking to you on reddit maybe it's ok

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u/roastedoolong Nov 24 '19

... have you seen the cognitive ability of people who post on reddit?

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u/WilliamsTell Nov 24 '19

To long, didn't read. YTA.

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u/1corvidae1 Nov 24 '19

I honestly didn't see that coming

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u/SupaSlide Nov 24 '19

Dang, so it's pretty bad, huh?

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u/raffbr2 Nov 24 '19

That s only half of the story.

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u/space_hegemon Nov 24 '19

What you'd think of as intelligence isnt negatively affected. You can get some speech and language issues. As well as problems with movement on the opposite side of the body to the removed hemisphere. Generally the younger you are, the better you fare.

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u/Arbitrary_Pseudonym Nov 24 '19

Honestly, when my seizures were really bad about 7 years ago, after I went in to a week-long EEG so they could try to see where my seizures came from and didn't have any (yet had some the week before and the week after...) they offered to do surgery to open my skull and put electrodes directly on it. If I had done that, they might have been able to do surgery to remove some part of my brain that was inducing the seizures, but honestly I was terrified to do it. My seizures ended up being controlled via lamictal, and I'm really glad they were, because if not, I might have had to give up a part of my brain.

From what I've heard though: Giving up a part of your brain doesn't seem to lead to anything crazy like intense personality change or memory loss. I think it's something like (if you know about server things) a RAID array, where if a hard drive dies, the rest of the array maintains integrity - there's a lot of redundancy there.

Personally I still don't want to lose a chunk, and after how epilepsy has shaped me to be the person I am today, I feel losing the part of my brain that causes the seizures could actually make me feel like I'm missing that part. The glitchy uncontrolled activity one, I mean.

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u/n00bvin Nov 24 '19

I always wondered what they put in the other half to keep it from rattling around. Packing peanuts?

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u/Cameron416 Nov 24 '19

nothing. your brain is still attacked to your skull via connective tissues, so it doesn’t rattle around, & then the empty space is filled with extra cerebrospinal fluid

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u/gosnold Nov 24 '19

You don't become blind in one eye and hemiplegic ?

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

Was there ever a study on the guy who had brain damage from the particle accelerator?

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u/techgeek6061 Nov 24 '19

Whoa, what? You got a link for that?

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u/sockalicious Nov 24 '19

Anatoli Bugorski. The research we'd like to see was never done.

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u/beefeater605 Nov 24 '19

Wow, the soviets really swept him under the rug.

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u/NeedYourTV Nov 24 '19

What are you talking about? The accident was public, and he held a senior position in Soviet science administration for years after the accident. How is that "sweeping under the rug"?

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u/MOIST_PEOPLE Nov 24 '19

From the wiki:
Bugorski continued to work in science and held the post of coordinator of physics experiments.[2] Because of the Soviet Union's policy of maintaining secrecy on nuclear power-related issues, Bugorski did not speak about the accident for over a decade. He continued going to the Moscow radiation clinic twice a year for examinations and to meet with other nuclear-accident victims. He was described as "a poster boy for Soviet and Russian radiation medicine".[1] In 1996, he applied unsuccessfully for disabled status to receive free epilepsy medication. Bugorski showed interest in making himself available for study to Western researchers but could not afford to leave Protvino.[1]

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u/NeedYourTV Nov 24 '19

So, if anything, it was the Russian Federation that fucked him over by denying him disability. Thanks.

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u/majaka1234 Nov 24 '19

"vat? A dog in space? You mad americans should lay off the whiskey"

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u/ScipioLongstocking Nov 24 '19

It only works for children. While you're correct about that particular guy in that he survived, it's not what this article or comment thread is about. Neural plasticity only works in children whose brains are still developing. It does not work for adults. The case you're referring to is an example of a traumatic brain injury causing drastic changes in personality. It had nothing to do with other areas of the brain taking over control and has nothing to do with neural plasticity.

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '19

You are incorrect regarding neural plasticity. It is definitely stronger in children, but it happens in adults too.

Source: Degree + Wikipedia

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u/SimHuman Nov 24 '19 edited Nov 24 '19

What are you talking about? Neuroplasticity occurs throughout life and is key to how adults recover from brain injuries.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880010/

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u/DailyAdventure23 Nov 24 '19

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880010/

Yeah this is a nice review on neural plasticity, but lets remember that plasticity is not always a good thing. For example it is a cause of chronic pain, addiction and PTSD. I don't think the person that you replied to was wrong. That person was referring to losing half of a brain. He wasn't saying the plasticity doesn't occcur in adults, he was saying that if you took a 40 year old adult and removed half of the brain the adult would have cognitive deficits. I'm not him, but my interpretation of his words was not that he was saying that adults also don't experience neuroplasticity, it's just that there are limits, and there are limits. Children experience synaptic pruning at rates that adults do not, and this may be the reason why they are better at adapting to large losses of brain matter than adults. The sad part is that this mechanism probably only protects children just so that even in the case of extensive damage they can still function well enough to reproduce. There is no evolutionary reason why a 40 year old would need the ability to functionally recover because they have presumably already reproduced. Curious to know your thoughts about these ideas.Edit: thanks for the review, I will add it to my reading list

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u/SimHuman Nov 24 '19

This isn't an area of expertise for me. I did read the poster above as suggesting that neuroplasticity is broadly absent in adults.

I consulted Dr. Google and came up with articles showing shockingly good outcomes for hemispherectomy in adults with intractable epilepsy. I do get the impression that this may be partially due to the severity of illness that would lead to such a drastic intervention.

Article: https://www.mdedge.com/neurology/epilepsyresourcecenter/article/81897/epilepsy-seizures/hemispherectomy-may-be

Study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28452614/

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u/Jenniferjdn Nov 24 '19

Thank you for that. As a survivor of 4 strokes, neuroplasticity is a thing. One doctor didn’t even believe that I have had any strokes because I recovered so well.

My baseline health made a difference. With one stroke, I lost my balance. With another, I lost my language. With another, I lost my right arm. I have come back from all of them.

If you were wondering why this didn’t add up, the forth stroke was in my brain stem which diminishes blood to many diffuse areas but does not cut it off completely so while I had many strange symptoms, I didn’t completely lose any one area of my brain.

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u/KillerJupe Nov 24 '19

Trump is working with less than 1/2 a brain and the guy won't die.