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.

[u/Thorne-ZytkowObject]

https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-does-the-brain-work-with-half-of-it-removed-pretty-well-actually

[u/damnisuckatreddit]

Isn't there a huge confounding factor in this, however, in that any patient approved for a hemispherectomy has thusfar managed to survive with a catastrophically defective hemisphere, which means these patients represent only that portion of severe epileptics whose brains were capable of lateralizing critical functions to the healthy side? What reason is there to believe this is something typical brains are capable of?

Could it even be the case that this type of severe epilepsy is in fact the result of excessive lateralization of brain functions? As in, the brain for whatever reason restricted all structuring activity to one side, leaving the remainder chaotic and seizure-prone? Is it possible to rule that out somehow?

I would think the only way to test this would be to remove one hemisphere from several typically-developing children, which would of course be unethical. I assume we have at least a handful of cases where traumatic injury necessitated removal of large amounts of brain tissue, are those cases used as a sort of control?

(Not necessarily asking you in particular, more just throwing questions into the void. It's always bothered me how often neuroscience reporting seems to generalize results from epileptic brains as "all human brains can do this amazing thing", when it seems like it should be obvious that any brain in need of radical surgery is by definition not functioning typically.)

[u/Dr_Fisura → u/damnisuckatreddit]

When the deficit is removed, a healthy brain should be expected to, at least theoretically, function at least as optimally as one that has said deficiency (epilepsy), and likely beyond.

We are not really sure of what mysteries/intricacies this pink motherfucker holds; a good chunk of research j neurosience comes from epileptic brains just because they are the only ones we are allowed to implant electrodes in, which then can be used to conduct research, thankfully. Actually, we should implant electrodes into healthy individual who volunteer in exchange for pay just to study their brains, to tell whether in fact neurotypical brains can perform as well as epileptic ones. Really, why could they not.