{"id":81223,"date":"2018-08-01T23:22:22","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T06:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/boy-who-had-a-chunk-of-brain-removed-turned-out-healthy"},"modified":"2018-08-04T10:00:59","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T17:00:59","slug":"boy-who-had-a-chunk-of-brain-removed-turned-out-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/boy-who-had-a-chunk-of-brain-removed-turned-out-healthy","title":{"rendered":"Boy Who Had a Chunk of Brain Removed Turned Out Healthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The strange case of a young boy who had a large section of his brain removed shows just how good the human brain is at repairing itself \u2014 or at least making the most of a tough situation. Beyond being just a lump of tissue that named itself<\/a>, the brain is also a kind of wonderful, wet computer that\u2019s capable of rewiring itself in response to new experiences like taking drugs<\/a>, forming new memories<\/a>, and making friends<\/a>. In extreme cases, like that of a 6-year-old boy who had about one-sixth of his brain removed, the brain can even adapt to getting cut apart.<\/p>\n

Doctors documented the boy\u2019s case in a paper<\/a> published July 31 in the journal Cell Reports<\/em>. They report that despite the boy having a significant portion of his brain removed, including the portion associated with visual processing, the boy has developed into a healthy 10-year-old. And while he still can\u2019t see in the left side of his field of vision, his brain has reconfigured some of the lost connections so that he is able to recognize people\u2019s faces. All in all, the doctors see it as a successful procedure, as well as evidence of the brain\u2019s plasticity \u2014 its ability to adapt \u2014 when it comes to higher-order functions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is essentially blind to information on the left side of the world. Anything to the left of his nose is not transmitted to his brain, because the occipital lobe in his right hemisphere is missing and cannot receive this information,\u201d Marlene Behrmann, Ph.D.<\/a>, a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and the corresponding author on the paper, tells New Scientist<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The strange case of a young boy who had a large section of his brain removed shows just how good the human brain is at repairing itself \u2014 or at least making the most of a tough situation. Beyond being just a lump of tissue that named itself, the brain is also a kind of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1523,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81330,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81223\/revisions\/81330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}