Brain imaging of a test child who underwent hemisphere resection in his childhood
Only half of the brain can survive, and the brain works well? This alarming situation does exist.
To treat severe and stubborn seizures, some patients underwent hemisphere resection during childhood. After undergoing such a large-scale resection, too many patients still have considerable recovery in their cognitive and motor abilities.
These half-brained people have shown the brain's powerful plasticity, but researchers don't know exactly how their brain is restored and reshaped. Recently, a study published in Cell Report provided new clues to this problem. The researchers performed magnetic resonance scans of six subjects who underwent hemisphere resection in their childhood, and compared their neural connections to healthy control brains. The results show that although the connection patterns are similar, the connections between different functional networks become stronger in the brains of patients with hemisphere resection.