Helen Santoro writes in the NY Times (archived) about her difficult birth and unexpected development:
In my first few hours of life, after six bouts of halted breathing, the doctors rushed me to the neonatal intensive care unit [… and] rolled my pink, 7-pound-11-ounce body into a brain scanner. Lo and behold, there was a huge hole on the left side, just above my ear. I was missing the left temporal lobe, a region of the brain involved in a wide variety of behaviors, from memory to the recognition of emotions, and considered especially crucial for language. […] They told [my mother] I would never speak and would need to be institutionalized. […]
But month after month, I surprised the experts, meeting all of the typical milestones of children my age. I enrolled in regular schools, excelled in sports and academics. The language skills the doctors were most worried about at my birth — speaking, reading and writing — turned out to be my professional passions.
My case is highly unusual but not unique. Scientists estimate that thousands of people are, like me, living normal lives despite missing large chunks of our brains. Our myriad networks of neurons have managed to rewire themselves over time. But how?
She proceeds to give a history of research in this area:
For more than a century, the left hemisphere of the brain has been considered the center of language production and comprehension.
This idea was first proposed in 1836 by Dr. Marc Dax, a physician who observed that patients who had injuries to the left side of their brains could no longer speak properly. Twenty-five years later, Dr. Pierre Paul Broca observed a young man who had lost the ability to speak and could utter only one syllable: “Tan.” A brain biopsy following the patient’s death revealed a large lesion in the frontal part of the left hemisphere, now known as Broca’s area.
In the early 1870s, Dr. Carl Wernicke, a neurologist, saw several patients who could speak fluently, but their utterances made little sense. One of these patients had a stroke in the back of her left temporal lobe, and Dr. Wernicke concluded that this section of the brain — now called Wernicke’s area — must serve as a second center for language, alongside Broca’s area.
Modern brain imaging studies have further expanded our understanding of language. Much of this work has shown that two brain regions — the left sides of the temporal and frontal lobes — activate when a person is reading or hearing words. Some researchers have called this the “language network.”
But other neuroscientists have argued that language processing is even broader and not confined to specific brain regions. “I believe that language in the brain is distributed throughout the entire brain,” said Jeremy Skipper, the head of the Language, Action and Brain Lab at University College London (and my former college psychology professor).
Studies have shown that written words can activate the part of the brain associated with the word’s meaning. For example, the word “telephone” activates an area related to hearing, “kick” triggers a region involved in moving the legs, and “garlic” activates a part that processes smells.
The areas of the brain traditionally attributed to language have lots of other functions, Dr. Skipper said. “It just depends on what other sections of the brain they are talking to and at what time and in what context.”
She takes part in a research project led by Evelina Fedorenko, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
My brain, however, surprised everyone, yet again. A preliminary analysis of the scans showed that, even without a left temporal lobe, I still process sentences using my left hemisphere.
“I had thought that any large left hemisphere early lesion leads to the migration of the language system to the right hemisphere!” Dr. Fedorenko said. “But science is cool this way. Surprises often mean cool discoveries.”
A possible reason behind this discovery, according to Dr. Fedorenko, is that my lesion is primarily in the front of my left hemisphere, leaving enough healthy tissue in the back for the language system to take root.
There’s more interesting stuff at the link. Thanks, Bonnie!
The only thing that surprises me about this is the claim that “the doctors” told her mother that she would never speak.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have myself seen a seven-year old whose “speech area” was completely destroyed by head trauma. Immediately after surgery she was aphasic; six months later she was normal.
The only thing that surprises me about this is the claim that “the doctors” told her mother that she would never speak
Unfortunately, there are doctors who make all kinds of premature claims. My birth was complicated and I had to spend a big part of the first years of my life in hospitals; at one point “the doctors” told my mother that I was “mongoloid” and would stay mentally retarded. There may be times and places where people may doubt my mental faculties (just ask my wife sometimes), but I’m sure that specific claim was dead wrong 🙂
Modern brain imaging studies have further expanded our understanding of language. Much of this work has shown that two brain regions — the left sides of the temporal and frontal lobes — activate when a person is reading or hearing words. Some researchers have called this the “language network.”
Observations of “activated brain regions” contribute zero to understanding of language. All of my brain regions are activated all of the time, and yet I understand nothing of linguistics.
Journalists and suchlike media people place great faith in Electric Phrenology.
We admit, in Geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other. This astonishes our dimension of brains, which is only about six inches long, five broad, and six in depth in the largest heads.
Voltaire, Article `infinity’, in A Philosophical Dictionary, Boston 1881
[as quoted by John H Conway in `On Numbers and Games’, Ch 3]
I used to go to Electric Phrenology back when the cool bands were playing there.
We admit, in Geometry, not only infinite magnitudes, that is to say, magnitudes greater than any assignable magnitude, but infinite magnitudes infinitely greater, the one than the other.
That sounds as if Voltaire were talking about cardinality, 100+ years before Cantor. On the other hand, he writes “in Geometry”, so I wondered whether he means dimensions.
He did mean volumes/areas of different dimensions, I find. This was a perfectly reasonable way to think at the time. In fact he writes “[talking about infinities] is how geometers reason about and deal with their objects. The word ‘infinite’ is their guild sign”.
Here’s the entire subsection De l’infini en géométrie in the first section of the Infini entry:
On admet en géométrie, comme nous l’avons indiqué, non-seulement des grandeurs infinies, c’est-à-dire plus grandes qu’aucune assignable, mais encore des infinis infiniment plus grands les uns que les autres. Cela étonne d’abord notre cerveau, qui n’a qu’environ six pouces de long sur cinq de large, et trois de hauteur dans les plus grosses têtes. Mais cela ne veut dire autre chose sinon qu’un carré plus grand qu’aucun carré assignable l’emporte sur une ligne conçue plus longue qu’aucune ligne assignable, et n’a point de proportion avec elle.
C’est une manière d’opérer, c’est la manipulation de la géométrie, et le mot d’infini est l’enseigne.
I think that’s called grand mal.
This just in
Study reveals striking differences in brains of modern humans and Neanderthals
Results believed to be first compelling evidence that modern humans were cognitively better than Neanderthals
slower creation of neurons in the brain’s cortex …
particularly in the frontal lobe of the brain
They’ve extracted enough DNA from a Neanderthal’s finger to re-grow their brain, or something. All my brain can do is goggle.
Study reveals striking differences in brains of modern humans and Neanderthals
That’s even better than Electric Phrenology.
When we were eight, for reasons that were never clear (to himself or to others nearby), a friend of mine, Jason, decided to mock the 1984 Supergirl movie by singing: