After a Lobectomy, a Boy Still Recognizes Words and Faces

A longitudinal study tracking the progress of an epilepsy patient after surgery shows the brain’s ability to reorganize itself to function nearly normally.

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ABOVE: LIU ET AL., CELL REPORTS, 2018

About three years ago, a six-year-old boy in Pittsburgh underwent surgery to remove a large part of the right side of his brain. Identified publicly as “U.D.” by doctors, the boy suffered from epilepsy, and drugs were not helping to control his seizures. His doctors and his parents decided that taking out U.D.’s right occipital and posterior temporal lobes would be the best way to improve his quality of life. But the medical team was not certain how the surgery would affect the boy’s ability to recognize visual images and printed words, which are normally processed by regions within these parts of the brain.

This uncertainty stemmed from neuro-scientists not having a clear understanding of how the brain’s visual system reorganizes itself after trauma caused by disease, injury, or surgery. “There is a general and ubiquitous question that people who are interested in ...

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Meet the Author

  • Ashley Yeager

    Ashley started at The Scientist in 2018. Before joining the staff, she worked as a freelance editor and writer, a writer at the Simons Foundation, and a web producer at Science News, among other positions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a master’s degree in science writing from MIT. Ashley edits the Scientist to Watch and Profile sections of the magazine and writes news, features, and other stories for both online and print.

Published In

November 2018

Intelligent Science

Wrapping our heads around human smarts

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