Five Things You Might Not Know About the Brain (The "Not to Be Missed" System)
A recent study published in the journal Neurologia has rediscovered one of the most unique and bizarre cases of brain injury in history: the case of Patient M, who, after being shot in the head in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War, woke up seeing the world upside down.
Tests then conducted on the patient showed that the injury had partially destroyed the outer posterior layers of his brain on the left side. Still, two weeks after the injury, which fortunately did not require surgery, Patient M (the patient's identity was never made public) woke up.
The mystery began when the patient began to see people and objects coming from the opposite side to where they actually were, and this also affected his hearing and sense of touch. He could read letters and numbers printed both normally and upside down, without his brain being able to see the difference between the two. The world can also appear upside down to patient M, as well as backwards: he was confused by men working upside down on scaffolding, for example. Patient M was also able to read the time on a wristwatch from any angle.
There were also other strange symptoms. They included triplopia, an ocular or neurological condition in which the person perceives three images and color blindness. However, it was reported that patient M handled all this quite calmly.
Patient M(photo: official website, neurologia journal)
Patient M has been studied for almost 50 years by Spanish neuroscientist Jesto Gonzalo, and his analysis has led to a significant change in the way we see the brain. During the 40s, Gonzalo proposed that the brain was not a collection of separate parts, but rather that its various functions were scattered gradually across the organ—an idea contrary to the conventional wisdom of the time.
"The brain looks like little boxes," neuropsychologist Alberto García Molina of Spain's Guttman Institute told El País. "When you changed a box, there was supposedly a concrete deficiency. For Dr. Gonzalo, modular theories could not explain the questions that arose with Patient M, so he began to create his theory about brain dynamics, and questions about how the brain works.
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Pioneering work on the brain
In a study of Patient M and others with brain injuries, Gonzalo suggested that the effects of brain damage depend on the size and location of the injury. He also showed that these injuries do not destroy specific functions, but affect the balance of a variety of functions - as was the case with the M. Dr.
Gonzalo identified three syndromes: central (in which multiple senses are disrupted), paracentral (where the effects of several senses are not evenly distributed), and marginal (in which only specific senses are affected).
It was pioneering work based on a remarkable case, but it's not as famous as it might have been—and now Gonzalo's daughter, Isabel Gonzalo-Ponrodona, is working on the new paper, describing the study involving patient M.
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