
Human Brain Tries Immediately to Compensate for Language Loss
Neurosurgeons recently had a unique opportunity to observe brains undergoing the loss of the speech area and compensating in real timeNeuroscientists have long clashed over a critical question: Can the human brain compensate for the loss of a critical hub like the speech area? If so, how? Epilepsy surgery led by a team at the University of Iowa recently allowed researchers a close look at the live process in real time. Two patients were having the front part of a temporal lobe — which decodes the meaning of language — removed so that surgeons could remove the deeper parts of the brain that were causing their debilitating seizures. The neurosurgery teams followed the usual procedure of asking these patients to do speech and language tasks in the operating room while electrodes were implanted. They would record data from parts of Read More ›