Recently the psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher at Yale University, Daniel Barron, published an article in the journal Scientific American that could well be the plot of a novel science and political fiction, because it involves a Basque neurologist, Colombian guerrillas, an American hospital technician and more neurologists.A story that begins with Mike Brennan, a man who could write but not read.
Mike Brennan , the man who could write but not read
Mike Brennan is not the real name of a cardiology technician, that one morning in 2010, meeting in the hospital where he worked, he opened the newspaper and realized that could not decipher the words in front of him .Thanks to the fact that he was aware of his background-he was hypertensive-and probably also to his work environment, he knew immediately that he must be suffering some kind of accident cerebrovascular, so aba He donated his office and headed directly to the emergency room, where he was evaluated and it was determined that had a small stroke .
Mike could not recognize the letters and words, but curiously, his ability to write remained intact .Thanks to an MRI, it was determined that he had suffered a spill of a pea's size in the left lower lobe-occipital cortex (a point behind the left ear), and he was diagnosed with a pure alexia , the inability to recognize letters and words without any injury to the optic nerve.
Beyond how interesting it could be to be able to write but not read what you write, what generated repercussion and mobilized the neurologists was that Mike Brenna's spill I could not end a debate that had several years, around the location of some brain functions, such as those that allow us to recognize letters and words.
Although there were already suspicions since 1990 that the ability to read it was in the area that affected the spill, there were no certainties, because the brain has redundant systems (two or more areas that fulfill the same function) and alexia was combined with other symptoms.
One of the clues about the brain area that processes the written signs came from an unexpected place and situation.At the beginning of the new millennium, a group of Colombian guerrillas abandoned the armed struggle, and part of them, who had reached adulthood without knowing how to read or write, were incorporated into a literacy plan, which in turn also allowed for an experiment with surprising results.
A team made up of British, Spanish neuroscientists and Colombians, I coordinated Swim by the Spanish neurologist Manuel Carreiras , of the Basque Cognicion Center, and by Catherine Price , from the University College of London, I evaluate 20 former guerrillas who were learning to read, using MRIs, and contrasted the changes in their brains with that of 20 other volunteers who were still illiterate.
Neuroscientists discovered that as they learned to read there were functional and structural changes in the brain : growth of gray matter in certain areas, and also specialization of regions such as the one that affected Mike Brennan's spill.This region, in the case of those who had not learned to read, worked to identify faces and other figures, but once the learning started he specialized in recognizing letters and words.
The pure alexia of Mike Brennan would come to confirm some conclusions of Carreiras and Price, and that at the time were a matter of debate in the scientific community.The injury allowed to confirm that there are regions of the brain that do not act as if they were a system of assembly, but as soloists, responsible for a single activity, which in this case would be the visual recognition of the contours of the letters and words.
With a good therapy and thanks to the remarkable ability of the brain to recover from cardiovascular accidents, Mike Brennan was able to read again and lead a normal life, probably with a new vision and understanding of that wonder that is reading.
So you have an idea, read what happens in the brain when we write.
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