[HN Gopher] How did a woman with a missing temporal lobe become ... ___________________________________________________________________ How did a woman with a missing temporal lobe become bilingual? Author : Hooke Score : 31 points Date : 2022-07-01 19:47 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (journal.medizzy.com) (TXT) w3m dump (journal.medizzy.com) | elliekelly wrote: | There was a great New Yorker article in 2018 about this woman and | the studies being done on her brain (and of other "hyper- | polyglots") at MIT: | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/the-mystery-of... | callesgg wrote: | She basically never had a temporal lobe... its not like parts of | the neocortex are specially built for certain tasks. | | Certain parts of the neocortex just happen to lie close to places | where certain information from sensor input happen to flow. As | such those said parts specialise in dealing with the information | that they happen to be provided with. | Teever wrote: | > its not like parts of the neocortex are specially built for | certain tasks. | | Is this a proven fact? | | I was under the impression that specific parts of the brain | were built for certain tasks, but others can be repurposed. | felipemnoa wrote: | From what little I know and read it appears that the brain's | neural organization is fractal in nature. The same patterns | are used and reused at different levels and in all regions. | callesgg wrote: | For the neocortex yes, but there are other (older & deeper) | parts of the brain that are definitely task specific. If you | come to me without a basal ganglia or a hippocampus. I would | be very very surprised if you were "normal". | pawsforthought wrote: | Right. There are enough cases of extreme neuroplasticity | following lobotomies, even hemispherectomies, that this case | doesn't seem too surprising. It _is_ still fascinating though, | that our brains are so malleable and self-reconfiguring. | mixologic wrote: | Makes me wonder if there is a part of the brain thats | actually responsible for reconfiguring/responding to abnormal | situations. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | My understanding is that the answer is probably "all of | it"; the brain is built from self organizing pieces | (neurons, mostly) | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: | [citation needed] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-03 23:00 UTC)