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A girl who had half her brain removed to save her life has fully recovered the ability to be fluent at languages. However, while the discovery amazed doctors at a Dutch hospital, UK experts say that in most cases, children who undergo such a drastic procedure do recover language skills.
The recovery is testament to the ability of the brain to recover from a seemingly catastrophic loss of tissue.
Surgeons at Utrecht Hospital in Holland removed the left hemisphere of the girl's brain when she was six.
She suffered from Rasmussen syndrome, a rare degenerative disease which affects just one side of the brain.
The missing half was simply replaced with marrow fluid.
The left hemisphere normally contains the speech centres of the brain.
When the girl went for a routine ear, nose and throat appointment, a year later, the specialist involved noticed that she was fluently bilingual in both Dutch and Turkish. Her sight was slightly impaired, but she could hear perfectly with both ears.
Dr Johannes Borgstein told the Daily Telegraph: "It was amazing. I had to tell my students to forget all the neurophysiological theory they were learning."
Commonplace
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"Most of them talk a mile a minute" |
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Professor Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, Institute of Child Health
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However, Professor Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, from London's Institute of Child Health, who specialises in child language skills following the removal of one half of a brain, said that such a recovery was not unexpected.
She said: "As long as the child had been exposed to both languages prior to the operation, I would expect fluency to return.
"I have seen 65 cases of hemispherectomy, and in all but a few, speech has returned.
"Obviously it depends at what age the operation is carried out.
"But most of them talk a mile a minute."
[USA Today]
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Last Revised at December 10, 2007 by Lusine Kazoyan, M.D.
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