Posted on 10/14/2009 2:02:54 PM PDT by llevrok
FALLS CHURCH, Virginia - Michelle Mack has turned medical thinking upside down.
Born with only half a brain, Mack can speak normally, graduated from high school and has an uncanny knack for dates.
At 27, doctors determined that the right side of her brain had essentially rewired itself to make up for function that was likely lost during a pre-birth stroke. But her childhood and young adult years were fraught with frustration.
"It was very hard for me," Mack said. "It was very hard for me growing up. No one knew the truth about my brain."
Mack's parents, Carol and Wally, realized shortly after her birth that something was wrong.
"There wasn't a group to turn to," said Carol Mack. "Michelle didn't have cerebral palsy, I knew that. She didn't have Down's syndrome, I knew that. I had no place to turn."
Ten years ago, Dr. Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the National Institutes of Health, finally diagnosed the problem.
An MRI scan revealed that she was missing nearly all the left side of her brain. While it was clear Mack has some problems, Grafman said he and the family were shocked by the extent of the damage.
"We were surprised to see the extent of the lesion in her brain, which basically took away the left side of her brain," said Grafman. "There's some very deep structures remaining, but the surface of her brain, the cortex is 95 percent gone and some of the deeper structures, structures that control movement, are missing. These are all structures that are important for movement, behavior, cognition."
The only answer, Grafman said, was that Mack's brain has rewired itself. The remaining half took over some of the essential functions that are normally done by the left, such as speaking and reading. That rewiring, however, came at a cost.
"Michelle has fairly normal language abilities, certainly basic language abilities, she can construct a sentence, she can understand instructions, she can find words when she's talking, but actually she has some trouble in some aspects of visual spatial processing," said Grafman.
"It's quite possible that in her learning, in her development, when the right hemisphere either took over or developed some of the language abilities that it cost her in some of the skills that are normally mediated by the right side of the brain," added Grafman.
In the 10 years since Grafman first diagnosed Mack, she has seen some intellectual functions improve, the doctor said. Recovery has not been perfect, however. Mack still struggles with abstract concepts and becomes easily lost in unfamiliar surroundings.
But the diagnosis explained why Mack had experienced a lifetime of difficulty controlling her emotions.
"He's helped us understand the reason why I tend to throw fits, temper tantrums," she said. "It was because I was missing half my brain."
Mack will always have some problems, but dad Wally Mack said that Grafman's diagnosis and treatment answered a lot of questions and gave him hope for the future.
"Dr. Grafman explained that the right hemisphere is taking over, and it might take her a little while longer to get there with all the rewiring that has to take place," he said. "But that told us all these bad days are behind us and there are nothing but good days ahead."
Michelle Mack is now 37 and lives with her mother and father. She works from home doing data entry for her church. She is fairly independent, pays rent and can do most household chores. She realizes she'll need help for the rest of her life but wanted to tell her story to make it clear that she is not helpless.
"I wanted to do this so people like producers, photographers and security guards and police officers learn about people like me," she said, "that I'm normal but have special needs, and that there are a lot people like me, so that they could be more understanding."
I thought this was another Orly Taitz thread.
≤}B^)
She’s doing much better than the creatures in our House of Representatives who ostensibly have two brain halves. They couldn’t get up an IQ of 100 if they put two of their heads together.
She is almost 13, and she learned to ride a bike when she was 5 or 6. She has a twin sister who did things before her, and she was highly motivated to keep up with her twin.
“She has some short term memory problem and she is not very coordinated”
Sounds like what my gawky preteens were like...especially the “selective” short term memory problems...ie” I didn’t know I was supposed to do the catbox...”
It would be interesting to see what sorts of these problems disappear for your daughter as she comes into full maturity and her brain nerve endings achieve final phase growth.
The brain is amazing. The head of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins University, Dr. Ben Carson noticed what he called the “plasticity” of the brain. He had amazing success removing half of the brain (hemispherectomies) of children with severe epilepsy and siezures. With children, the brain can flourish with just half intact. He also was responsible for separating conjoined twins where they were joined at the brain.
I highly recommend his book “Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story”. He grew up black, in the ghetto, and became a devout Christian and one of the pre-eminent pediatric neurosurgeons in the world. His study of the brain has only bolstered his strong faith as he knows what any amazing God it takes to create something so intricate and incredible as our brains, that most of us take for granted. His personal story is incredibly moving and reminds us of what a great country we live in. Unfortunately, the current crop in the White House and Congress would like to keep people like Ben Carson in the ghetto, dependent upon the “generosity” of the government and democratic party.
It will definitely be interesting. She got seizures when she started puberty. I never knew that puberty could bring on seizures, but it can.
She has an excellent speech therapist who has really helped her the past few years.
It’s very interesting, especially because she is an identical twin.
You should check the scientific literature.
Definitely not as stereotyped by the old left-brain/right-brainers. This is not instant Mr. Spock!
Looks like both halves are normally employed for what we philosophically call “reflection.”
I recommend Hemispheric asymmetry: what's right and what's left by Joseph B. Hellige (2001) for some interesting information. Note that I am not a professional in this field, however.
They called it speech, but talked about it in a way that implicated deeper human interactions.
Through biofeedback it might be interesting for people to introspectively learn the connection between philosophy (in a broad sense, meaning all of the thought approach to life) and meatware activity. I am a believer in a trans-physical soul, but also that God has made a creation in which body is normally employed to carry out many of the intentions of the soul and to bring back certain information to the soul.
Oh, and I didn’t mean to say that I thought said reflection had to symmetrically map into the brain. It would be like a computer with two cores designed to optimize different kinds of tasks. The software calls on the floating point unit, say, for one thing, and on the integer arithmetic unit for other things.
Oh again, thank you for the more modern references.
You’re welcome. I agree with you on the FPU analogy. I also think that the indications from things like ADHD are that inhibitory functions are more important than I would have earlier believed, but I’m not convinced whether or not that’s the CC’s function.
Your view of the body expressing for the soul is certainly possible, even if I don’t have similar beliefs. I’m glad you find these things interesting to ponder—many people don’t bother to consider them.
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