Girl born with half a brain retains full vision | Hacker News Reader

Girl born with half a brain retains full vision

newscientist.com

22 pointsrobg11 comments

The brain is remarkable in children. I lost my right eye in an accident when I was 7, and of course I can't see from that side, but I /do/ have perfect depth perception. I use shadows, relative object sizes, and parallax to get the data I lose without binocular vision.

When I was an intern, I witnessed, helpless, a newborn losing most of his left hemisphere in the first hours of his life because of a massive meningeal hemorrhage (he's hemophiliac). He was only left with an atrophic, gliotic frontal lobe (and an intact right hemisphere).

It was 5 years ago. Today, he can walk, use both hands, speaks two languages and has a normal mental development. He's paretic (reduced force) on the right side and a bit temperamental, but he should live a quasi-normal life (he will have some difficulties at sport).

That's just amazing :-)

I'm sure your depth perception is perfectly adequate for anything you'd need it for, but I doubt it's truly as good as someone with two eyes.

Well... I'm a pretty accomplished painter, and I can play ping pong with the rest. I was a boxer in high school. How good do you want it to be?

What I mean is, in any practical task I'm sure your depth perception is fine. But if you were to do tests specifically for depth perception, certainly you would be at a disadvantage with only one eye, especially for objects that aren't moving relative to you.

On another note, do you think the missing eye harmed your peripheral vision, and does that affect boxing or ping pong?

It absolutely harmed my peripheral vision, I can see that it's only about 75% of what it would be with two eyes. But it does not affect boxing or pingpong because I hold my head to the side.

A picture would be better, but imagine your eyes are flashlights shining out where your peripheral vision is. Your two beams create a sort of half-circle of light surrounding your face.

If you cover one of those beams up, the remaining beam shines on all of its previous area, in addition to the area that was overlapping in the middle.

It's shining more to one side than the other though, it's not so much a half circle around the face, it's like a slightly smaller arc around the side of the face that's still uncovered.

So I just turn my head so that the smaller arc I still have is roughly centered on the front of my head.

it turns that the arc is wide enough to do anything you can do... except I'll admit to hit the sides of narrow doors on my bad side 8)

It's called neuroplasticity. I've read "The brain that changes itself" by Norman Doidge and it uncovers a whole new world.

fascinating read. thanks.

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Brain == FPGA ?

I thought they all came that way...

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