Post by healthy11 on Apr 21, 2014 19:18:15 GMT -5
nypost.com/2014/04/20/how-a-brain-injury-turned-a-college-dropout-into-a-genius/
It's worth reading the entire article, but a section of it says,
"Dr. Berit Brogaard, now director of the Brogaard Lab for Multisensory Research at the University of Miami, invited him (Jason Padgett) to Finland for a three-day research work-up. She used fMRI machines and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to find that the right side of Padgett’s brain had been compromised and that there was greater activation on the left side. She noted significant increased activity in the left parietal lobe — which is where neuroscientists say “math lives.”
...The parietal lobe is involved with many complex computations used in our daily lives. Reach out for a cup of coffee while reading, and your brain is making seriously complex calculations (charting the distance, the weight, the velocity of movement, etc.) — all of this without our realizing it. “One could speculate that [Padgett] has better access to these areas than the rest of us,” Brogaard says.
This supports emerging research that shows that bilateral involvement in the parietal lobe (meaning both sides are activated) actually is correlated with worse math abilities. The brain likes to be specialized — and Padgett is hyper-specialized. But how did it get this way? How did the brain know to specialize after an injury?
Theories involving neuroplasticity, or the ability of the brain to make new connections, abound. Brogaard hypothesizes that the trauma of the event flooded the brain with neurotransmitters, which ultimately changed its structure...."
It's worth reading the entire article, but a section of it says,
"Dr. Berit Brogaard, now director of the Brogaard Lab for Multisensory Research at the University of Miami, invited him (Jason Padgett) to Finland for a three-day research work-up. She used fMRI machines and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to find that the right side of Padgett’s brain had been compromised and that there was greater activation on the left side. She noted significant increased activity in the left parietal lobe — which is where neuroscientists say “math lives.”
...The parietal lobe is involved with many complex computations used in our daily lives. Reach out for a cup of coffee while reading, and your brain is making seriously complex calculations (charting the distance, the weight, the velocity of movement, etc.) — all of this without our realizing it. “One could speculate that [Padgett] has better access to these areas than the rest of us,” Brogaard says.
This supports emerging research that shows that bilateral involvement in the parietal lobe (meaning both sides are activated) actually is correlated with worse math abilities. The brain likes to be specialized — and Padgett is hyper-specialized. But how did it get this way? How did the brain know to specialize after an injury?
Theories involving neuroplasticity, or the ability of the brain to make new connections, abound. Brogaard hypothesizes that the trauma of the event flooded the brain with neurotransmitters, which ultimately changed its structure...."
