Living With Half a Brian

As absurd as this may sound, it is possible to have half of your brain removed! I had no idea you could live without a portion of your brain, did you? The operation known as hemispherectomy—where half the brain is removed—sounds too radical to ever consider, much less perform.

Many children that suffer from epilepsy, with an underlying disease such as Rasmussen's encephalitis or Sturge-Weber syndrome suffer from severe, uncontrollable seizures in which a hemisphere becomes damaged. Anatomical hemispherectomies involve the removal of the entire hemisphere, whereas functional hemispherectomies only take out parts of a hemisphere, as well as severing the corpus callosum, the fiber bundle that connects the two halves of the brain. The evacuated cavity is left empty, filling with cerebrospinal fluid in a day or so. Most children that undergo this surgery are well under the age of ten and come out seizure-free from the procedure. The younger the child is when they undergo a hemispherectomy, the less disability they might face later in life. If the left side of the brain is taken out, most people have problems with their speech, but it used to be thought that if you took that side out after age two, you'd never talk again, and that has been proven untrue. Surprisingly research has found that memory and personality develop normally well after the surgery. Some patients even improve academically once their seizures stop. The operation does have its downfall though; You can walk, run—some dance or skip—but you lose use of the hand opposite of the hemisphere that was removed. You have little function in that arm and vision on that side is lost.

This link has a heart-filled video of a little boy who undergoes a hemispherectomy that works to his advantage and allows him to lead a normal, seizure-free life.