This procedure is a modern adaptation of the radical hemispherectomy in which one brain hemisphere is removed to prevent the spread of seizures from one brain hemisphere to the other.
32.
In some cases, severe epilepsy is treated with the hemispherectomy, a drastic surgical procedure in which part or all of one of the hemispheres of the brain is removed.
33.
Vargha-Khadem, who has followed more than 100 children after hemispherectomy, offered this assessment of the procedure : " There's always a cost to brain injury.
34.
Standard anti-epileptic drugs are usually ineffective in controlling seizures, and it may be necessary to surgically remove or disconnect the affected cerebral hemisphere, in an operation called hemispherectomy.
35.
While the initial diagnosis had been hard enough to take, Freeman suggested a cure that seemed infinitely worse : He wanted to perform a hemispherectomy, removing the diseased right side of the brain.
36.
Additionally, functional hemispherectomy is less likely to cause hydrocephalus, the excessive accumulation of ( cerebrospinal ) fluid in the brain, which leads to complications from harmful pressure on brain tissues.
37.
While at Johns Hopkins, Carson figured in the revival of the hemispherectomy, a drastic surgical procedure in which part or all of one hemisphere of the brain is removed to control severe pediatric epilepsy.
38.
These aspects of speech are typically either bilateral or originate in the right hemisphere, and split-brain and hemispherectomy patients normally learn them without difficulty, but linguists were unsurprised that Genie never used them.
39.
"She's a bit older than most patients who had a hemispherectomy but she's certainly not the oldest patient we've operated on, " he said at a news conference.
40.
Previous observations of right-hemisphere language acquisition in adult split-brain and left hemispherectomy patients consistently showed that both populations were much better at learning vocabulary, although they were able to learn some basic grammar.
