Such breakthroughs can offer hope to the hopeless and helpless. I stated some examples in Part 1 of last week. As promised, I shall continue discussing other types of brain problems and corresponding physiological disorders that can be helped by such innovative methods and state of the art technology. Combined with scientific knowhow and patients’ hard work and resolve, some dedicated scientists and neurologists helped people affected by stroke and brain damage regain some of their lost or underdeveloped mental skills. Here are other incredible stories that made the dreams of the mentally disabled a reality, changing their lives. Here is an unusual story.

Barbara Arrowsmith was born with an “asymmetrical” brain. Though she is brilliant in certain skills, such as auditory and visual memory and has remarkably developed frontal lobes, she has pronounced limitations in other sectors of the brain, like learning disabilities, seeing letters in reverse, no grammar and math logic, no spatial reasoning, forgetting location of things and misjudging spaces. The asymmetry was not limited to her brain only, but also extended to her body, spine, face and eyes. One side of her body was noticeably larger and different from her other side. Her emotional intelligence was underdeveloped too. She could not hear and notice nuances and inconsistencies in smooth talking and emotions, which resulted in her becoming doubtful of everyone around her, not knowing whom to trust.

At school, she was branded as slow and mentally retarded. Fortunately for her mother’s positive attitude and persistence, she drove herself to accomplishment. As Barbara grew older, her teachers started noticing her brilliant side. “She had a remarkable ability to pick up nonverbal cues in the child-observation laboratory,” leading her to teach the course. This ability gave her the opportunity to go to graduate school and specialize in education. Though her disabilities remained with her right through adulthood, she managed to overcome some of them, but not without difficulty and hard work.

While her peers would only need to read a paper once to understand it, she would have to read the same paper 20 times in order to recall the beginning of each paragraph that she had already read. Things began to look better after she met another gifted student, Joshua, at graduate school. He, too, assisted in teaching disabled children through “compensation” methods like giving extra time to slow readers on tests. His procedure did not work for Barbara; so Joshua suggested to her to follow some of the techniques devised for stroke patients who had grammar, logic and reading problems.

This particular method was devised by Russian psychoanalyst Aleksandr Luria (inventor of the lie detector) who was also the founder of neuropsychology. At the same time, Barbara came across a paper by Mark Rosenzweig of UC Berkeley, which showed “that the brains of the rats which had more neurotransmitters were heavier and better in blood supply than [less stimulated ones],” suggesting that the brain can change with activity.

Barbara linked the researches of both Luria and Rosenzweig. She applied both systems on herself through exhaustive mental exercises and drills to correct her inaptitude and learning disabilities such as reading the clock. She would put hundreds of flashcards featuring different times of clock dials with the correct time written on the back of each flashcard. She practiced and re-practiced the drill hundreds of times and also worked on real clocks by moving their hands to understand the changes in the needle directions. With hard work, she managed to perfect reading the time even faster than ordinary people. An unexpected bonus that she also received from the drill and the newly acquired skill was progress in “her other difficulties relating to symbols like math, logic and grammar.”

She also began to follow conversations without the earlier difficulty. She started to comprehend properly what others were saying around her and “she began to live in real time.” From that experiment, she created exercises for her other disabilities like spatial and visual disorders. With hard work and perseverance, she corrected her impairments by herself, which made her at least appear like any other ordinary human being and not as a disadvantaged one.

After Barbara and Joshua got married, they collaborated in helping the handicapped with their disabilities. From their own experiences and peculiarities, they developed brain exercises for their school, Arrowsmith School in Toronto, which they started together to help adults and children with learning disabilities such as attention deficit disorder (ADD), writing, reading and verbal problems and other brain difficulties. This involved stimulating other parts of the brain to compensate for the dysfunctional spots.

No doubt, this incredible story gives way to optimism. Next week, I shall provide more examples that validate the plasticity of the human brain and how the healthy half of the brain can take over the functions of the affected or missing part or parts, whether it concerns speech, motor skills or any other.

This is possible only if mainstream medicine starts collaborating with scientists and start looking at certain mental disorders and disabilities with an open mind in order to help the disabled overcome their hurdles. It would save so much cost on healthcare for the handicapped who remain for years dependent on financial assistance and physical and medical care, becoming a burden on their families, communities and governments. Such people should not be disqualified just because they have had unfortunate fates. They should be given a fair chance.

Stay tuned to Part 3 of the article. There are other amazing stories to tell and experiments to expose in order to see the other side of the brain.
 
N.B.: Individuals with medical conditions or on medication should consult their physicians when they decide to introduce anything new in their diet even if it is natural.
 
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