• Question: what heppens if you damage your brain

    Asked by anon-205671 to adeliegorce, Affelia, Gabriel, Jose Angel, Kathryn, Russell on 2 Mar 2019. This question was also asked by anon-205648.
    • Photo: Russell Arnott

      Russell Arnott answered on 2 Mar 2019:

      Not a brain expert, I’m not really qualified to answer that!
      But what I do know is that all kinds of things can happen from headaches to personality changes to loss of senses or memory.

      The drummer in my old punk band hit his head and damaged the back of his brain quite badly. He kept passing out and fainting for about a year after it happened. He’s much better now but still had no feeling in the skin of his legs and he has completely lost his sense of smell.

      The brain is the most complicated structure in the universe so we’re still studying it and trying to know more about it. Luckily medical imaging using MRI scanners is helping us do this better.

    • Photo: Gabriel Gallardo

      Gabriel Gallardo answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      Like Russell, I’m no expert on the brain. However, I do know that it depends on what part of the brain gets hurt, and by how much. Sometimes nothing happens, sometimes the person develops an entirely different personality, maybe they gain a new accent, there are even cases where people who were not musical at all suddenly liked playing the piano and composing music!

    • Photo: Jose Angel Martinez-Gonzalez

      Jose Angel Martinez-Gonzalez answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      Brain is not my field… I think the last time I studied the brain in my biology courses at the university. However, I can only say that everything depends on how the damage is in the brain.
      Some minor injuries that are related to accidents, can cause people to change their behavior, make it more difficult for them to do certain things, …

      However, the neurologists, who are the doctors who study the brain, tell us that the brain has a property called Neuroplasticity that is the ability of the brain to change throughout an individual’s life, e.g., brain activity associated with a given function can be transferred to a different location, the proportion of grey matter can change, and synapses may strengthen or weaken over time. And they are using this skill / function of the brain to help people who suffer accidents or have diseases related to brain damage.

      As Russell said, The brain is the most complicated structure in the universe but a lot of our collegues are studying it.

    • Photo: Kathryn Boast

      Kathryn Boast answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      Ooh, tricky! I’m not an expert, but the brain is fascinating. All sorts of things can change if your brain changes, whether that’s how you can move or speak, or even your personality – it will depend on which bit of the brain is damaged. But the brain is also amazing at re-learning things – it’s called “plasticity”. It means that a different part of the brain might be able to change its function and learn how to do what the damaged bit did before.

Comments