The story of patient M, the man with a head injury who began to see the world upside down – time.news

2023-05-14 06:59:50

Of Christine Brown

A new study recalls the case of a Spanish soldier wounded by a bullet who begins to see the world upside down and green objects inspiring the theory of brain dynamics

We learned about the world upside down with the successful Stranger Things series, where on the opposite side of the world reality is represented differently, with monsters and storms. But an upside-down planet, with the sky instead of the floor and the clouds like carpets, has known him well patient m in the last century and its history, told by The country on the occasion of the publication in the magazine Neurology of a new study on the strange case, still represents a valuable clue in the never finished investigation
how the human brain works
.

The story of the patient M

Patient M was 25 years old in 1938 when he was shot in the head in battle during the Spanish Civil War. Two weeks later the republican soldier regained consciousness and miraculously did not need any special operations or treatments. The man however had suffered a shocking change : he saw the world upside down. To realize it was the doctor who followed him, Justo Gonzalo. The bullet, probably fired by the Francoists, had partially damaged the ccerebral cortex in the left parieto-occipital region. Doctor and patient survived the war and continued to see each other for 50 years, until Dr. Gonzalo’s death in 1986.

The strange symptoms

During all those years the doctor described the bizarre symptoms of that patient who became a friend. The soldier he saw everything multiplied by three and perceived the colors detached from the objects as if they were a separate thing, distinct and separate from the object itself. The objects were then mainly tinged with green. But the strangest thing of all that the war veteran when he was not subjected to particular stimuli and rested, he saw everything as if it were upside down. She had sort of reversed vision: he was able to read letters and numbers both in the normal position and in the upside down position, affirming that in both cases the position was identical. Also his auditory and tactile perception were reversed, so that sounds and touches appeared in his mind from the opposite side. Gonzalo in his notes wrote that his patient saw men working upside down on scaffolding.

The brain and its ability to adapt

In those years, most neurologists believed that the brain was made up of distinct regionsseparate da clear borders con very precise functions. Justo Gonzalo, just observing the consequences of the injury that had struck the soldier in his book Cerebral Dynamics hypothesized that the brain was not divided into distinct regions, bens interconnected with each other with surprising adaptability. The researcher had come to the hypothesis that the effect of a cortical lesion depends on its size and location: the size conditions the intensity of the disturbance, while the location affects the type of disturbance. Deepening his studies, he proposed the theory of brain dynamicsor, in simple terms, that the brain has its functions distributed in gradients, with gradual transitions.

The reconstruction of the daughter

Years later, Gonzalo’s daughter, Isabella Gonzalophysicist and professor emeritus at the Complutense University of Madrid, who throughout her life met patient M during his family visits, dusted off her father’s archives, boxes with hundreds of documents and photos with the aim of reconstructing the case helped by the neuropsychologist Alberto Garcia Molina. The result of this journey into the past is the new work recently published in the magazine Neurology. My father admired him, because he was a very brilliant person, capable of taking care of himself and working in the fields, recalls Isabel Gonzalo. Despite having been wounded in the war, patient M never received a pension but tended to minimize his ailments with which he lived throughout his life. His identity has never been disclosed.

What does the history of neurology tell us?

The history of neurology tells a great many tragic natural experiments. Like that of Phineas Gage, an American railroad captain who survived an iron bar that had driven into his brain on September 13, 1848. The once calm man became aggressive and vulgar. The world-renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks, in his famous book The man who mistook his wife for a hat collects some interesting clinical cases that have occurred to him during his career. Such as the story of Jimmie, who at the age of 19 lost the ability to memorize, getting stuck in 1945; or Dr P, musician, who mistook fire hydrants for children and addressed doorknobs as if they were people. Once he mistook his wife’s head for a hat and grabbed her to put it on. Also another lesser known Indian neurologist, perhaps due to his unpronounceable name, Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran reported numerous patient stories in his book The Man Who Thought He Was Dead. the neuroscientist tells us the stories of Francesca, Susan and Mirabelle who literally see sounds and hear colors due to the synaesthesia that mixes sensations, perceptions and emotions. Nora, on the other hand, after a stroke denied the obvious infirmity or the young Ali, an epileptic really convinced he was dead. More recently, there has been talk of the anterogated amnesia of a young American girl: after her head trauma, her memory stops at October 12, 2017. The girl is unable to remember anything for more than 12 hours and always lives in the present.

May 14, 2023 (change May 14, 2023 | 06:58)

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