Am an actual brainlet after brain removal surgery

Psychologically I'm not sure. I'm a lot more confident now because I'm not having seizures every day, my spatial memory is slightly impaired; driving without gps is hard for me because I get lost easily. My memory becomes really poor after only a few drinks so I can't drink much like I used to or I risk blacking out.

I go through periods of depression sometimes but usually clears up with a change in environment

Lasting problems relating to alcohol consumption, spatial memory impairement, and possible depression

Why do you want to know about cognitive elasticity though?

idk, I think brains are pretty elastic. In cases of damage the brain reorganizes itself to

My psychologist talked about it saying my brain will eventually reorganize and those memory issues will get better. I just want to learn more about the concept of cognitive elasticity, like other brain matter can compensate for missing parts

I'm willing to bet basic mental exercises are probably a great start. Maybe try playing some puzzles games or doing a crossword on a regular basis? Something that makes you work your problem solving skills.

Brain development usually continues until the late twenties, so your brain should be able to reorganize itself pretty well

>Something that makes you work your problem solving skills
I was studying the LSAT the whole year after surgery which were pretty good brain exercises, but now that I'm in school all we do is reading, it doesn't seem like a lot of problem solving exercises

I can't tell you if it will help, but coming from someone who has recovered from majour psychological trauma, I've learned that a lot of the shit you think is caused by your own problem is actually just normal human psychology that you're only now able to be aware of. People who are under chronic stress, as you probably were with your seizures, usually don't get to spend time becoming self aware like anyone else. Your depression and memory lapses are probably mostly just normal human psychology that everyone else also experiences.
I've been tryign the NYT crosword for the past couple of years, and only recently was able to compelte them. But spending time every week trying them was good for me is ways I can't really explain, but top thing is that I didn't feel like I was any kind of retard because of the mental illness I went through.

I feel like this year I'm learning a lot about my own psychology actually
It has made me more popular with people. In my undergrad I had no friends, now 3 nights a week I'm going out with people and choosing between things to do with others.
My main concern now is that my brain isn't as quick as my peers in class or who I study with

Just don't be too self conscious. People can't tell you're different unless you tell them probably, and from my experience you're probably worrying about it too much.
Keeping a positive attitude will help you a lot more than comparing yourself to your peers.

>this is your brain on communism

Thanks for the advice

I got into this game recently: store.steampowered.com/app/558990/Opus_Magnum/
Maybe it'll be good for you!

pic related is OP. top kek

Look into Lion's Mane mushroom, has shown benificial results in aiding in the growth of new neurons and neural pathways.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24266378

There is also some evidence that the food coloring used in blue M&M's, Brilliant Blue G, has some neuroprotective properties for non-damaged neurons. Can read more here:

skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/30071/does-the-brilliant-blue-g-food-dye-halt-spinal-degeneration

That study doesn't even remotely prove what you're implying it proves.

>my spatial memory is slightly impaired; driving without gps is hard for me because I get lost easily
Playing RPG games with big open maps could take care of that.

...

he's not. you are. the other hemisphere compensates. IQ loss after unilateral amygdalohippocampectomy is usually mild, sometimes only 2 or 3 points.

OP stop drinking alcohol completely. effects of alcohol are the total opposite of that mushroom , it totally impairs birth and integration of new neurons.

>people with brain damage become lawyers
Checks out.

>In conclusion, the aqueous extract of H. erinaceus contained neuroactive compounds which induced NGF-synthesis and promoted neurite outgrowth in NG108-15 cells. The extract also enhanced the neurite outgrowth stimulation activity of NGF when applied in combination. The aqueous preparation of H. erinaceus had neurotrophic but not neuroprotective activities.

if it works like this why not just split the brain in two and get two people then

>double the brain
>double the IQ
Genius!

>sometimes only 2 or 3 points
Ironically all my cognitive tests improved to above average 1year after surgery compared to before surgery (except spatial memory which improved from below average to average)

But I attribute that to no longer being on a cocktail of antiepilepsy drugs, which probably caused more impairment than I realised

>this is how babby is formed

your spatial memory can improve if you stop alcohol, and do lots of hiking in the wild, or make city trips. do lots of new stuff in places that vou've never been before. and sleep a lot.

im happy to hear that man, its very heartwarming when someone recuperates so well

Not gna fully compensate though and iq loss is irrelevant. People with tbi can be highly disabled with little iq change. Dont be rude.

I was rude to someone who was rude

Explain.

>person with brain damage steers career toward high paying field while brain intact user shitposts

0/10 not a believable larp. this is a very rare surgery with a poor prognosis afaik. got curious and looked it up after the house episode on it.

>Youre gna be mentally fucked.
rude and retarded.

What did you have to take?

>this is a very rare surgery with a poor prognosis afaik
Temporal lobe surgery is the most common surgery for treating epilepsy you dumb brainlet. This surgery has been around since the 1930s

300mg lamotrigine, 10mg clobazam, 20mg locosomide

i thought op meant a hemispherectomy.

This is the surgery I had

webmd.com/epilepsy/guide/temporal-lobe-resection-epilepsy

On the right side, I wasn't woken up during surgery because my speech is on my left side of my brain.

>What does Veeky Forums know about cognitive elasticity?
This is not my field but I have heard from someone who knows that it is impressive people remain human after dramatic brain surgeries rather than turning into vegetables.

Thus you have good odds.

It is possible brain scientists will contact you to hear how things develop with you, and as an ex scientist myself I hope you agree. The brain is impressive in capacity and adaptability yet we have only very little knowledge about how things actually work.

what were you feeling psychologically before the tumor was removed?

Depressed and hopeless honestly

>It is possible brain scientists will contact you to hear how things develop with you, and as an ex scientist myself I hope you agree
I filled out a form to donate the component of my right temporal lobe that was removed

I have an appointment with my psychologist next summer just so she sees how I'm doing or if things have improved while being at school. I might donate my brainlet to research when I die

and how do you feel now?

Go through bouts of depression but I'm a lot more confident than I was prior to surgery because it stopped the seizures and I can now drive. Usually I get depressed when I'm stuck in the same place too long

I didn't have my brain removed but I also can't drive without a GPS
I have no problems with remembering places and then walking there in my mind, but for some reason memorizing a route is too hard. I get lost after driving for 4 minutes without a GPS.

It will reorganize and compensate for the lost part but not for free. You can't have part of your brain removed and then return to the same state as before. Your brain is this specific size for a reason, if you could just remove a part of it and retain the same skills then we would do that as it saves energy. I'd say you will return to 70% of the state before.

I don't have much to say other than:
Cool scar.
I hope that you recover successfully, and have a fulfilling life.

flip the photo and you're a question-mark man

Its in my vernacular showing amazement. Maybe i should have said fucked mentally. Op understood me. Your comment was unnecessary and shown wrong anyway. Appreciate your contribution though.

Why are you pulling numbers out of your ass? You realize there have been cases of individuals with 10% the brain mass of a regular person having an IQ of 120 and getting a degree in mathematics?

newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-shocks-doctors/

Brains are extremely adaptable.

hahahah you fucking retard that article is a meme
also you didn't even read a simple meme article
>Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75

I think being connected to the central nervous system is kind of important

well, I think that only one thing really matters:
If you're feeling better now than you were before then the procedure was a success.

3 week water fast.

>I'd say you will return to 70% of the state before.
Cool opinion, according to my psych my brain function is now above average minus spatial memory.

>I have no problems with remembering places and then walking there in my mind, but for some reason memorizing a route is too hard. I get lost after driving for 4 minutes without a GPS.
Yeah this is my issue. Walking places I will remember the route and figure out how to get there or get back, but I think driving being so much faster I don't retain my surroundings in my visual memory as well

Wrong article, my bad.

irishtimes.com/news/remarkable-story-of-maths-genius-who-had-almost-no-brain-1.1026845

hey I just had the same thing

Where did you have your surgery?

France

Mine was in Ontario/Canada

Were you monitored for several weeks before surgery? I had to be in hospital for 2 weeks having a video EEG so they could pinpoint mynl seizures

No, I arrived at the hospital just one day before so they could do a last MRI. Did they keep you awake during the surgery?

No they didn't need to because the test showed my speech was located on the left side of my brain.

I also had an MRI the morning before surgery

They kept me awake because of possible issues with speech, cognition, and/or movement. Close to the end my arm froze for a second during a movement and then resumed, that's when the surgeon decided it was time to stop. Did they remove the totality of your tumor?

Yeah the tumour was on my hippocampus, in a few min I'll post a copy of my MRI I just need to find it

here's a pic of mine from back in August, it was a bit bigger just before the surgery

my brains intact and my ability to drink fell off rapidly around 24 years old. you may be attributing normal changes to your surgery.

my tumour was much smaller than yours. It was located entirely on the hippocampus

Nice. Mine was at almost 90cc the day before the surgery. I had had light epilepsy seizures for over a year by then, it was getting really annoying.

my comment is valid. I said compensate, not compensate 100%. your comment was tasteless and only because OP is a cool guy he didnt get mad at you.

I had epilepsy for 7 or 8 years and the tumour never grew over that time. Doctors kept trying to treat the seizures with medication until I saw a new doctor who referred me to surgery

Mine kept growing, the docs told me it would never stop growing so surgery was necessary before it caused brain damage or turned malignant

>90cc
that's enormous, hope you're doing better now user

Aside from the epilepsy I was doing fine. The docs were a bit surprised that I was still fully functional beforehand, at the psy eval she said I had "superior intelligence" and that it was a good sign for the recovery post-surgery.
They all told me I'd feel fucked up for several days or weeks after the surgery, maybe even a few months, but I actually felt 100% fine right when they woke me up a couple hours after they finished.
Gonna have another psych eval in 6 months to check if I'm better or worse than before. At least I don't have epilepsy anymore, that's enough to make me happy.

>but I actually felt 100% fine right when they woke me up a couple hours after they finished.
OP here, I felt like shit for like 2 weeks, after 2 weeks I started feeling back to normal just fatigued really quickly. I went back to work after 5 weeks, and after 6 months was pretty much back to normal physically, and it took about a year to feel back to normal cognitively. It probably took a full 2 years to get over the fatigue though

How much of your amygdala is gone?

Here's a question I've always wanted to ask: Do you feel like a part of your head is missing? I know it gets filled up with fluid, but can you feel it?

Youre doomed to being slow thoughted. Not necessarily dumb, just slow.

All I felt right after the surgery is strong pain in my skull. I swallowed some food the wrong way and started coughing and I felt like my skull was going to blow open.
After a few days, when I was lying in bed in the evening and morning, with full silence, I could hear and feel something dripping inside my head. A bit like a faucet not properly closed. The doc had told me it was going to fill up and that I might feel it.
Not feeling anything else since then.

My right one is gone or mostly gone, I'm not sure

What I notice is I can't place a thought in my head on the right side of my skull. Like try moving a thought around in your head, roll it around if you will. I can't place it where the tissue is missing

Cool opinion user

Can you experience any noticeable changes in cognitive functions?

Not OP, but I feel some improvement. Even with the anti-epilepsy meds I still felt a bit absent a lot of the time, like reality was somewhat abstract. Now I feel sharp as I used to be before the epilepsy started.
Other than that, I didn't feel like the tumor had an effect on my abilities, so on that point nothing changed.

are you more fearless now? because fear as an emotion is said to come mostly from the amygdala.

no, you have 2 amygdalas. Function would be compensated by the second

not even a tiny bit?

I'm still afraid to ask a certain qt out on a date