Great advances in science are sometimes produced by studying single cases, rather than large samples of volunteers.
The international scientific press is discovering these days a case that in Spain we have known about for a long time. Its about patient M, a soldier who in 1938, in the Spanish Civil War, was shot in the head. She survived, but his view of his world was changed forever.
This anonymous soldier began to see how his senses were working backwards. as described Science Alert, he saw people appear from the left who entered his field of vision from the right. Also I saw people who were in high places upside downlike a scaffold.
But that is not all. Sometimes I saw colors outside of objects, or saw them in triplicate. At other times he would become color blind, and then his sight would return to normal. Such a brain injury has never been documented again.
Also could read perfectly with the letters forwards or backwardsand was not able to distinguish one from the other.
Here we can see the place where the bullet entered and exitedand the area of the brain that was damaged:
Neurology
Despite everything, this patient M He led a more or less normal life.
This case was studied for decades by the Spanish neurologist Justo Gonzaloand thanks to him they produced important advances in the knowledge of the brain.
Patient M and advances in science
Now his daughter, Isabel Gonzalo-Fonrodona, and the neuroscientist Alberto García Molina, have published a study in the scientific journal Neurologywhere claim the contribution of Justo Gonzalo to science.
Until then it was thought that the brain had certain independent areas, so that if one of them was damaged, it would affect a condition (sight, hearing, the ability to recognize, etc.), but it would leave the rest intact.
He patient M It showed that it was not. Just Gonzalo thought that the brain does not have independent zones, but its functions are distributed in gradients, throughout it. That is why Patient M showed different types of alterations.
It is a theory that fits what we know about the brain today, and apparently Justo Gonzalo was one of the pioneers.
Science is almost always based on studies of conventional pathologies, but unique cases like this Patient M, who saw the world upside down after being shot in the headcan be very valuable to better understand the mysteries of the human brain.
