The incredible case of Patient M is unique and has advanced science. A new study returns to this man, because of a bullet received in the head, he saw the world in the wrong way.
It is a mysterious story that takes place in 1938, during the Spanish Civil War, and which is still studied today by scientists. A man who was shot in the head woke up to see the world backwards, that is, his brain reversed right and left, but also the direction of the letters read and the sounds heard . History has remembered this strange case as "Patient M".
See, hear, and touch the world upside down
A new study published in the journal Neurologia looks back on this incredible case and tries to better understand it. At the time already, the doctor Justo Gonzalo, who had followed this man surely shoted by a Francoist bullet, was convinced that his patient could shed light on the functioning of the human brain.
For patient M, people and objects seemed to be standing on the opposite side to where they actually were. Same thing for what he heard, and for what he touched. If a noise came from his right, he thought it was coming from the left, if someone touched his left arm, he thought it was his right arm. He could read letters and numbers printed both normally and upside down, without his brain being able to see any difference between the two. "M looked at his watch in any direction to check the time", explains to El Païs Isabel Gonzalo, the daughter of the researcher and physicist at the University of Madrid, who met this curious patient at that time. Other bizarre symptoms appeared, such as seeing objects in triplicate, having the impression that colors are detached from their object, or even perceiving colors differently.
A case that changed the theory of how the brain works
The projectile had partially destroyed the ridges of his cerebral cortex, in the left parieto-occipital region, but M had miraculously survived. Whereas previously the brain was considered as a set of small boxes independent of each other. If a box was damaged, there was a brain deficit, according to this theory. However, the patient did not seem so embarrassed as that on a daily basis, and only realized his disorder when he saw, in the street one day, "men working upside down on a scaffolding". He worked in the fields, and did not receive the disability pension devoted to veterans, reveals the Spanish newspaper. This case has therefore made it possible to review this theory, and to consider the brain rather as a dynamic, a communicating whole. According to Dr. Justo Gonzalo, brain damage does not destroy specific functions, but affects the balance of a whole variety of functions.
M is believed to have died in the late 1990s. The identity of the man who helped shed light on how the human brain works has never been revealed. He is one of those unique cases that has advanced science.
Comments
Post a Comment