3 Fascinating Neuroscience Cases

The most descriptive thing about a new neuroscience case is usually that it leads to interesting and previously unknown knowledge of brain function. Sometimes an illness or symptom provides clues that increase our understanding of the human brain.

Many of these neuroscience cases are known because patients have had completely unique symptoms. The impact of these special symptoms on a person’s life has often been strange and fascinating. Most valuable, however, is the opportunity to study the functioning of the human brain in a way no one has ever seen before.

The scientific community considers neurologist Oliver Sacks to be one of the most important teachers of our time. Despite the fact that his storytelling style and peculiar stories of patients may sometimes seem more like scientific literature, they are the truest truth. Today we are going to deal with three fascinating cases he recorded.

3 fascinating neuroscience cases

1. Remembrance

This is one of the most fascinating case studies. The patient was a woman of about 80 years of age who had had a special experience in 1979. Her state of health was good and her mental faculties functioned flawlessly. However, he suffered from some hearing problems.

One night he dreamed of his childhood in Ireland. In this dream he heard music from his past, traditional songs as well as traditional dances. When he woke up, the music was still going on in his head. At first he thought there was a radio on somewhere or that someone was playing records but no one was there. He was able to hear all the musical notes perfectly in such a loud voice that it interfered with his focus on other things.

Before the doctors got the brain imaged, the music started to dissipate. It had been ringing in his brain for months. Everything seemed to suggest a problem in the temporal lobe that is associated with a sense of nostalgia. This case gave indications that all past experiences are stored in certain parts of the brain as if as indestructible files.

2. The case of Madeline

Madeline was a 60-year-old, blind woman from birth. So he had never seen anything. He also had a CP injury and suffered from forced hand movements. Because of all these symptoms, one might expect her to also have serious cognitive challenges, but Madeleine was a very intelligent woman.

His loved ones read to him constantly. Because of this, he was a cultural figure and an excellent interlocutor. He never learned to read Braille, for in his own words, his hands were “useless, god-forsaken lumps of dough”. He felt like they weren’t even part of his body.

Despite Madeline’s beliefs, her hands were practically normal. For some reason, they just didn’t move as they should. Oliver Sacks had a theory that he had forgotten how to use his limbs because his family did everything for the woman. Based on this idea, Sacks developed a rehabilitation program for the woman. Thanks to the treatment, Madeline eventually became a sculptor.

3. The man who fell out of bed

This neuroscience case is affected by a special disorder called autotopagnosia, which means an inability to identify your own body parts. The young man in the hospital had a very strange experience with this. He saw a leg on his bed that he claimed belonged to someone other than himself, so he tried to grab the limb to throw it off the bed. When he did this, he naturally fell out of bed.

The young man was, of course, horrified by the experience. For some reason, he believed his leg had been amputated from his body, so there was no way the leg on the bed could belong to him. The foot even scared him. He was interviewed by medical experts and as he was unable to tell anyone where his right leg was, he was constantly trying to hit himself and get rid of the strange limb.

Unfortunately, such cases of identity error have not yet been resolved. Despite the fact that similar cases have occurred more than once and have been written about, no one still knows where the problem is coming from and how this disorder could be treated.