Half a Brain Is Enough: The Story of Nico

by Antonio M. Battro

Book Overview

Half a Brain is Enough is the extraordinary story of Nico, a three-year-old boy who was given a right hemispherectomy to control his severe intractable epilepsy. Antonio Battro, a distinguished neuroscientist and educationalist, describes his work with Nico over several years and explains how a boy with only half a brain has developed into a bright child with relatively minor physical and mental impairment. Eight years later, he runs and plays with...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521783070
• ISBN13: 9780521783071
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating

This is a fascinating contribution to understanding human brain functioning. Nico undergoes a hemispherectomy (removal of his right hemisphere) due to extreme epilepsy.What follows is the amazing journey of Nico, through kinder garden, schooling, and socialization. Nico conveys the image of which the author so profoundly believes, that his left hemisphere isn't damaged, it's a brain it itself.By reading this book, you'll realize that Nico has nearly no deficits resulting from his hemispherectomy. His left visual field is absent (due to the left eye normally transmitting information to the right - in this case absent - hemisphere. He also suffers from minor physical disability in his right limbs. Nonetheless, Nico performs or outperforms his peers when it comes to reasoning and intelligence, with the only deficit being in drawing.It would do injustice to the author if it weren't mentioned about how he strongly believes in technology improving education for both the general public and especially handicapped children. By using a laptop Nico was able to further his verbal and spatial education regardless of his drawing and handwriting deficit.Antonio M. Battro deserves credit and reading for this extremely concise and informative authoritative introduction to hemispherectomy & brain research in general.

Insightful and Revolutionary Study

Battro's insightful, inspirational, and sensitive study of a young boy whose functional hemispherectomy has left him with only a functioning left side of his brain is a challenge to many preconceptions regarding the limitations of the human brain and its adaptability. The successful adaptations made by the subject of the book, Nico, with the aid of computer technology to succeed in a regular academic environment will call into question standard lesion analysis in projecting the capabilities and potential of others who have undergone this surgery.