A BOY who had a large chunk of his brain removed to treat his epilepsy - has escaped with very few side effects.

The boy, who was seven at the time, had a third of the right hemisphere - the side responsible for creativity, imagination and visual abilities - removed, to try and control his seizures.

3 The boy had part of his brain removed to treat epilepsy

He had been through multiple treatments to treat his medically intractable epilepsy, which started when he was four, but nothing proved successful.

The "lobectomy" surgery removed his entire optical lobe and most of his temporal lobe, both of which play a role in visual processing.

The boy, known only as UD, lost some of his vision but eventually the left side of the brain eventually began to compensate for the part missing in the right, including recognising faces and objects.

Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University in the US followed UD's progress to find out how the brain would cope after losing one of it's visual centres - we usually have two, one in each side of the brain.

3 Over time the boys left side of the brain began to compensate for the part in the right that was cut out

Over three years they followed his progress, studying his brain and behaviour, to see which parts were able to recover.

They found that intellect; visual perception; and face and object recognition skills were all normal for a boy his age.

The only difficulty he faced was not being able to see the whole field of vision.

"When he is looking forward, visual information falling on the left side of the input is not processed, be he could still compensate for this by turning his head or moving his eyes," said lead author Marlene Behrmann.

3 The only impact of the procedure is the boy now can't see the whole field of vision

"Moreover, by tracking the changes in the brain as UD developed, we were able to show which parts of the brain remained stable and which were reorganised over time.

"This offers insight into how the brain can remap visual function in the cortex."

It suggests humans need both hemispheres to have 180 degree vision, she added.

Lobectomy procedures are rare, done on only four to six percent of patients of all ages with medically intractable epilepsy.

UD, who is now almost 11, is free of seizures since the operation.

Behrmann hopes the study will help pave the way for further life-changing neural developments.

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"These findings provide a detailed characterisation of the visual system's plasticity during children's brain development," she said.

"They also shed light on the visual system of the cortex and can potentially help neurologists and neurosurgeons understand the kind of changes that are possible in the brain.

"More needs to be done to understand which lobectomy patients will show recovery, which will not and why not.

"It will also be important to know if patients are more likely to regain functions if the left or right hemisphere is removed and if the visual system is more robust in younger individuals."

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