A Woman Perpetually Falling

Cheryl is a woman who lost her sense of balance after she was prescribed too much gentamicin to treat an infection. Due to the overdose, her inner ear structures, including the vestibular apparatus, have been thoroughly damaged. The vestibular apparatus - a structure in the ear - is the organ tasked with helping a person sense space and orientation, and so, could no longer stand without falling. A neurologist by the name of Bach-y-Rita developed a helmet that could bypass the damages vestibular apparatus and send signals directly to the part of the brain that processes balance via the tongue. The longer Cheryl wore the helmet, the longer the effect lasted and Cheryl could stay balanced without the help of the device. Long term use also eventually makes permanent adjustments to the brain so that the residual effect last longer every time. This amazing ability of the brain to take over and redelegate  the jobs of damaged brain parts proves the plasticity of the brain.

"[Cheryl] suffers from mental fatigue, as well, from being on constant high alert. It takes a lot of brain power to maintain an upright position--brain power that is taken away from such mental functions as memory and the ability to calculate and reason" (5) All of our senses are interconnected - though Cheryl has lost her sense of balance, everything else in her life is affected too. She has trouble remembering, calculating, and reasoning, all abilities that were also compromised by the damage to her vestibular apparatus. Individual sense like  balance are not isolated in regions of the brain, so when one region is affect, other cognitive abilities are also impaired.

"Her residual effect progressed to multiple hours, to days, and then to four months. Now she does not use the device at all and longer considers herself a Wobbler" (10). This truly demonstrates the elasticity of the brain. The effects of using this device lasted even when Cheryl wasn't wearing the device because the brain was able to redelegate the cognitive abilities that were impaired to other parts of the brain.

"...my father had had a huge lesion from his stroke and that it had never healed, even though he recovered all those functions" (23). This was really interesting to read, because when my grandmother had a stoke, the part of the brain that died due to the stroke, never recovered. However, her speech, ability to use her left arm, and ability to walk all came back. Even though the damaged part of the brain didn't recover, other parts of the brain adapted and adopted the functions that the brian could no longer carry out. As a result, over a couple years of physical therapy and retraining of the brain, she regained her ability to speak, use her arm, and move.