If you have a medical background like I do, you can’t help but wonder what goes on in BeeBee’s brain. To begin with, I’ve given up thinking that there is just one lesion or abnormality that will explain the whole shebang. That’s the left side of my brain talking there. My right brain still clings to the hope that there’s one, reversible condition that would explain it all and that said condition will magically right itself when Mars is in the 7th house of Pluto or some such thing.
Realistically, it seems that her symptomatic hodge-podge involves both her brain and her cranial nerves. Relative to the latter, could those involved be deficient thanks to something like pressure on that side of her face during development? Or did the narrowness of her muzzle and the exaggerated dome of her skull prevent the normal formation of these nerves as well as the base of her brain? What does her functioning brain look like? Is there some way I could look at it? Such are the musings of my vetself.
Fortunately, the November 8, 2007 edition of The Week had an article that got me off my high diagnostic horse and back into the realm of BeeBee. Entitled, “How blind brains compensate,” the article reported how Alexander Stevens of Oregon Health and Science University performed brain scans on humans who had been blinded early in life as they listened to audio signals. In his article in the Journal of Neuroscience, Stevens described how those parts of the brain associated with the process of visual signals lit up when the sounds were played. Other kinds of nonvisual signals also were allotted more processing space in the brain. In other words, the brain is far more adaptable that what I was taught years ago; there aren’t fixed areas to process this or that kind of input that languish when that input does not arrive for some reason.
This got me thinking about what would have happened if I’d had BeeBee’s brain scanned. Surely by now the area normally associated with hearing would have gone to enhance her other perceptions. Similarly, I expect that her visual centers will have adapted to enable her to make the most of her unilaterally reduced vision and facial/head muscle control and her wonky gait.
Had I not read about this study, I would have compared her brain scan to a normal one and thought, “No wonder she has so many problems! Everything’s all mixed up in her brain!” when in fact quite the opposite is true. Being much smarter than I, BeeBee’s brain is retooling itself to enable her to survive in the most energy-efficient way. How cool is that?
Even better, that means that BeeBee has even more than the usual animal ESP relative to humans. She’s capable of extra extra sensory perception.
Not bad for an impaired dog.