A TEENAGER who was born without the entire left hemisphere of her brain has above-average reading skills - despite missing the part of the brain that is typically specialised for language - New Scientist can exclusively reveal. The 18-year-old also has an average-to-high IQ and plans to go to university. Brain scans reveal she has more of the type of brain tissue involved in reading than typical. Tests of her brain activity indicate that the right side of her brain has taken on some of the functions of the left, suggesting that the organ has adapted to compensate for the missing tissue. The parents of the woman, known as C1, first noticed something was amiss when she was 7 months old. Most babies stop clutching their thumbs with their fist at around this age, but C1 continued to do so with her right hand. A brain scan at 10 months old revealed there was a sac of fluid where her left hemisphere should have been.
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