{"id":1190,"date":"2018-01-08T21:38:31","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T21:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/?p=1190"},"modified":"2018-03-30T17:01:41","modified_gmt":"2018-03-30T17:01:41","slug":"brain-mapping-shows-childs-brain-was-rewired-after-double-hand-transplant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/2018\/01\/08\/brain-mapping-shows-childs-brain-was-rewired-after-double-hand-transplant\/","title":{"rendered":"Brain mapping shows child\u2019s brain was \u201crewired\u201d after double hand transplant"},"content":{"rendered":"

At age 2, Zion Harvey had his hands amputated due to a life-threatening infection. At age 8, he was the first child to receive a double hand transplant. He continues to amaze his family and doctors. One year after the transplant, he threw out the first pitch at a Baltimore Oriole\u2019s baseball game. Fast forward one more year, and he\u2019s in the news again.<\/p>\n

U.S. News and World Report<\/a><\/em> stated, \u201cZion Harvey was the first child to undergo a successful double hand transplant. Now he’s gaining notoriety for another milestone: the way his brain reorganized itself in response to the amputation and transplantation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nine-year-old Zion Harvey, the world’s first child to receive a bilateral hand transplant, throws out the first pitch before the Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers baseball in Baltimore, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2016. Image Credit: NBC News \/\u00a0Gail Burton \/ AP<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

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Zion’s brain reacts<\/h2>\n

Each part of the body that receives nerve sensations sends electrical signals to a corresponding location in the brain. When you touch an ice cube with your fingertips, your brain processes the “cold” signal in a certain region. If the ice cube touches your lips, a different area of your brain receives a “cold” signal.<\/p>\n

Previous brain imaging<\/a> studies in adults showed that the brain remaps itself when it no longer receives signals from the hands following amputation. The region of the brain that typically processes signals from the hands is remapped and starts to process signals from nerves from other areas of the body. This remapping is called massive cortical reorganization (MCR).<\/p>\n

MCR was observed in Zion as well. For Zion, his brain started to utilize the region that\u00a0typically processed signals from his hands to process sensations from his lips.<\/p>\n

“We had hoped to see MCR in our patient, and indeed, we were the first to observe MCR in a child,” stated\u00a0William Gaetz, Ph.D., a radiology researcher, in a news release<\/a> from Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

After his transplant, MCR was observed in Zion’s brain again, this time reverting to the pre-amputation mapping. His new hands were sending electrical signals, and over time, his brain remapped in order to process them in the correct region of the brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our patient, we found that the process is reversible,\u201d continued Gaetz.<\/p>\n

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Mapping the regions of the brain that receive signals from Zion’s hands<\/h2>\n

Researchers used Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive neuroimaging\u00a0technique, to detect the location, signal strength and timing of the Zion\u2019s responses to sensory stimuli applied lightly to his lips and fingers. MEG offers higher spatial resolution compared to common EEGs. It\u2019s also far more comfortable for the patient compared to fMRI, which is especially helpful when studying children who tend to be squirmy.<\/p>\n

Once the imaging was complete, the researchers used Brainstorm<\/a> to perform data analysis for this study. Brainstorm is a MATLAB<\/a> community toolbox for MEG analysis.<\/p>\n

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Image Credit: Gaetz et al.\/Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

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The team performed MEGs four times on Zion in the year following his hand transplant. They also performed similar tests on five healthy children who served as controls. Their findings are shared in a paper<\/a> published in the\u00a0Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology<\/em>.<\/p>\n