During the summer we had Rachel’s mental capabilities tested. Even before her medical condition, it was something we were considering. We had gotten a strong recommendation forJohn Aulenta, a psychologist in Monterey, and had already\u00a0been thinking that testing might be helpful. Now knowing that her brain had\u00a0a most unhelpful displosion in it, the time had clearly come. Her new neurologist was also very\u00a0interested to see the results, to help evaluate how functional her right temporal lobe was.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0have always had a very low opinion of classic IQ tests. I think they essentially test how similar\u00a0the subject is\u00a0to\u00a0Einstein, and that always struck me as a most\u00a0unhelpful way to evaluate humans.<\/p>\n
The opposite was true of the tests performed on Rachel. Aulenta’s\u00a0tests didn’t produce a single IQ number; they produced dozens. This much more resembles my experience with people: we are usually good at some things, and not so good at others.<\/p>\n
For Rachel the results were incredibly striking. The hippocampus is the place where we form memories. The one on the left side forms language-related memories\u00a0(i.e.\u00a0reading a book). The one on the right forms visual memories (i.e. reproducing an abstract drawing you got to look at for 5-10 seconds). All of Rachel’s tests results bounced around in the\u00a060-90 percentile range, except one: with\u00a0visual memory she was in the\u00a018th percentile.<\/p>\n
For Dr. Porter, this was very strong evidence that her right temporal lobe was already not helping Rachel. It was strong evidence that a more aggressive surgery, with a greater chance of stopping the\u00a0seizures, would not carry greater risks of compromised capabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During the summer we had Rachel’s mental capabilities tested. Even before her medical condition, it was something we were considering. We had gotten a strong recommendation forJohn Aulenta, a psychologist in Monterey, and had already\u00a0been thinking that testing might be helpful. Now knowing that her brain had\u00a0a most unhelpful displosion in it, the time had … Continue reading Neuro-psych testing<\/span>