How brain surgery rewired my brain...for the better!

 

    Hello Folks!! Today is an interesting topic I have to talk about. Ever since my brain surgery last year in August 2024, I realized that my thought process has become faster than before. Not just that, I noticed I am able to "absorb" information more thoroughly and learn things quicker. At first I thought that I am probably just being delusional. But then I started measuring my brain's cognitive performance on quantitative and qualitative scales. I checked how many days it took me to learn a new skill, how it felt mentally and emotionally from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective, and how many times I melted down learning these new skills due to Autistic and ADHD overstimulation. For those of you new to my blog, welcome! I am Arifa Kokab, a scientist with Autism and ADHD and I struggle to read in general and my spelling skill sucks big time. I am also very OCD. Anyways, back to my story.

    So I began "re-learning" the piano along with two distinct languages: French and Arabic. I started to learn French from scratch, not just spoken, but written with all the grammar and spellings. I already knew how to read fluently in Arabic, but my spoken and understanding of Arabic was rather weak, so I began to work on that. I executed all of this simultaneously for my personal "experiment" purposes. Across the last 3 months, my achievement of these skills have grown immensely, being able to read, write and speak more fluently in both languages and being able to read and play the piano music at an intermediate level. Now, I had tried learning French in the past, I would keep getting overstimulated every time I had to learn a new word and would want to break down in tears every time there was a new grammatic rule to look into. Likewise for Arabic. In 3 months, I have successfully learned 250 words for both languages which allows me to read and understand basic paragraphs now. I mean I am not fluent, don't get me wrong, but it is a massive boost to what my brain was capable of earlier. And the coolest part is, I enjoy learning it! No meltdowns, in fact, in my free time, I open my DuoLingo and get back at it. That app is amazing! (no this is not sponsored lol).

    Let's talk about how it was before. I was progressively struggling with memory and remembering things, probably due to the cyst growing in the center of my brain. That interfered with how I learned, and everything seemed so hard and impossible to do. I would get confused really fast, and then shutdown mentally due to Autistic and ADHD overstimulation. But here is the thing, while in high school, I had successfully completed a 2-year advanced mathematics course in just 3 months (I studied 12 hours a day that time), so my brain did have the power of learning fast in my area of interest (yes I LOVE math lol). In terms of memory skill, I was 9 years old when I memorized 327 digits of Pi for a math competition, which I won and probably scared all my teachers because their jaws were dropped when I was reciting in front of the school (guys, I have a photographic memory, I was literally just seeing a mental image of that paper with all the digits of Pi and just reading it out loud with my eyes closed). 

    However, it got worse and worse over the years, till the point where I would do things and forget what I was doing (even while in the middle of it!). Luckily, I had an open brain surgery which removed the cyst in the nick of time, saving my life, but my biggest fear was losing my past memory as well as the capacity to form new memories. But little did I know that this was going to change my life, for the better! 

    Here is how neurosurgery affected my brain and thought process. My neurosurgeon accessed the third ventricle of my brain through my left frontal lobe. This area basically manages focus, planning, memory and emotional regulation. Now this cyst had been pressing on my deep brain pathways. Once it was removed, my neural communication began to flow freely again. Although neurons are not directly injured as my neurosurgeon was careful to avoid functional tissue, but this type of a surgery tends to temporarily disinhibit the area which then reactivates previously "silent pathways". Neuroplasticity takes place and new dendrites are formed, which is how neurons speak to each other.

    Now here is the cool part. I had my neurosurgery while doing my graduate engineering degree in artificial intelligence, needless to say, I was coding pretty heavily. I didn't take a single day off from university. I was back to coding in about 4 days post-surgery, which forced my brain to jerk awake and keep it rolling. I was walking again by 1 week without my walker, which is amazing, my physiotherapist kept telling me he couldn't believe I just had a huge neurosurgery. I kept doing my prayers as well as practicing mindful gratitude. I kept resting whenever I felt tired and napping multiple times a day.

    But what all this did was basically, I had unintentionally created the best environment for my brain to re-wire and re-activate in advanced 2.0 mode! This is also known as Neurorehabilitation. Trust me, I had no clue and intention of doing this. I just basically went back to my normal life of studying, cooking, praying, working and being mindful. A year later, I graduated from that engineering degree (with a 4/4 GPA!) and now I am doing my graduate medical studies in biomedical neuroscience. Doing all this activated different parts of my brain, advancing neuroplasticity and the neural networks.

    So, in the end, that what had scared me the most, turned out to be my greatest blessing of all!! If you know me, you know I am quite religious and always credit God/Allah for how much He has truly helped me throughout life. I am grateful to Him for having given me a second chance at life and upgrading my brain so I can become my best version. I am so excited for what is to come forward in my life! Until next time!

xXx,

Soni