Cerebral Palsy maybe/maybe not

The designations found in anatomy texts indicating normal adult regions of function do not, therefore, tell us what we really want to know. Will this loss recover? There is recent genetic evidence that a major key to outcome is in the genetics of neurological healing which is, in essence, the genetic ability to reassign function from injured areas to intact areas of brain - even to the opposite side. Also, in this, is the reason that speech is so often intact in children whose brain injuries would be expected to eliminate speech. Certain genes have been noted to correlate with poor recovery. The ultimate outcome may be more related to degree of recovery than to the initial scope of injury. In fact, a very nit picking and fastidious study of new born babies found 7 times the number of subtle neurological findings than any of our clinical data (from toddlers) had suggested. The conclusion is that our data of incidence of clinical CP reflects a lower number of injuries - by far - than actually occurs. MOST heal. MOST. The span of time was considered to be about seven years. This data is in flux. New information seems to support these figures as a generality. So, late brain injury, injury after function has been assigned and hard wired - is different from early brain injury - before the function is up and running. The plastic infant brain structuring can decide - so to speak - to place the needed function in an intact though odd location. Injury to the speech center location is different if the injury follows attainment of speech than if before speech is up and running and the center for that function uncommitted.