man with barely any brain leads normal life? :O

[chibiphonebooth]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290610,00.html

French doctors are amazed that a 44-year-old civil servant with an abnormally small brain has led a normal life with a slightly lower than normal IQ, according to a report on Physorg.com.

craazzyyy stuff hereeeee XD

[ShiroiHikari]

Holy crap. How is that possible? D:

Is it true that we only use 10% of our brains then? XD

[chibiphonebooth]

i guess so! XDDD

[sharien chan]

wow...

[Raiden no Kishi]

Wait. "Civil servant". That's synonymous with "government worker," right? That explains how he could lead a normal life with so little gray matter. XD

No offense to any readers who may be employed by Uncle Sam - it's intended as a slam on the system, not you. ^_^

.rai//

[Technomancer]

Holy crap. How is that possible? D:

Is it true that we only use 10% of our brains then? XD

The brain itself is fairly plastic, and can adapt to at least some forms of damage. More importantly, the part of the brain that is responsible for all of our higher processes (the cerebral cortex) is itself only a thin layer on the outer edge of the rest of the brain. That region seems to have been mostly preserved in this individual. A combination of displacement and subsuming of function would account for the rest. The distributed nature of neural processing would also improve the robustness to damage

However, this does not mean that we only use ~10% of our brains. We would certainly not have evolved such a large and energy intensive organ if that were the case! I'm not really sure where this notion originated, but it may have something to do with the fact that all of the brain isn't active at the same time (leaving aside the random neural activity that is always occuring).

[minakichan]

Oh my-- and here I was expecting some kind of punchline.

Wow, that's crazy amazing.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Neuroplasticity is marvelous indeed. There are numerous cases which children lead fully functional and normal lives with an entire hemisphere of their brain removed at a very young age.

For further information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

[Tsukuyomi]

How interesting O.O

[ChristianKitsune]

O_O woah.

A man from my church was found to be missing half a brain... he's a bit slow, but otherwise really normal.

No, I am not kidding!

[termyt]

Holy crap. How is that possible? D:

He's a civil servant. It probably helps. Actually, though, I doubt it's all that big a deal. I wonder how well he can see though, since my understanding is a large portion of hte brain is dedicated to interpreting vision. Even then, I don't know how much of it is.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

I wonder how well he can see though, since my understanding is a large portion of hte brain is dedicated to interpreting vision. Even then, I don't know how much of it is.

According to the article, the man had surgery at the age of six months. Since the brain is still incredibly far from development at very young ages, it "rewires" itself to in what brain-matter is left to the point where it functions just like any normal human being with a fully-developed brain.

If you got brain surgery right now and had half your brain removed, you'd most likely be dead or rendered incapacitated because your brain was fully developed all around. However, if you had brain surgery as an infant, you could quite easily grow up with just as an effective brain as your average adult, although the chance of psychological ineptness does exist.

The best analogy I can think of is baking bread. You stick dough in an oven and you get bread in the end. If you take off a chunk of that bread, you break apart the bread crust and it's obvious that parts of the bread is missing. However, if you took out a chunk of the dough before it goes in the oven (i.e. brain development) and then bake it, you'll have a full crust on the outside and it will look normal despite the fact that it's smaller than the previous loaf.

[Shilohan ninja]

That's almost as amazing as the limbless Auzie!

[WrestlingOtaku]

The brain itself is fairly plastic, and can adapt to at least some forms of damage. More importantly, the part of the brain that is responsible for all of our higher processes (the cerebral cortex) is itself only a thin layer on the outer edge of the rest of the brain. That region seems to have been mostly preserved in this individual. A combination of displacement and subsuming of function would account for the rest. The distributed nature of neural processing would also improve the robustness to damage

However, this does not mean that we only use ~10% of our brains. We would certainly not have evolved such a large and energy intensive organ if that were the case! I'm not really sure where this notion originated, but it may have something to do with the fact that all of the brain isn't active at the same time (leaving aside the random neural activity that is always occuring).

Maybe it's because we only use a small percentage of the brain for actual thought and it just got shortened to, "Humans only use 10% of their brain"?

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Well the thing is that our brain is used for so many things. We all have different types of nervous systems that do different things. As our brain develops, different areas of the brain take up different roles. While some may be used for body movement or thinking, our brain is not limited to that. Everything that you do is because of your brain. Your heart beats because of your autonomic nervous system. Chemical imbalance in our brains is what generally causes depression. Our brain also does things like shape our personality, determines what motivates us, and how we both biologically, psychologically, and socially react to anything that acts as a stimuli. (Such as stress)

Everything that is psychological is also biological. (In the brain, that is)

So I guess in a way we only cognitively "use" a small portion of our brain for what we can take control of, but ourselves as a whole use up nearly our entire brain.

[Htom Sirveaux]

I just saw a young woman in the hospital today with her whole forhead deeply concaved. Like, all the way from eyebrows to hairline. She wasn't very coherent (it's a hospital, half the patients are completely zonked) so I couldn't tell how intelligent she might or might not have been, but it was definitely the wierdest thing I've seen there yet.

[mysngoeshere56]

Wow, this is pretty interesting. I've heard that we can live without most of our brain, but I never really thought about it until now.

Wow.

[Fish and Chips]

Wow, this is pretty interesting. I've heard that we can live without most of our brain, but I never really thought about it until now.

Wow.

A lot of people manage do it without the neurosurgery.