7 ms·

No Brainer

314 points by shpx 11y ago

andrewflnr 11y ago
I want to know if people like this are less susceptible to concussion. If so, and if it's true that there's not necessarily a decrease in ability, it seems like a strictly superior arrangement.
- stickfigure 11y ago
  Not to mention innate resilience to the impending zombie apocalypse.
jboggan 11y ago
This could imply that (a) the exterior folds are far more important than the inner volume or (b) we shouldn't discount interstitial fluid as being inert with respect to cognition in these cases. Though the absence of lissencephaly cases with normal or above average intelligence (from a cursory search) probably supports the former. The latter would be delightfully weird - but I'm sure there's all kinds of strange and poorly understood things going on your spinal fluid.
- brianpan 11y ago
  (a) is exactly what is described in a paper he linked- the exterior, and more important, gray matter is pretty much all there. The vast majority of what is missing is white matter. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/07/26/is-your-brain-really-necessary-revisited/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/07/26/is... Not as exciting when you look at it like that.
  - emn13 11y ago
    Also, it's fairly reasonable to assume that IQ doesn't scale nearly linearly with brain mass (data on male/female differences clearly shows that a 10% size difference doesn't translate to much of anything on average). But let's pretend mass difference does simplistically affect neurological computational throughput. Even then, physically larger brain will need longer, more expensive signalling pathways, which can't be entirely free. Also, the larger the animal, the lower the metabolic rate - and translated to a brain with lots of dead weight, that may mean that mass gained via density is at least partially offset by a lower metabolic rate of the tissue (i.e. such a damaged brain may be burning more calories per gram of brain matter left, and that might even be less efficient overal - but in todays society, I think it's safe to say that some hypothetical extra calorie needs wouldn't need to be a problem...) If you look at it computationally, it's reasonable to assume that many of the "algorithms" the brain uses scale supra-linearly. If you had twice the computing power, the accuracy of the resulting solutions wouldn't be twice as good or arrived at twice as quickly, but some amount much lower than that. To take the classic example of chess; twice the computing power only lets you look ahead a fraction of a move more, not twice as many moves. Furthermore, the brain is a ridiculously parallel computation device. At that scale, it's conceivable that even considerably fewer neurons that operate slightly more quickly (due to a higher metabolic rate and shorter signaling pathways) might perform just as well or even better on certain tasks. All in all, it doesn't surprise me that a considerable difference in brain mass don't necessarily translate to an easily measurable IQ difference. There's going to be some effect surely, but how large would the mass difference need to be before it's noticeable? I have no idea. And those dramatic images seem to be from http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2807%2961127-1/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67..., that describe a patient with IQ 75 - perhaps still impressive, but also clearly below average.
lololomg 11y ago
The most obvious hypothesis to me is that the (missing) inside parts of the brain is much less important than the (remaining) outer structures
- dahart 11y ago
  I have a friend working on the Connectome project (http://cbs.fas.harvard.edu/science/connectome-project http://cbs.fas.harvard.edu/science/connectome-project) who told me last summer that all brain logic happens in the outer millimeter of tissue, everything inside is essentially routing. I'm summarizing his summary, so I'm certain it's more complex than that, but to a first order approximation, I'd guess your guess is correct! And so it wouldn't be particularly surprising that someone with cavities in their brain could be smart. One might expect deficiencies of some sort, but one might be speculating; I probably wouldn't bet on it.
  - mistaken 11y ago
    This might even be useful for simulating brains, since the hollow brain model seems to be a lot simpler than a fully connected one.
  - amelius 11y ago
    Uhm, but why isn't the routing essential for processing? And why is it there in the first place? In other words, why wouldn't evolution eliminate this costly and unnecessary part of the brain?
    - trhway 11y ago
      it was mentioned that the condition develops gradually from the normal brain. So it seems pretty plausible that in some people the brain successfully rewires in parallel with and in response to the development of the condition so that direct white matter connections get functionally replaced by some kind of mesh-style network in the gray matter layer. While this may suggest that typical amount of white matter may be not strictly necessary, the significantly less than 100% success rate of such rewiring may explain why evolution hasn't gone this way .
olh 11y ago
I don't remember reading a post as interesting as this one in a long time here.
LAMike 11y ago
How would this bring us closer to the Singularity?
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  I assume you're referring to this paragraph from the article? > But maybe the reality is simpler than the fiction. Maybe you don’t have to tweak genes or interface brains with computers to make the next great leap in cognitive evolution. Right now, right here in the real world, the cognitive function of brain tissue can be boosted— without engineering, without augmentation— by literal orders of magnitude. All it takes, apparently, is the right kind of stress. And if the neuroscience community heeds de Oliveira et al‘s clarion call, we may soon know how to apply that stress to order. The singularity might be a lot closer than we think.
amasad 11y ago
While "extracorporeal" evokes the supernatural, some scientists have been working on bringing this back to science. The Relativistic Brain Theory is a book by the neuroscientist that built some of the first brain computer interfaces along with a mathematician that worked on the Human Brain Project. It talks about how the magnetic field created by the electrical current in the brain creates some sort of analog computer. It's a very interesting read but I couldn't shake off the feeling that it was somewhat religiously driven. http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=665 http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=665
- ivanhoe 11y ago
  One of my professors at old University (http://www.dejanrakovic.com/english.html http://www.dejanrakovic.com/english.html) had a somewhat similar theory about electrical impulses of our brain being able to extend outside of neural pathways into a much wider surrounding space, all based on some advanced quantum physics calculations (frankly, too advanced for me to follow). And yes, he is also heavily inspired by popular religious/metaphysical ideas, but considering his academical background and indisputably huge knowledge, it's an interesting Sci-fi idea, to say the least...
tim333 11y ago
It reminds me off the difference between a desktop and laptop computer. I've often thought it remarkable with them how you squish the circuitry into about a tenth the volume and get much the same functionality.
- DiabloD3 11y ago
  Except then you realize most of the inside of a desktop is unoptimized empty space nowadays.
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    Maybe it's same thing with our brain. It has volume to fill but it already evolved to not need that volume.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    It's not "unoptimized." It's quite well-optimized for modularity, expandability, and ease of maintenance.
  - tim333 11y ago
    Maybe the regular brain has empty space so is can flush toxins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid#Circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid#Circulatio...
- chippy 11y ago
  It's not quite the same thing, as the network is not any denser, it's more efficient. I can't quite find the right metaphor in computing as I imagine the human creators made things pretty efficient even with valves and transistors. Perhaps a good metaphor would be that of the flow of water in a branching braiding swamp near the coast and the flow of water in a mountain river.
- rayedearthstar 11y ago
  Not a very suitable analogy because an animal brain was in fact optimized for mobility for hundreds of millions of years. The real difference in desktop vs. laptop is lack of optimization for expandability, for use of standardized components, for ease of physical access for upgrades. Now that I wrote previous paragraph, it leads me to question whether these 'no-brain' cases may be less fit for future rewiring? For instance, being transplanted in a different culuture, different language, different field e.g. physical work or arts or social work instead of intellectual or from arts of physical work to social or intellectual work?
RobertoG 11y ago
If I remember correctly, grey matter (that is situated in the outside) is grey because it's mostly composed by cellular bodies. White matter (in the inside) is white because is mostly composed by axons, and its function is to connect cellular bodies. My understanding is that if the external part is not damaged, the processing power should be there. Of course, that doesn't explain everything, but we don't need to star to believe in souls yet.
narrator 11y ago
There are a lot of nerve cells concentrated in the gut and spinal cord[1]. Maybe they took over some of the functions of his missing brain? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system
kbart 11y ago
Isn't that because the most of a brain activity happens on cortex?
atdt 11y ago
Energy expended by the brain makes up one-fifth of the resting metabolic rate, so if it is largely ornamental (by volume), it is a very expensive ornament.
- lmm 11y ago
  I guess the immediate question is, how much energy is this guy's (small) brain consuming?
geon 11y ago
> While I was writing Blindsight I was just about to recommend him to read it. :(
- rayedearthstar 11y ago
  The recommendation may still be appropriate: he hasn't necessarily read it.
hywel 11y ago
Google cache of this page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LQ2p32k0Z_0J:www.rifters.com/crawl/%3Fp%3D6116+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=et http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LQ2p32k... (the actual site is currently down)
plusquamperfekt 11y ago
So it is for real ... o.O It's a recurring theme in science that the more we know the more we become aware how little we actually understand. But the brain and it's embedding in the rest of the body and environment raises this phenomenon to a new level. I think to some extent it shows that considering something to a certain restricted level as true until falsified is a valid approach. Because a lot of the things science is uncovering about our mental capabilities has been postulated for thousands of years by means of introspection and meditation.
querious 11y ago
Does anyone know whether this is a degenerative disease or a condition one is born with? It's possible the whole brain is necessary for learning, (including learning how to learn more abstract things), but then can be pruned heavily to move information into denser networks.
rayedearthstar 11y ago
One possibility is that the mode and requirements of life have changed so quickly over the last few thousand years that the brain's ability to rewire and optimize for changed environment is lagging, and disabling large swathes of it acts as a kind of a shock therapy to rewire the rest of it at fast pace. The implication is that finding a way to gradually disable parts of the brain may force similar rewiring of active parts; at this point the latent part may be re-enabled and may 'learn' from the rewired part. I would volunteer but, uh..
asab 11y ago
> The point, though, is that under the right conditions, brain damage may paradoxically result in brain enhancement. Makes me think of one of my favorite stories: 'Understand' by Ted Chiang. In the story, brain-damaged people treated with an experimental drug gain superintelligence.
cmarschner 11y ago
(Stupid question perhaps, but) have they looked outside the skull? Lots of old brain-like systems are around the spine and other places I hear (guts etc.). Couldn't there be an anomaly that a part of his brain sits somewhere in his chest?

314 points by shpx 11y ago

I want to know if people like this are less susceptible to concussion. If so, and if it's true that there's not necessarily a decrease in ability, it seems like a strictly superior arrangement.

stickfigure 11y ago
Not to mention innate resilience to the impending zombie apocalypse.

jboggan 11y ago

This could imply that (a) the exterior folds are far more important than the inner volume or (b) we shouldn't discount interstitial fluid as being inert with respect to cognition in these cases. Though the absence of lissencephaly cases with normal or above average intelligence (from a cursory search) probably supports the former. The latter would be delightfully weird - but I'm sure there's all kinds of strange and poorly understood things going on your spinal fluid.

brianpan 11y ago
(a) is exactly what is described in a paper he linked- the exterior, and more important, gray matter is pretty much all there. The vast majority of what is missing is white matter. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/07/26/is-your-brain-really-necessary-revisited/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2015/07/26/is... Not as exciting when you look at it like that.
- emn13 11y ago
  Also, it's fairly reasonable to assume that IQ doesn't scale nearly linearly with brain mass (data on male/female differences clearly shows that a 10% size difference doesn't translate to much of anything on average). But let's pretend mass difference does simplistically affect neurological computational throughput. Even then, physically larger brain will need longer, more expensive signalling pathways, which can't be entirely free. Also, the larger the animal, the lower the metabolic rate - and translated to a brain with lots of dead weight, that may mean that mass gained via density is at least partially offset by a lower metabolic rate of the tissue (i.e. such a damaged brain may be burning more calories per gram of brain matter left, and that might even be less efficient overal - but in todays society, I think it's safe to say that some hypothetical extra calorie needs wouldn't need to be a problem...) If you look at it computationally, it's reasonable to assume that many of the "algorithms" the brain uses scale supra-linearly. If you had twice the computing power, the accuracy of the resulting solutions wouldn't be twice as good or arrived at twice as quickly, but some amount much lower than that. To take the classic example of chess; twice the computing power only lets you look ahead a fraction of a move more, not twice as many moves. Furthermore, the brain is a ridiculously parallel computation device. At that scale, it's conceivable that even considerably fewer neurons that operate slightly more quickly (due to a higher metabolic rate and shorter signaling pathways) might perform just as well or even better on certain tasks. All in all, it doesn't surprise me that a considerable difference in brain mass don't necessarily translate to an easily measurable IQ difference. There's going to be some effect surely, but how large would the mass difference need to be before it's noticeable? I have no idea. And those dramatic images seem to be from http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2807%2961127-1/fulltext http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67..., that describe a patient with IQ 75 - perhaps still impressive, but also clearly below average.

lololomg 11y ago

The most obvious hypothesis to me is that the (missing) inside parts of the brain is much less important than the (remaining) outer structures

dahart 11y ago
I have a friend working on the Connectome project (http://cbs.fas.harvard.edu/science/connectome-project http://cbs.fas.harvard.edu/science/connectome-project) who told me last summer that all brain logic happens in the outer millimeter of tissue, everything inside is essentially routing. I'm summarizing his summary, so I'm certain it's more complex than that, but to a first order approximation, I'd guess your guess is correct! And so it wouldn't be particularly surprising that someone with cavities in their brain could be smart. One might expect deficiencies of some sort, but one might be speculating; I probably wouldn't bet on it.
- mistaken 11y ago
  This might even be useful for simulating brains, since the hollow brain model seems to be a lot simpler than a fully connected one.
- amelius 11y ago
  Uhm, but why isn't the routing essential for processing? And why is it there in the first place? In other words, why wouldn't evolution eliminate this costly and unnecessary part of the brain?
  - trhway 11y ago
    it was mentioned that the condition develops gradually from the normal brain. So it seems pretty plausible that in some people the brain successfully rewires in parallel with and in response to the development of the condition so that direct white matter connections get functionally replaced by some kind of mesh-style network in the gray matter layer. While this may suggest that typical amount of white matter may be not strictly necessary, the significantly less than 100% success rate of such rewiring may explain why evolution hasn't gone this way .

olh 11y ago

I don't remember reading a post as interesting as this one in a long time here.

LAMike 11y ago

How would this bring us closer to the Singularity?

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
I assume you're referring to this paragraph from the article? > But maybe the reality is simpler than the fiction. Maybe you don’t have to tweak genes or interface brains with computers to make the next great leap in cognitive evolution. Right now, right here in the real world, the cognitive function of brain tissue can be boosted— without engineering, without augmentation— by literal orders of magnitude. All it takes, apparently, is the right kind of stress. And if the neuroscience community heeds de Oliveira et al‘s clarion call, we may soon know how to apply that stress to order. The singularity might be a lot closer than we think.

amasad 11y ago

While "extracorporeal" evokes the supernatural, some scientists have been working on bringing this back to science. The Relativistic Brain Theory is a book by the neuroscientist that built some of the first brain computer interfaces along with a mathematician that worked on the Human Brain Project. It talks about how the magnetic field created by the electrical current in the brain creates some sort of analog computer. It's a very interesting read but I couldn't shake off the feeling that it was somewhat religiously driven. http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=665 http://www.nicolelislab.net/?p=665

ivanhoe 11y ago
One of my professors at old University (http://www.dejanrakovic.com/english.html http://www.dejanrakovic.com/english.html) had a somewhat similar theory about electrical impulses of our brain being able to extend outside of neural pathways into a much wider surrounding space, all based on some advanced quantum physics calculations (frankly, too advanced for me to follow). And yes, he is also heavily inspired by popular religious/metaphysical ideas, but considering his academical background and indisputably huge knowledge, it's an interesting Sci-fi idea, to say the least...

tim333 11y ago

It reminds me off the difference between a desktop and laptop computer. I've often thought it remarkable with them how you squish the circuitry into about a tenth the volume and get much the same functionality.

DiabloD3 11y ago
Except then you realize most of the inside of a desktop is unoptimized empty space nowadays.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  Maybe it's same thing with our brain. It has volume to fill but it already evolved to not need that volume.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  It's not "unoptimized." It's quite well-optimized for modularity, expandability, and ease of maintenance.
- tim333 11y ago
  Maybe the regular brain has empty space so is can flush toxins - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid#Circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebrospinal_fluid#Circulatio...
chippy 11y ago
It's not quite the same thing, as the network is not any denser, it's more efficient. I can't quite find the right metaphor in computing as I imagine the human creators made things pretty efficient even with valves and transistors. Perhaps a good metaphor would be that of the flow of water in a branching braiding swamp near the coast and the flow of water in a mountain river.
rayedearthstar 11y ago
Not a very suitable analogy because an animal brain was in fact optimized for mobility for hundreds of millions of years. The real difference in desktop vs. laptop is lack of optimization for expandability, for use of standardized components, for ease of physical access for upgrades. Now that I wrote previous paragraph, it leads me to question whether these 'no-brain' cases may be less fit for future rewiring? For instance, being transplanted in a different culuture, different language, different field e.g. physical work or arts or social work instead of intellectual or from arts of physical work to social or intellectual work?

RobertoG 11y ago

If I remember correctly, grey matter (that is situated in the outside) is grey because it's mostly composed by cellular bodies. White matter (in the inside) is white because is mostly composed by axons, and its function is to connect cellular bodies. My understanding is that if the external part is not damaged, the processing power should be there. Of course, that doesn't explain everything, but we don't need to star to believe in souls yet.

narrator 11y ago

There are a lot of nerve cells concentrated in the gut and spinal cord[1]. Maybe they took over some of the functions of his missing brain? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system

kbart 11y ago

Isn't that because the most of a brain activity happens on cortex?

atdt 11y ago

Energy expended by the brain makes up one-fifth of the resting metabolic rate, so if it is largely ornamental (by volume), it is a very expensive ornament.

lmm 11y ago
I guess the immediate question is, how much energy is this guy's (small) brain consuming?

geon 11y ago

> While I was writing Blindsight I was just about to recommend him to read it. :(

rayedearthstar 11y ago
The recommendation may still be appropriate: he hasn't necessarily read it.

hywel 11y ago

Google cache of this page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LQ2p32k0Z_0J:www.rifters.com/crawl/%3Fp%3D6116+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=et http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LQ2p32k... (the actual site is currently down)

plusquamperfekt 11y ago

So it is for real ... o.O It's a recurring theme in science that the more we know the more we become aware how little we actually understand. But the brain and it's embedding in the rest of the body and environment raises this phenomenon to a new level. I think to some extent it shows that considering something to a certain restricted level as true until falsified is a valid approach. Because a lot of the things science is uncovering about our mental capabilities has been postulated for thousands of years by means of introspection and meditation.

querious 11y ago

Does anyone know whether this is a degenerative disease or a condition one is born with? It's possible the whole brain is necessary for learning, (including learning how to learn more abstract things), but then can be pruned heavily to move information into denser networks.

rayedearthstar 11y ago

One possibility is that the mode and requirements of life have changed so quickly over the last few thousand years that the brain's ability to rewire and optimize for changed environment is lagging, and disabling large swathes of it acts as a kind of a shock therapy to rewire the rest of it at fast pace. The implication is that finding a way to gradually disable parts of the brain may force similar rewiring of active parts; at this point the latent part may be re-enabled and may 'learn' from the rewired part. I would volunteer but, uh..

asab 11y ago

> The point, though, is that under the right conditions, brain damage may paradoxically result in brain enhancement. Makes me think of one of my favorite stories: 'Understand' by Ted Chiang. In the story, brain-damaged people treated with an experimental drug gain superintelligence.

cmarschner 11y ago

(Stupid question perhaps, but) have they looked outside the skull? Lots of old brain-like systems are around the spine and other places I hear (guts etc.). Couldn't there be an anomaly that a part of his brain sits somewhere in his chest?