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Humans can also work fine with almost no brain tissue, as has been discovered throughout history. The canonical article is from 1980, "Is Your Brain Really Nec
by tacon 10y ago
Humans can also work fine with almost no brain tissue, as has been discovered throughout history. The canonical article is from 1980, "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?"[0]
"There's a young student at this university," says Lorber, "who has an IQ of 126, has gained a first-class honors degree in mathematics, and is socially completely normal. And yet the boy has virtually no brain." The student's physician at the university noticed that the youth had a slightly larger than normal head, and so referred him to Lorber, simply out of interest. "When we did a brain
scan on him," Lorber recalls, "we saw that instead of the normal 4.5-centimeter thickness of brain tissue between the
ventricles and the cortical surface, there was just a thin layer of mantle measuring a millimeter or so. His cranium is filled mainly with cerebrospinal fluid."
[0] http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/Science_No-Brain.pdf http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/Science_No-Brain.pdf
- fjarlq 10y agoIn 2007, John Hawks criticized[1] Lorber's claim. [1]: http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/development/ten_percent_brain_myth_2007.html http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/brain/development/ten_pe...
- tacon 10y agoThanks for that update. That article was in my weird stuff file, and I had no idea the evidence presented was controversial.
- sandworm101 10y agoThere is another layer, and it is very political. "Studies" that show people can be functional without brain matter are championed by certain pro-life groups who want to describe "brain dead" people as potentially functional. It came to a head during the Terri Schiavo fiasco. Her scans were horrific, showing very little brain after her accident. People pointed to these studies as evidence that such a scan did not preclude recovery to a normal life, that she should be kept alive at all costs in hope of recovery. That's how these things stay around. Someone finds them useful for completely non-scientific arguments.
- Para2016 10y agoLorber is full of crap. I want to see his 1980 poor resolution head CT and find out what he's called 5 mm and whether that extends throughout each ventricle. I don't actually want to see it at all actually, the imaging will show he's exaggerating his claim and he's totally full of it. Lorber gives MDs a bad name. It's too bad 40 years has lapsed and he's still discussed as anything other than a complete quack.
- scotty79 10y agoWhat about this guy? https://www.google.pl/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSN1930510020070720 https://www.google.pl/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idU...