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There are people who are missing huge percentages of their brain from injury or other issues and lead a seemingly normal life. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithap

• throwup238 6mo ago
  The original paper did not say that a huge percentage of their brain was missing [1], that was the journalist's flourish based on their own misunderstanding. Tissue can be compressed, stretched, reorganized, or displaced especially to compensate for a congenital condition - the patient's brain had a lifetime to adapt to hydrocephalus, which pushed on the other brain tissue. The gray cortical shell is clearly visible in those images and their volume on a scan is not representative of neuron count or synaptic capacity. There are far more dramatic cases of brain damage and neuroplasticity that reorganizes major functions, but there are a lot of caveats. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61127-1/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
  • CamelCaseCondo 6mo ago
    Was expecting an article about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy
    • chmod775 6mo ago
      It's wild to me that this can have effectively no impact on a person's cognitive ability.