Do you need a brain to go to university?
The human brain is a really good example of how resilient and adaptable the human body is, and how little we really understand it.
I first realised this when I read about a British university student in 1980, who by accident was discovered to have around 95% of his brain missing. The student in question had his head scanned as part of a large scientific study into spina bifida. He was totally unaware of his condition, and was only asked to participate in the study because his doctor thought his head looked a bit big. That must have been an interesting conversation.
Instead of the expected 4.5 cm thick layer of brain cortex, he had a wafer thin layer only 1 mm thick. This had been caused by a condition called hydrocephalus, with the missing brain tissue replaced by cerebrospinal fluid. Importantly, despite only having around 5% of his expected brain tissue, he had an IQ of 126 and graduated with a first class degree in maths!
There have been more recent examples of this phenomenon, including in 2007 when a 44 year old French civil servant went to his doctor complaining of mild weakness in his leg, and was discovered to have most of his brain missing,
Another really amazing example was in 2002 when a 6 year old Dutch girl had half of her brain removed due to severe epilepsy. Despite the (missing) left side of the brain being known to contain the areas responsible for speech, she remained perfectly fluent in 2 languages (Dutch and Turkish).
The photo below is the girl’s brain scan, with the dark area showing the missing brain hemisphere after surgery.
I find stories like these very inspirational for a couple of reasons. Firstly they show just how resilient the human body is, and how we can continue to function normally despite taking on major damage. In all of the cases above, the remaining parts of the brains and nervous systems of the individuals have managed to compensate somehow for the loss of brain tissue. What is more, we still don’t understand exactly how they manage to do this, which underlines the fact that certainly for the brain, we still don’t really know how it works.
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Cliff Russell, Registered Osteopath
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