Do you need your brain?

[chipmunk stew]

This is from an amusing website I stumbled across:
Is your brain really necessary?

The student in question was academically bright, had a reported IQ of 126 and was expected to graduate. When he was examined by CAT-scan, however, Lorber discovered that he had virtually no brain at all.

http://www.alternativescience.com/no_brainer.htm

 

[Meffy]

Lorber discovered that he had virtually no brain at all.

This is ambiguous. I think I know what the writer intended to say... but am loath to commit.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

Is that due to the condition where the ventricles fill with fluid and compress the brain?

 

[Soapy Sam]

I've looked up Lorber's work before. It's hard to find much real detail. There are known cases of hydrocephalic people whose cortex is very thin, but which actually has much the same surface area as a normal sized one.

Clearly there are minimum useful size limits, but they may be smaller than most of us would expect. (Small women seem no less intelligent than big men for instance, though brain volume may be 30% smaller ). There's a lot of redundancy in the young brain- and hydrocephaly is a condition of extreme youth. It seems that the young brain can , in some cases, adapt to work around the surface area / volume changes forced on it by fluid pressure in the skull.

 

[Meffy]

Lorber's the genuine article then, not a woo? I'm not familiar with him.

 

[El Greco]

Number 7 of these modules is a video with Lorber talking about brains with larger than normal ventricles and showing CAT scans of Sharon, perhaps the most famous "patient" of this kind.

ETA: And here's a relevant discussion

 

[Meffy]

Looks... respectable but controversial.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I see what's being said, but due to the misleading thread title I think I'll pull a Steven.

This is what I've been saying all along! The brain is useless! What does it really even DO for you? I mean, "think"? I don't pay people to just sit around... thinking all day. I want good hard working organs! That's why I have my heart and my gut do my thinking for me! They don't just sit in the attic of my body all day lounging about, they are hard at WORK for me, so I know I can trust them to think for me too!

 

[Mercutio]

This topic, and these studies, have been explored here before (probably prior to pruning, sadly). Quite a lot by a very few people in the literature. Not a lot of case studies there, so a few exceptional cases really stand out.