Introducing the brain: missing a part doen't matter (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, June 13, 2022, 23:56 (680 days ago) @ David Turell

Another part of the brain takes over:

https://mindmatters.ai/2022/05/woman-missing-key-language-part-of-brain-scores-98-in-vo...

"For EG, who is in her fifties and grew up in Connecticut, missing a large chunk of her brain has had surprisingly little effect on her life. She has a graduate degree, has enjoyed an impressive career, and speaks Russian—a second language–so well that she has dreamed in it. She first learned her brain was atypical in the autumn of 1987, at George Washington University Hospital, when she had it scanned for an unrelated reason. The cause was likely a stroke that happened when she was a baby; today, there is only cerebro-spinal fluid in that brain area. For the first decade after she found out, EG didn’t tell anyone other than her parents and her two closest friends. “It creeped me out,” she says. Since then, she has told more people, but it’s still a very small circle that is aware of her unique brain anatomy.

***

"EG has since become the subject of a paper published this month in Neuropsychologia by MIT cognitive neuroscientist Evelina Fedorenko and her team.

"Study of EG has proceeded on the assumption that other regions of her brain had taken up the task of processing language. That’s not as unusual as it sounds; the brain is a living organ, not a machine. Given an opportunity, it can shift burdens around (neuroplasticity.) This is especially true if, as in EG’s case, the damage occurred when she was a baby. Children’s brains appear more neuroplastic than those of adults, probably because many thinking tasks have not yet been assigned.

"Among people with intact brains the left hemisphere usually processes language. But left-handed people are more likely than others to have the right hemisphere doing that job. In EG’s case, the researchers concluded, based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), that language processing had shifted to her right hemisphere. Her left frontal cortex could still do math tasks, however.

***

"Indeed. Except for the advent of fMRI, no one would ever have known about her brain abnormality — a sobering thought when we realize how many definitive judgments are made on the basis of the merely partial understanding that a new technology often provides.

"In reality, the human brain is remarkable not only for its complexity but for its adaptations to adversity, especially early in life.

"Here Are some other stories of people living with partial or split brains:

"Yes, split brains are weird, but not the way you think. Scientists who dismiss consciousness and free will ignore the fact that the higher faculties of the mind cannot be split even by splitting the brain in half.

"Some people think and speak with only half a brain. A new study sheds light on how they do it.

"Boy born with 2% of brain does maths, loves science. Noah Wall’s story raises intriguing questions about the relationship between the brain and the mind

and

"Four researchers whose work sheds light on the reality of the mind The brain can be cut in half, but the intellect and will cannot, says Michael Egnor. The intellect and will are metaphysically simple."

Comment: all of this absent brain ability has been presented here in the past. Not by chance.