Per the linked article this claim is made. How in the world is this possible? Seems like borderline BS.
I’ve read about something like this before. The brain mass is normal, but compressed into a very small volume, lining the inside of the skull.
Maybe a variation on something called Hydrocephalus or something like that? I don’t remember.
-FrL-
I’ve heard of reported cases like this;
I always 50% think - this is BS
49% think - man, the brain is far more plastic than anyone thinks
1% think - wow, this is proof. Consciousness and the mind are separate from the physical body
Yeah, that was it. The Wikipedia article on Hydrocephalus talks about another “exceptional case.”
It looks like I was wrong about the brain mass–it really is much smaller than a normal brain, yet some victims with this version of the condition still function apparently quite normally!
Weird.
-FrL-
Yeah, that was it. The Wikipedia article on Hydrocephalus talks about another “exceptional case.”
It looks like I was wrong about the brain mass–it really is much smaller than a normal brain, yet some victims with this version of the condition still function apparently quite normally!
Wierd.
-FrL-
I know the guy who’s profiled in this article:
He’s hydrocephalic and a brilliant mathematician.
I read the Wikipedia article and the three news stories linked at the bottom of the page, and I can’t find any clear statement that the brain mass was abnormal. The articles refer to him as having a “tiny brain”, but that’s the journalist’s choice of words. I think what we have here is probably a brain with about the same number of cells as a normal brain, but with a very odd shape.
I’ve also heard of cases in which people have had slow-growing brain tumors that reached a huge size–like the size of a baseball–before causing any symptoms. It’s apparent that the brain has surprising plasticity, but it would be ridiculous to infer that it is “not necessary”. People who have had portions of their brains destroyed tend to miss them. :dubious:
WF Tomba writes:
> I think what we have here is probably a brain with about the same number of
> cells as a normal brain, but with a very odd shape.
It appears though that the brain of the boy mentioned in the article linked to in the OP really does have a small brain mass (and thus less brain cells). The neurologist who examined him says that his brain has a mass of 50 to 150 grams. In contrast, the average brain is 1.5 kilograms (1500 grams). Thus the boy has no more than 10% of the mass of the average brain. This happens in about half of hydrocephic cases. That is, half the time a hydrocephic case with no more than 5% of the average brain mass is profoundly retarded. The other half the time people with about 5% of the average brain mass are somewhere close to average intelligence (and some are in fact extremely intelligent).
I can’t help but wonder what this means for koalas.
Seems like BS to me too. By analogy, I think most people would agree that a person with a heart or with leg muscles 10% of normal size won’t be running marathons.
I think people get sentimental about brains, because intelligence has become so important in modern society. A lot of people really don’t like the idea that physical limitations can prevent people from accomplishing things.
But what %age of a normal brain’s mass is good old fat?
If the guy has a lean brain but a close to normal # of thinkin’ cells he becomes less remarkable. And isn’t it also the case that of the thinkin’ cells we do have, we don’t use anything like the majority of them? So if he’s got close to the normal number of thinkers, and maybe uses a higher than average %age of them, well, deformed but not remarkable.
Little to none, as far as I can tell from reading reputable academic websites. Also, the idea that we don’t use most of our brains is a well-known urban legend.
From the OP link:
Well, since we only use 10% of our brains, that’s obviously the 10% he has. Makes perfect sense to me.
I keed. 
I hope it has merit…my son has an arachnoid cyst (similar to hydrocephalus) which pushes on the brain from the outside instead of in, although they may result from strokes according to his doctor. But, as large as his is (maybe 10% of his cranial cavity but hard to put a number on it even from an MRI), he is 100% normal at 22 months. He can run and play, count to 10, knows hundreds of words, is learning the alphabet, and amazes me everyday. So I hope the brain is able to compensate for at least some loss. At least it appears to have some ability to do so thus far.
Having studied the neurosciences pretty heavily back in the day, and having had a couple of decades now of clinical practice heavy with managing patients with neurologic diseases, I can declaim with little fear of substantiated contradiction that in the field of the study of the brain, there’s a lot that goes on that we don’t know about.
And as I learn more and more about the brain and its functioning, the more it is apparent to me that we barely know anything about it at all.
In the novel The Exorcist, published in 1971, Chris MacNeil takes her daughter Regan to the Mayo clinic to try to determine what’s wrong with her. In talking to one of the doctors, he (the doctor) mentions about how he knows of one kid, a brilliant mathematician, who came to him complaining of recurring migraines. When they studied his brain using a CAT scan they found out that he didn’t really have one - akin to the OP, the kid described in the novel had a brain stem and a lot of fluid, but no brain.
So when I read the link posted by the OP, I wonder if the doctor and Blatty were writing about the same kid?
Other than that… I got nothin’.
The likely source of disingenuousness in the reporting is that they pick a case where a person has exceptional intelligence in a narrowly defined area, combined with a lack of brain matter in general, and say “hah! this person doesn’t even have a brain and he’s smarter than you!” The thing to realize is that there are almost always tradeoffs, and I strongly wonder what we are not being told. I would be very interested, not in the CAT scans, but in the results of thorough IQ and neuropsychological exams. What functional mechanisms are severely lacking or missing altogether?
The (fictional) doctor in the novel The Exorcist probably wasn’t speaking about the same case as the one mentioned in the article that’s linked to in the OP. If you’ll read the article carefully, it says that after John Lorber’s talk in 1980, someone at Sheffield University became aware of a young hydrocephalic man who was a mathematician. So it appears that the man mentioned by the colleague at Sheffield couldn’t have been the same one as the one mentioned by the doctor in The Exorcist, which would have been about ten years earlier. In any case, there have appear to be several cases of hydrocephalic men who were brilliant mathematicians, since the one I know (Nick Patterson) apparently wasn’t the same as either of the two previously mentioned ones.
I don’t know, but Nick Patterson, as I’ve mentioned, is hydrocephalic and a brilliant mathematician. I presume that his brain also has little mass, but I don’t know if anyone has checked. I’ve seen no sign in him of any mental deficiency.