Half a brain girl recovers vision | Hacker News Reader

Half a brain girl recovers vision

news.bbc.co.uk

10 pointsdlnovell5 comments

"Despite lacking one hemisphere, the girl has normal psychological function and is perfectly capable of living a normal and fulfilling life. She is witty, charming and intelligent."

I'm always impressed at how the brain can put so much function in such a small space on such low power. But it's this like this that really impress me: imagine a computer not only as powerful and efficient as the brain, but also which is so adaptive that you could remove half of it during production and it would still, when finished being produced, be capable of most of its normal function.

Well it is not one computer but a network of billions of them. So they redistribute load when some of them go down. Still cool though :)

The research I've seen tends to lend weight to the view that each hemisphere is its own indpendent computer. Each may specialise in particular tasks but they are not dependent on each other. It's kind of like disabling one core in a dual core CPU.

This was interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocephaly#Exceptional_case

One interesting case involving a person with past hydrocephalus was a 44-year old French man, whose brain had been reduced to little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue, due to the buildup of fluid in his skull. The man, who had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away fluid (which was removed when he was 14), went to a hospital after he had been experiencing mild weakness in his left leg.

In July 2007, Fox News quoted Dr. Lionel Feuillet of Hôpital de la Timone in Marseille as saying: "The images were most unusual... the brain was virtually absent."[9] When doctors learned of the man's medical history, they performed a computed tomography (CT) scan and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, and were astonished to see "massive enlargement" of the lateral ventricles in the skull. Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled, either.

There's a lot of interesting stuff with hemisphere seperation. Also check out that TED lecture of the lady having a stroke.

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