"Scientific journals have reported cases of persons whose injuries have necessitated the removal of a large portion of the brain, and whose memory and power of thought were unimpaired by the loss of much cerebral matter, or by damage to centers which are supposed to be necessary to memory and consciousness. Dr. Troude writes: 'As M. Bergson foresaw in 1897, the hypothesis of the brain as conservative of memory images, must be renounced once and for all, and other ideas as to the nature of its role in the act of memory must be accepted. ' "
--- Helen C. Lambert, A General Survey of Psychical Phenomena, p. 49.
Scientists
have very often claimed that the human mind is produced by the brain,
and that memories are stored in the brain. A very interesting
question is: could you do a sink-or-swim experiment testing such
hypotheses? The experiment has actually been done, not just once but
many times. I will here use the term “experiment” for medical
procedures that were usually done for medical reasons such as
stopping very bad brain seizures in patients. Although the doctors
who did such procedures may not have considered them experiments, we
can consider them as experiments in the sense of testing a particular
hypothesis about the brain.
The
sink-or-swim experiment for the hypothesis that the brain makes the
mind and the hypothesis that the brain stores memories is to
surgically remove half of the brain, and see what the effect is on
the mind and memory. Such an experiment has been done many times.
Almost every time the result has been that there was no major effect
on consciousness, no major effect or intelligence, and no major
effect on memory. The memories of people who had half of their brains
removed usually preserved the
knowledge and life memories they had acquired.
This
is a “sink” result for this sink-or-swim experiment. The results
of such surgical operations decisively refute claims that the mind is
the product of the brain and claims that the brain is the
storage place of memories. But addicted to materialist dogma that
the mind is merely the product of the brain and that memories are
stored in brains, virtually no neuroscientists have paid attention to
the results of these sink-or-swim experiments. In this regard, they
are like fundamentalists who keep believing that the Earth is 6000
years old despite observational results indicating our planet is
billions of years old.
I
have in five previous posts (here, here, here, here and here) listed very much data
relating to such experiments. In this post I will not restate that
data showing that intelligence is well-preserved after removing half
of the brain, but will mostly cite some data and cases I have not previously
discussed.
I
can start with the results reported in the American Journal of
Psychology, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Jul., 1934), pages 500-503, regarding
work of W. E. Dandy, in which he removed half of the brains of patients. You can read the results in the preview here (without doing any registration). We read the following (I have put a few of the sentences in boldface):
“Dandy
has completely removed the right cerebral hemisphere from eight
patients. He has performed total extirpations of one or more lobes
much oftener... There are tabulated below certain generalizations on
the effects of removing the right hemisphere.... The operation was
the complete extirpation of the right frontal, temporal, parietal,
and occipital lobes peripheral to the corpus striatum. The weight of
the tissue re moved varies, with the pathological conditions
involved, from 250 to 584 grm [grams].Coherent
conversation began within twenty-four hours after operation, and in
one case on the afternoon of the same day. Later examinations showed
no observable mental changes. The patients were perfectly oriented
in respect of time, place, and person; their memory was unimpaired
for immediate and remote events; conversation was always coherent;
ability to read, write, compute, and learn new material was
unaltered. Current events were followed with normal interest. There
were no personality changes apparent; the patients were emotionally
stable, without fears, delusions,
hallucinations, expansive ideas or obsessions, and with a good sense
of humor; they joked frequently. They showed a natural interest in
their condition and future. They cooperated intelligently at all
times throughout post-operative care and subsequent testing of
function.”
It would be rather hard to imagine a more decisive refutation of the claim that
the human brain is the source of the human mind, and the claim that
the human brain is the storage place of human memories. Here are
eight people who had half of their brains removed. Yet the people
showed “no observable mental changes,” and “their memory was
unimpaired for immediate and remote events.” The people could
read, write, compute and learn just as if nothing had happened, and
“there were no personality changes.”
A
1966 paper was entitled “Long-term changes in intellect and
behavior after hemispherectomy.” The paper refers to operations in
which half of a brain is removed, often to stop very bad brain
seizures. This paper gives very detailed “before and after” IQ
score data on 11 people who had half of their brains removed. Eight
of the 11 people had the left half of their brain removed, and the
other three had the right half of their brain removed. Every single
one of the 11 people was able to get an improved IQ score on at least
one of the tests taken after half of their brain was removed,
a score better than a corresponding score they had got before half of
their brain was removed.
Patient
1 (a P.G.) had an IQ of 128 before half of his brain was removed.
After half of his brain was removed, he scored 142 on an IQ test. The
paper tells us that this man with half a brain “obtained a
university diploma after operation” and “has a responsible
administrative position with a local authority.”
The
same paper refers to previous results when removing half of a brain,
and notes data suggesting that such an operation has little negative
effect on intelligence. Referring to intelligence, we are told that
McKissock reported “short term improvement in 13 of 17 cases,”
that another researcher found “significant improvement in verbal
intelligence scores in a variety of tests after operation in five of
35 cases, with temporary deterioration in two, the remainder
unchanged.” We are also told that White “reports improvement in
personality in 80% of 134 cases” in which half of the brain was
removed.
The 2013 paper "Long-term functional outcomes and their predictors after hemispherectomy in 115 children" reports this: "In this cohort of 115 children, at a mean follow-up of 6.05 years after hemispherectomy, 83% patients walked independently, 73% had minimal or no behavioral problems, 69.5% had satisfactory spoken language skills, and 42% had good reading skills." These results are for people with half-brains, and we should remember that a large fraction of people with full brains lack good reading skills. Typically a hemispherectomy operation occurs as a last resort for a child who has been long-plagued by seizures. Before the operation, such seizures may have long-disrupted normal learning. So this 42% may not even reflect any major deterioration in reading skills after removal of half a brain.
In the scientific paper here, we have on page 248 and page 250 before and after test scores for various subjects who had of their brains removed in hemispherectomy operations. The IQ score differences are slight. IQ tests don't involve learned information, but almost any IQ test would be largely a test of memory, as it would be a largely a test of ability to read test questions.
On the same pages we have before and after test scores for Peabody Picture Vocabulary Tests given to various subjects who had half of their brains removed in hemispherectomy operations. In these tests, someone is shown picture cards like the one below, and asked to name the words represented by the pictures. These tests are tests of memory retention after removal of half of the brain. On these memory tests there was no decline in the score of 21 subjects mentioned on page 248, and no decline in 7 subjects mentioned on page 250.
In an article in the New Yorker magazine, we are told of a Christina Santhouse who
had half of her brain surgically removed: “When I met her, she had
taken her S.A.T.s and just finished high school, coming in
seventy-sixth in a class of two hundred and twenty-five.” If your
brain makes your mind, how could you finish in the top 34% of your
class with only half a brain? The same article tells us of someone
who had half of the brain removed, but made the dean's list in
college, a list of the top-performing students on campus.
An
article in the LA Times tells us about memory preservation in a young
girl who lost half her brain:
“How is it that
8-year-old Beth Usher of Storrs, Conn., can lose her left hemisphere,
yet retain her large repertoire of knock-knock jokes? Beth’s
memories survived not just the loss of brain tissue, but also the 32
days that she spent in a coma, the result of some brain stem swelling
that occurred in response to the trauma of surgery. Shortly after
Beth regained consciousness, her father began quizzing her about
people and places from her past. Brian Usher didn’t get very far.
'Dad,' Beth interrupted, with a trace of impatience. 'I remember
everything.' ”
In a scientific paper ("Why Would You Remove Half a Brain? The Outcome of 58 Children After Hemispherectomy −−The Johns Hopkins Experience: 1968 to 1996") we read about how surgeons at Johns Hopkins Medical School performed fifty-eight hemispherectomy operations on children over a thirty-year period. Eleven of these children had the left hemisphere of their brains removed; most of the rest had the right hemisphere of their brains removed. The paper states this:
"Despite removal of one hemisphere [i.e. one half of the brain], the intellect of
all but one of the children seems either unchanged or
improved....Although there have been major concerns about loss of language after left hemispherectomy, all eleven of these children have regained virtually normal language....It is
tempting to speculate, that the continuous electrical
activity of these severely dysfunctional hemispheres
interferes with the function of the other, more normal hemisphere. This might explain why motor
function improves after hemispherectomy and why
language recovers after removal of the dysfunctional
left hemisphere, but does not seem to fully transfer
before surgery. Perhaps it also partially explains intellectual improvement in these children after removal of half of the cortex. We are awed by the
apparent retention of memory after removal of half
of the brain, either half, and by the retention of the
child’s personality and sense of humor."
There is a reason why we can be confident that removal of half of a brain in hemispherectomy operations does not cause any major loss of learned memories. If there was a case of any such thing happening, you can believe that it would be endlessly recited by those who wish for us to believe that memories are stored in brains. But there is no such case, so we never hear materialists telling us about some person who suffered some dramatic loss of learned knowledge after having a hemispherectomy operation in which half of his brain was removed.
Our professors very often make biology claims that are contrary to the low-level facts of biology. The table below lists various cases in which the fantasy biology of academia dogma diverges from biology reality.
| FANTASY
BIOLOGY VERSUS BIOLOGICAL REALITY |
| Dubious
Biology Claim |
Biological
Reality |
| Brains
store memories, probably in synapses or dendritic spines.
|
Neither
synapses nor dendritic spines last for even a tenth of the longest
time that humans can remember things, and both are made up of
proteins with lifetimes of only a few weeks. |
| DNA
stores a blueprint or recipe for making the human body.
|
DNA
does not specify the physical structure of any of these things: an
organism's body, its organ systems, its organs or its cells. |
| Visible
biological innovations arise from a combination of random
mutations and natural selection, which improves the DNA of a
species.
|
It
has not been proven that any visible complex biological innovation
ever appeared because of random mutations and natural selection,
and we know of a reason why mere DNA mutations could never produce
a complex visible biological innovation: that visible physical
structures are not specified in DNA.
|
| Life
appeared because of a lucky combination of random chemicals
billions of years ago.
|
Neither
a living thing nor any of the building blocks of a living thing
(proteins and nucleic acids with genetic information) has ever
been produced through any experimental process that realistically simulated early
Earth conditions.
|
| The
building blocks of life have been found in outer space. |
No
one has found in outer space either of the two actual building
blocks of life: proteins or nucleic acids with genetic
information.
|
| Brain
scans show your brain makes your mind.
|
Brains
scans actually show signal differences of less than 1% during
thinking or recall, what we would expect from random variations.
|
| Brain
signals are real fast.
|
Synaptic
delays, synaptic fatigue and relatively slow dendritic
transmission mean that signals in the cortex must be real slow.
|
| The
common descent of all life from a single ancestor is a fact.
|
A
shortage of transitional fossils and the lack of DNA corresponding
to old fossils (because of DNA's half-life of 521 years) make the
doctrine of common descent very unproven.
|
| Chemically
humans are almost exactly like chimps.
|
80% of proteins are different between humans and chimps.
|
| Our
minds can be explained neurally.
|
There
is no credible neural explanation for any of the main features of
the human mind: memory, self-hood, consciousness, abstract
thinking, and imagination.
|
| We
kind of understand how a speck-sized egg can progress to become a full-sized baby. |
We
have no understanding of how this occurs (given a lack of a body
plan in DNA), and do not even understand what causes cells to
reproduce.
|
| Memory
and intelligence depend strongly on brain status.
|
A
person can lose half of his brain in a hemispherectomy operation,
with little effect on memory or intelligence.
|
The image below reproduces the table above.
Postscript: The paper "Language recovery after hemispherectomy in children with late-onset seizures" gives us before-and-after IQ scores for six children having removal of the left half of the brain (Table 1, FSIQ row). Such comparisons can be affected by short-term deficets that later are reduced. The comparison shows one child dropped 20 IQ points, one child dropped 10 IQ points, another child gained 3 IQ points, another child dropped 15 IQ points, another child gained 11 IQ points, and another child had no change in IQ. The very mixed results are consistent with the brain not being the source of the human mind.
On page 254 of the textbook here, we read a statement by someone saying that he performed 43 hemispherectomy operations. He says, "The secondary outcome scores reevaluated at six months and 1 year showed no significant difference in IQ," indicating intelligence is not affected by removal of half of the brain.
Page 5 of the scientific paper here describes a 7-year-old girl who is "fully bilingual in Turkish and Danish" despite having had most of half of the left side of her brain removed in a hemispherectomy operation at the age of 3. We are told that except for a slight spasticity, "she leads an otherwise normal life."
On page 3 of the Florida newspaper you can read here, the Lake City Reporter of December 25, 2015, we have a quote by brain surgeon Ben Carson:
"He recalled meeting one patient to whom he’d
given a hemispherectomy — removing half the brain
— as an infant. 'He had graduated from college
number one in his class — with half a brain,' Carson
said."
Below is an excerpt from the 1931 newspaper article "How Much Brain Used?" by William Brady M.D.:
"Aside from the fact that the boy felt no pain from the surgical treatment (and had no anesthetic), it was remarkable that he retained full consciousness and unimpaired mental function, al| though a considerable part of the cerebrum was destroyed. Recent surgical observation has proved that the whole of the right cerebral hemisphere may be removed without disturbance of mentality: this has been done repeatedly for the removal of large brain tumor. Both right and left frontal lobes of the brain may be removed without disturbing the patient's mentality. The patient remains perfectly oriented as to time, place and person; the memory is unimpaired: reading. writing and mathematical calculation are still done accurately; conversation is normal. In other cases the left occipital lobe and the lower third of the left temporal lobe have been removed without apparent. effect on mentality. "
You can read the full article using the link below:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1931-01-20/ed-1/seq-28/
Below is the first page of a 1933 Popular Science article written by a doctor, one you can read here. We are told of a woman who had the "entire right half" of her brain removed. We are told that a few hours after the operation she "recognized and talked with her friends." The operation apparently caused no loss of learned knowledge or memories. Both the act of recognizing a friend and the act of talking requires the use of learned knowledge such as the knowledge of what a friend looks like, and the knowledge of the words in a language and the grammar rules of the language. We are told the woman "improved rapidly, reading and writing during her convalescence." No mention is made of any loss of memory. The reported result is consistent with the idea that the brain does not store memories.
The next page mentions several case histories of people who suffered the most horrible brain injuries in various types of accidents. No mention is made of any damage to memory or mind. We hear instead comments such as "apparently his mind did not suffer from the accident" and mention of a "miraculous recovery."
Another case is discussed here, in a book chapter of a textbook. We read of a patient E.C. who had a large brain tumor. To treat the tumor, the left half of the patient's brain was removed, in a hemispherectomy operation. We read that "the entire hemisphere was removed in one piece" on December 7, 1965. We read that "immediately following hemispherectomy" the patient had an "ability to follow simple verbal commands." We read on page 107 that "the patient spontaneously articulated words and short phrases fairly well immediately after the operation." We read that this patient E.C. "gave the correct number of years when asked how long he had lived at his house." We read on page 107 that on January 26, 1966 (about six weeks after the operation) he "slowly but correctly selected four of the first six items from six pages, each with four items to choose from, before indicating he was tired" when given the Peabody picture vocabulary test. Such a test involves a tester speaking a word, and the user pointing to the correct picture in a grid of 4 pictures.
The image below (from the paper here) shows an example of one of the pages. The word spoken by the tester is "citrus."
The result described above (4 out of 6 correct on six such pages) clearly suggests that patient E.C. retained his learned knowledge after the left half of the brain was removed. Since the test was given only six weeks after the operation, and E.C. was in a recovering state during those weeks in which he was not being schooled, we cannot explain such a result as being due to knowledge acquired during those six weeks. We also read on page 107 that on June 3, 1966 patient E.C. correctly named 85 out of 112 items on such a Peabody picture vocabulary test. No mention is made of schooling occurring during the first six months of 1966. On page 109 we read of three other cases of the removal of the left half of the brain, and we read that "speech and verbal comprehension were present immediately after left hemispherectomy in all three cases." We read nothing about any loss of knowledge or episodic memories in any of these cases. Neither speech nor verbal comprehension can occur unless a great deal of learned knowledge is retained.
The news story here documents a very clear case of the preservation of memory after the removal of the left half of the cerebrum. We read of a 47-year-old man who had the left half of his cerebrum removed. We read this:
"Dr. Smith said the patient's memory of events before the operation 'was well preserved, much better than anyone expected.' Tests following surgy show Coe can perform many functions traditionally thought impossible after removal of the brain's dominant hemisphere. Immediately following surgery, Coe still had the ability to speak spontaneously."
A report like this does not merely contradict the claim that the brain is the source of the mind. It also contradicts the claim that the brain is a storage place of memories.
The 1963 newspaper account here is entitled "Monkeys With Half a Brain." We read this:
"Fifty monkeys have had half of their brains removed. Their memories appear to be as complete as before surgery. Until this experiment was made, even doctors thought that such surgery would affect memory....Not only is memory retained; the monkeys are alert, intelligent, sociable, and have the same enthusiasm as doing things as before....What are some of things the team has discovered from observation of monkeys with half their brain removed? The monkeys remember how to do things taught them before surgery. Such as which of two blocks of wood place under them has a reward under it -- a raisin or other food. Fears are recalled....'While the rhesus monkeys we test remember everything taught them before surgery, it takes them twice as long to learn something new as monkeys with both half of their brain,' explains Dr. Kruper. 'But the important thing is that they DO learn, even if it does take them longer.' "
The visual below "speaks volumes" on this topic. It is the result of a search on Google Scholar for "amnesia after hemispherectomy." "Hemispherectomy" is the standard name for the operation that has been performed thousands of times, in which half of the brain is removed to stop very bad seizures. "Amnesia" is the main term used for a loss of episodic memories. Any search on Google Scholar will produce very many results when there are quite a few cases corresponding to such a search. For example, doing a Google Scholar search for "vision loss after automobile accident" produces many results. But doing a search for "amnesia after hemispherectomy" produces zero results.
The results discussed in this post deserve to be pondered at great length. The results indicate very strongly that the human brain is not any storage place of human memories. After considering such results, you should also ponder the most important null result of neuroscience research: the fact that brain tissue from thousands of living and recently deceased humans has been microscopically studied at great length, with the most powerful microscopes; but no one has ever found the slightest trace of learned information or any episodic memory by such microscopic examination. No one found a single phrase, a single word or even a single letter of the alphabet after microscopically examining brain tissue. Nor did anyone ever find by microscopic examination of brain tissue any trace of anything a human ever saw or heard.
