The failure of neuroscientists to adequately study minds is a very severe failure. You can get a PhD in neuroscience while making only a perfunctory study of human minds. An examination of the courses required to get a Master's Degree in neuroscience will typically show that only one or two courses in psychology are required. Doing a neuroscience PhD dissertation typically involves some highly specialized research on some very narrow topic, research that does not require much in the way of additional study of human minds and the mental capabilities and mental experiences of humans. The topic of human minds and human mental experiences is a topic of oceanic depth, requiring years of deep study for someone to get a good grasp of the full range of human mental states, human mental capabilities and human mental experiences. Very strangely, a typical neuroscientist is someone who will feel qualified to pontificate about what causes mental experiences, mental states and mental capabilities, even though he typically has done little to very deeply study mental experiences, mental states and mental capabilities.
Ask a neuroscientist to describe the best examples of high capacity and high accuracy in human memory recall, and you will be likely to get a shrug of the shoulders, or an answer that is wrong. Ask a neuroscientist to describe the best examples of human performance in tests of extrasensory perception (ESP), and you will be likely to get a shrug of the shoulders, or an answer that is wrong. Ask a neuroscientist to describe the best examples of humans learning or memorizing things very quickly, and you will be likely to get an answer showing no study of such a topic. Ask a neuroscientist to describe the fastest examples of human calculation involving no use of any objects such as pencil, paper or blackboards, and you will likely get an answer that fails to describe the most impressive cases.
Rather amazingly, it is also true that most neuroscientists are not very deep and broad scholars of the topic of human brains. A typical neuroscientist may be able to tell you in very great detail about some narrow facet of human brains, and may be able to tell you in the greatest detail about how to use some machine that is used to study brains. But the same neuroscientist may have failed to properly study the topic of human brains in a way that involves learning about every relevant thing you could about human brains. Ask that neuroscientist to tell you what happens when you remove half of a human brain, and you may get an answer that is wrong. Ask that neuroscientist to tell you how reliably chemical synapses transmit nerve signals (action potentials), and you may get an answer that is wrong. Ask that neuroscientist to tell you how quickly a brain electrically shuts down when the heart stops (reaching a state called asystole), and you may get an answer that is wrong.
Part of the job of properly studying brains is to study very thoroughly all of the most impressive cases of high mental performance despite very high brain damage. Relatively few neuroscientists show signs of having studied such a topic. In order to properly study such a topic, you must study unusual medical case histories. Very many of the most important and relevant medical case histories are recorded in books, newspapers and magazines. But can you ever recall reading of a neuroscientist searching newspapers for unusual case histories in neuroscience? I can never recall reading of such activity by a neuroscientist.
Luckily there are some web sites that contain very many of the most relevant examples of such medical case histories that are relevant to the question of whether the human mind is the source of the mind and whether the human mind is the storage place of human memories. One of those sites is the very site you are reading. In my series of posts labeled "High Mental Function Despite Large Brain Damage," which you can read here, I describe many of the most important case histories that are relevant to the question of whether the human mind is the source of the mind. Now let me provide some more such cases.
The first case involves a case of hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus is a disease in which a brain has excessive watery fluid. In cases of hydrocephalus a brain may end up in a state that is mostly watery fluid. The brain scan of someone with severe hydrocephalus might look something like the schematic scan below. The black part in the middle is a watery fluid that has basically no neurons.
The case of Sharon Parker is described in a 2003 news story entitled "Success of Nurse Who Lost Most of Her Brain." You can read the story here. We read this:
"When she was a baby, Sharon Parker's parents were told a rare and incurable condition meant she would not reach her fifth birthday.
She was left with only 15 per cent of her brain and there was little hope she could lead a normal life. But she defied the experts to become an astonishing success story.
Now 39, Mrs Parker is a nurse with a high IQ who is happily married with three children....She was diagnosed with congenital hydrocephalus - water on the brain - when she was nine months old. Doctors drained the liquid from her skull with a tube but her brain mass had been compacted in the outer edges of her skull, leaving a gaping hole in the middle....As a 16-year-old, she passed eight O-Levels and her IQ was later found to be 113, putting her in the top 20 per cent of the population.
The hydrocephalus has left her with a below-average short-term memory so she carries a notebook to remind herself to do things. However, tests have found that her long-term memory is better than average.
After leaving school, Mrs Parker decided to become a nurse and soon after starting her training, she met her future husband David, a builder who is now 45. The couple were married three years later and have three children...
She often participates in studies, including one recently in Ohio when she was examined by one of the world's leading experts on brain mass. Graham Teesdale, Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Glasgow, said she demonstrated how adaptable the brain can be even when it is incomplete. 'She shows how the brain has an immense capacity to cope and adapt,' he said. 'Some people with the same acute problem experience problems in thought processes but others are able to function totally normally.' "
A materialist who believes that the brain is the source of the mind may wince after reading about this case history. But there is another hydrocephalus case that may be even better as evidence that brains do not make minds. Coincidentally, this case also involves someone named Parker, but someone other than Sharon Parker: a male with almost no brain.
We read about the case on the page here.
"Parker was born on September 9, 2008, with hydrocephalus, or excess fluid on the brain. Parker’s parents received the diagnosis at 20 weeks in the pregnancy that there was a blockage between the third and fourth ventricles of Parker’s brain, which was preventing the cerebrospinal fluid from draining into the body. As a result, the fluid would build up and compress Parker’s brain matter against his skull, making it almost non-existent, threatening to severely hinder Parker’s early neurological development. At birth, the average baby has 90–95% brain matter and 5–10% fluid within the cranial cavity; Parker had over 98% fluid and less than 2% brain matter, amounting to a mere 8 millimeters of brain matter at birth."
Later on the same page we read this
"He attends a special-needs kindergarten class, where he continues to thrive and demonstrate an inexplicable intellect and remarkable social skills.
Parker is truly a miracle – the child who once was thought may never walk or talk now plays, dances, sings, never stops talking (having never met a stranger) and hopes to one day become a sportscaster. Parker has far exceeded every expectation of his doctors and also adds being named the 2015 Ace All-Star to his long list of remarkable achievements."
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