They Had Good Minds After Losing the Left Half of Their Brains

Although neuroscientists are brain specialists, very many 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 brain is the source of the mind (keep pressing Older Posts at the bottom right to read the whole series). Now let me provide another such case, one I learned about from searching old newspaper articles for a use of the phrase "half a brain." The 1976 case is one that you can read about using the link here. Below are some excerpts from the newspaper article.

We read of a young man named Bruce Lipstadt who had a hemispherectomy operation when he was five years old, an operation that removed the left half of his brain.  Operations of that type are only done when someone is being plagued by very severe seizures, and the seizures cannot be controlled by medication.  The operation was done because as a young boy Bruce was suffering from 10 to 12 seizures a day. 

We are told that despite having the left half of his brain surgically removed, Bruce can ride a bike, swim and play sports. We are told that Bruce got an A grade (the best grade) in a course on statistics at a university. We are told Bruce's speech is normal. We are told that "although not a genius, Bruce has superior intelligence." We are told that Bruce works as a traffic controller, and that next spring he will get a degree in sociology from a university. 

The 1976 newspaper article here gives us some more details on Bruce Lipstadt. We read that his IQ tests showed his verbal IQ to be 126, well above the average IQ of 100. We read this:

A verbal IQ of 126 in a subject who had the left half of his brain removed is a result that would seem to "make mincemeat" out of claims that the brain is the source of the human mind. One of the accounts above mentions an authority named Sugar. The Bruce Lipstadt case seems to be the same one mentioned in the scientific paper here co-authored by Oscar Sugar MD, one entitled "Development of above normal language and intelligence 21 years after left hemispherectomy."

The newspaper article here tells of a film about a man who had the left half of his brain removed, but who (five months after the operation) could still "sing, distinguish colors, and pass simple tests of reading, writing and arithmetic."

At the 2:59 mark in the Youtube.com video here, we get the table below, which shows some impressive intellectual achievements in patients who underwent a hemispherectomy operation to remove half of their brains:

We have some stunning results. All of these people with half a brain had some college studies. Two had achieved a two-year Associate's Degree. One had achieved a Master's Degree. The top row tells whether the left or the right half of the brain was removed.  The two rightmost columns give details for people who had the left half of their brain removed, both of which had some college studies, and both of which were employed. 

At the 5:03 mark in the video, we have the chart below. It shows the IQ of 7 subjects who had a hemispherectomy operation to remove half of their brains. The dots in yellow are people who had left half of the brain removed. Each column represents a particular type of IQ. The first column is full IQ. The second column is verbal IQ. The third column is performance IQ, something that does tests involving non-verbal tasks and motor tasks, with speed of completion affecting the score. We see that one of the subjects who had the left half of his brain removed had above-average verbal IQ. 

At the 8:07 mark in the video, we have a chart showing that one of the left hemispherectomy patients (who had the left half of the brain removed) had a way-above-average 130 score on reading comprehension. 

At the link here, you can read the very interesting paper "AN ENORMOUS CEREBRAL TUMOUR" by William E. Conroy M.D. We read of a patient F. H. who was observed in 1889. The patient had an operation to remove the tumor, but died soon thereafter. 

On page 179 we read that an autopsy was performed, and that after the tumor was removed, the left half of the brain was all but gone, being only the size of the palm of a hand:

On page 180 we read that this "enormous" tumor in the left half of the brain produced almost no mental effects. We read that the boy was "intelligent" and "expressed himself well" and "read much with enjoyment" until his eyesight failed. We read that the mental faculties were "not seriously impaired."  We read this:

On page 16 of an 1899 book J. Sanderson Christison, M.D.  states this: "And when we find that individuals have filled the business and social functions of life in the ordinary way, who were either destitute of a corpus callosum (see page 65) or had but little more than half a brain (see page 62), it is evident that external features are not necessarily of fundamental significance." 

On page 47 Dr. Christison says this:

"Dr. E. W. Taylor reports a man, 36 years of age, with extensive destruction of the left frontal lobe of the brain, and yet, says Dr. Taylor: 'When I last saw him the whole impression was that of a clear-headed vigorous man of exceptional intellect, but neurasthenic. A few days before his death he was filling a responsible position, and making decisions of importance with accuracy and judgment.' "

On pages 58-59 Christison says this:

"Dr. Charles Phelps reports a man who died at the age of 25 years with a large abscess in the middle area of the left cerebral hemisphere, while a large proportion of both hemispheres was either softened or invaded with punctate hemorrhages. Yet Dr. Phelps reports that this man 'had absolute integrity of all his mental faculties and special senses without either having aberration or decadence, and was cheerful and slept well.' "

On the same page 59 Christison says this:

"Drs. J. J. Putnam and M. H. Richardson report a business-man, 30 years of age, whose entire left cerebral hemisphere (except the occipital lobe and the lower portions of the frontal and temporal lobes) was occupied by a diseased growth, 'which everywhere compressed the adjoining brain tissues and to a great extent destroyed them,'  and yet in this man 'no notable mental changes were observable.'  'His mind was clear and he read and understood with pleasure, and enjoyed the society of his family and friends,' and although 'he dragged his right leg he walked well, going to church and back half a mile off, and he drove his horse to town eight miles away, four days before his death.' "

On page 61 Dr. Christison says this:

"Dr. W. B. Haddon reports a man, 21 years of age, with an enormous tumor occupying the left cerebral hemisphere, and severely compressing adjacent structures. Yet, although he occasionally had an epileptic fit and stammered slightly from childhood, he had no paralysis. He was somewhat opinionated, but evinced no moral perversion. At the time of his death (in a fit) he was a clerk in the Steward's office of St. Thomas' Hospital, London, and a few days later he would have entered the government examination for a second grade certificate in perspective and drawing, branches in which he was pronounced by experts to be exceptionally proficient."

On page 62 Dr. Christison says this:

 "Andral reports a man who died at the age of 28 years with the whole of his right cerebral hemisphere so completely atrophied that its covering membrane (pia mater) formed a cyst in which there was not a trace of brain tissue. The floor of the cyst was formed by the optic thalamus, the corpus striatum, and the parts on a level with these two bodies. Yet, says Andral, this man  'had received a good education, had a good memory, and exhibited as much intelligence as most men' (19)."

Cognitive Effects of Epilepsy Surgery Clash with "Brains Make Minds" Dogma

Epilepsy is a disease causing seizures. When the seizures are frequent, the disruption to a patient's quality of life can be so great that brain surgery may be recommended. In such surgery, large chunks of the brain may be removed. In other cases, the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres of the brain may be severed.  The most extreme type of brain surgery is hemispherectomy, in which an entire half of the brain is removed. 

I have already written several posts on the surprisingly small effects of hemispherectomy operations.  Let us look at some reports of the cognitive effects of lesser types of surgery to treat epilepsy. One such type of surgery is temporal lobe resection. A paper tells us this about removal of the temporal lobe: "cognition remains relatively stable in the years following right temporal resection."  Another paper discusses surgery in the posterior cortex of the brain. Using the word "resection" which refers to surgical removal of part of the brain, the paper states the following:

"The results of our study show that posterior cortical resections, either in the dominant or non-dominant hemisphere, do not lead to significant changes in general intelligence....This is in contrast to the outcome after temporal lobe resections. Several authors have shown a significant increase in full scale IQ (FSIQ) after non-dominant temporal lobe resection and only a slight increase or a decrease in FSIQ after dominant temporal lobe resections...PIQ [performance IQ] was almost invariably shown to be improved compared to baseline IQ, regardless of the side of temporal resections. The effect of dominant temporal lobe resections on VIQ [verbal IQ] seems to be somewhat inconsistent, with either decreasing  or increasing scores, whereas right temporal lobe resection regularly leads to increasing scores."

This is hardly what we would expect if your brain is what makes your mind. It seems that taking out parts of the brain (called a resection) often is followed by an increase in scores on IQ tests. 

Another paper states, "The data do not confirm concerns that patients undergoing temporal lobe epilepsy surgery are likely to develop accelerated memory decline over the longer term." Another paper states the following, suggesting no big cognitive effect from epilepsy surgery:

"Pooled data on IQ, executive functioning, and attention indicated few patients show declines post surgery, but a substantial rate of improvement in verbal fluency with left‐sided temporal surgery (27%) was found. Self‐reported cognitive declines after epilepsy surgery were uncommon, and gains were reported in some domains where losses were found on objective tests (i.e., verbal memory and language). Variations in surgical techniques did not appear to have a large effect on cognitive outcomes, except for naming outcomes, which appeared better with more conservative resections. Sensitivity to postoperative changes differed across visual memory tests, but not verbal memory tests. Few conclusions could be made regarding cognitive risks and benefits of extratemporal epilepsy surgery, or of epilepsy surgery in children."

The paper "Neuropsychological outcome following frontal lobectomy for pharmacoresistant epilepsy in adults" here deals specifically with the surgical removal of the frontal lobe to treat epilepsy. Neuroscientists have made more claims about the frontal lobe than any other part of the brain. We have been told that the frontal lobe is some kind of center of judgment and memory, although there are many reasons for rejecting such claims.  The paper (which studied 90 patients) states the following :

"Forty-eight percent of the sample did not show decline on any of the 16 cognitive measures examined in this study. Forty-two showed decline on measures in 1 or 2 cognitive domains. In contrast, 10% of the sample showed declines in 3 or more cognitive domains." 

Elsewhere the paper states, "The vast majority of patients who undergo frontal lobectomy for treatment of pharmacoresistant epilepsy demonstrate good cognitive and motor outcomes." Using the term "frontal lobectomy" for the removal of the front part of the brain, the paper also states, "Interestingly, there was a subset of patients who demonstrated clinically meaningful improvements in confrontation naming (15% of sample), verbal intellectual function (11%), or memory (10%–17%) following frontal lobectomy."  The paper says, "Existing studies that have examined change in intellectual functioning following frontal lobe surgery have had mixed results, with some studies reporting no change on intelligence measures and others reporting apparent improvements."

Referring to removal of one of the two temporal lobes in the brain, page 122 of the book here tells us "experimental ablation studies in monkeys have failed to reveal any significant or consistent behavioral change after unilateral temporal lobectomy." 

Another relevant paper is the paper "Determinants of IQ outcome after focal epilepsy surgery in childhood: A longitudinal case-control neuroimaging study." We read the following:

"Fifty-two children (28 boys, 24 girls) were evaluated for epilepsy surgery and reassessed on average 7.7 years later...). Pre- and postsurgical assessments included IQ tests and T1-weighted brain images...Applying a ≥10-point change threshold, 39% of the surgically treated children improved, whereas 10% declined."

We are not told in this paper how large was the matter removed from the brains of these children, but it is known that epilepsy surgery typically involves removing large parts of the brain, sometimes as much as 50%. Again, we have a result that is inconsistent with claims that the brain generates the mind. 

Another relevant paper is "Neuropsychological outcomes after epilepsy surgery: systematic review and pooled estimates." The paper was a meta-analysis that reviewed 23 other papers on the cognitive effects of epilepsy surgery. Four of the studies dealt with IQ changes. The paper states, " Epilepsy surgery was associated with an average 11% loss and 16% gain in IQ for combined left and right surgical groups."  The wording of the paper's summary of findings about verbal memory decline is ambiguous, so I won't quote it. But I will note that the paper reports significant percentages of subjects having an improvement in verbal memory, with many others having a decline.  The paper states this:

"For visual memory (six studies), average loss was 21% (95% CI 13 to 31) for left sided surgery and 23% (95% CI 18 to 29) for right sided surgery and average gain was 15% (95% CI 10 to 21) in left sided surgery and 10% (95% CI 7 to 13) in right sided surgery. In one study involving children where side of surgery was not reported, gains in verbal and visual memory were 10% and 25% of children, respectively and risks of loss were 5%."

Summarizing four studies dealing with changes in executive function after epilepsy surgery, the paper states this:

"Left and right sided surgery were associated with a loss of 1% and 0% respectively (one study) and a gain of 9% and 4% (one study) in mental flexibility. Left and right sided surgery were associated with an average loss of 10% (95% CI 4 to 23; 3 studies) and 21% (two studies) respectively and an average gain of 27% (95% CI 10 to 55; 2 studies) and 16% respectively (two studies) in word fluency. In left and right sided surgery, two studies reported an average loss of 6% and 2% respectively and an average gain of 10% and 15% respectively in attention."

Summarizing three studies dealing with "overall subjective change in multiple abilities," the paper finds that "Regardless of side of surgery, average overall loss was 9% and average overall gain was 18%."

Overall, the results reported above are in conflict with dogmas that the brain is the source of the human mind and the storage place of human memories. Epilepsy surgery typically involves removing large chunks of the human brain, as much as 50%.  The studies mentioned above do not show the kind of big mental damage we would expect under such a dogma. The studies often mention improvements in mental function that are inexplicable under the dogma that the brain is the source of the human mind. 

Postscript: An article discusses the case of patient EG: "When EG went in for an unrelated medical scan, she discovered she was missing her entire left temporal lobe...Despite missing a large chunk of her brain, EG was living a totally regular life... She could read normally, had a better-than-average vocabulary, and even spoke Russian as a second language."  A scientific paper describing her says, "She performed within normal range on all language assessment tasks...EG performed within normal range on both general cognitive assessments."

Below is a news story from 1951 referring to an increase in IQ after the removal of half a brain:

Preservation of Mind and Memories After Removal of Half a Brain

"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.

The idea of a crucial experiment or critical experiment is an old concept in the world of science. Such an experiment is supposedly one that leaves one particular hypothesis standing, and rules out all rival explanations or rival hypotheses. The idea that there are such experiments has been criticized by some. A simpler idea is the idea of a sink-or-swim experiment. A sink-or-swim experiment is one that either leaves some hypothesis standing as a viable hypothesis (the “swim” situation) or causes the hypothesis to be discredited (the “sink” hypothesis).

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. 

The Guy with the Smallest Brain Had the Highest IQ

According to the theory that your brain creates your mind and stores your memories, we should expect that removal of half of the brain should have the most drastic effect on memory and intelligenc. But at the link here and the link here you can read about many cases showing a good preservation of memory and intelligence even after half a brain was removed to treat epileptic seizures. 

Described in the 1966 paper "Long-term changes in intellect and behaviour after hemispherectomy," Patient   P.G. had an IQ of 128 before the right half of his brain was removed. After the right half of his brain was removed, he scored 142 on the same IQ test, improving his score by 14 points. 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.” If your brain makes your mind, how could taking out half of someone's brain cause their IQ to increase by 14 points, with an end result so far above average?

There is a new study relating to the topic of intelligence and removal of half of the brain.  Once again, the study reports facts shockingly inconsistent with standard claims that the brain is the source of the human mind. But the press reporting on this study is feeding us a kind of "cover story" trying to explain away the shocking result.  Upon close inspection, this "cover story" falls apart. 

The study involved brain scans of six patients who had half of their brains removed.  Table S3 of the supplemental information of the study reveals that the intelligence quotients (IQ scores) of the six subjects were 84, 95, 91, 99,  96 and 80. So most of the six were fairly smart, even though half of their brains were gone.  How could this be when half of their brains were missing? 

In stories such as the story in Discover magazine, it is suggested that "brain rewiring" can explain such a thing. The story states the following:

"In a study published Tuesday in Cell Reports, scientists studied six of these patients to see how the human brain rewires itself to adapt after major surgery. After performing brain scans on the patients, the researchers found that the remaining hemisphere formed even stronger connections between different brain networks — regions that control things like walking, talking and memory —  than in healthy control subjects. And the researchers suggest that these connections enable the brain, essentially, to function as if it were still whole."

The summary above is not accurate, as it tells a story that is not true for one of the six patients, as I will explain below. This hard-to-swallow story (repeated by the New York Times) is reassuring if you wish to keep believing that the brain is the source of your mind.  The person who buys such a story can reassure himself kind of like this:

"How do people stay smart when you take out half of their brain? It's simple: the brain just rewires itself so that the half works as good as a whole. It acts kind of like a computer that reprograms itself to keep functioning like normal when you yank out half of its components."

We know of no machines ever built that have such a capability.  All brains engage in some "brain rewiring" every year, so any mental effect can always be attributed to "brain rewiring." We cannot dream of how a brain could possibly be clever enough to rewire itself to perform just as well when half of its matter was removed.   When we take a close look at the data in the study, it shows that this "brain rewiring" story does not hold up for the smartest subject in the study. 

In Table S4 of the study, we have measurements based on brain scanning, designed to show the level of connectivity in the brains of the six subjects.  Some of the six subjects have a slightly higher average connectivity score, but it's not very much higher.  The average connectivy scores for the controls with normal brains were .30 and .35.  The average connectivity scores for the six patients with half a brain were .43, .45, .35, .30, .43, and .41.  So it was merely true that the average brain connectivity score of the patients with half a brain was slightly higher than the normal controls.  And when we look at another metric (the "max" score listed at the end of Table S4), we see that all of the half-brain subjects had lower "brain connectivity" scores than the controls.  The "max" connectivy scores for the controls with normal brains were .90 and .74, but the "max" connectivity scores for the six patients with half a brain were only .57, .67, .49, .51, .63, and .62.  So the evidence for greater brain connectivity or "nicely rewired brains" after removal of half a brain is actually quite thin. 

Interestingly, the half-brain patient with the highest intelligence (labeled as HS4, with an IQ of 99) had an average brain connectivity score of only .30, which is the same as one of the group of controls with normal brains, and less than the brain connectivity of the other group of controls with normal brains.   So the smartest person with half a brain (who had an IQ of 99) did not at all have any greater brain connectivity that can explain his normal intelligence with only half a brain.  How can this subject HS4 have had a normal intelligence with only half a brain?  In this case, favorable brain rewiring or greater brain connectivity cannot explain the result.   So the "cover story" of "their brains rewired to keep them smart" falls apart. 

The half brain of subject HS4, IQ of 99, average brain wiring

The only way we can explain such results is by postulating that the human brain is not actually the source of the human mind.  If the human brain is neither the source of the human mind nor the storage place of memories, we should not find any of the results mentioned in this post to be surprising. 

Subject HS4 is not by any means the most remarkable case of a patient with half a brain and a good mind. The study here is entitled "Development of above normal language and intelligence 21 years after left hemispherectomy."  After they removed the part of the brain claimed to be the "center of language," a subject developed "above normal" language and intelligence. 

Then there is the case of Alex who did not start speaking until the left half of his brain was removed. A scientific paper describing the case says that Alex “failed to develop speech throughout early boyhood.” He could apparently say only one word (“mumma”) before his operation to cure epilepsy seizures. But then following a hemispherectomy (also called a hemidecortication) in which half of his brain was removed at age 8.5, “and withdrawal of anticonvulsants when he was more than 9 years old, Alex suddenly began to acquire speech.” We are told, “His most recent scores on tests of receptive and expressive language place him at an age equivalent of 8–10 years,” and that by age 10 he could “converse with copious and appropriate speech, involving some fairly long words.” Astonishingly, the boy who could not speak with a full brain could speak well after half of his brain was removed. The half of the brain removed was the left half – the very half that scientists tell us is the half that has more to do with language than the right half. 

What is also interesting in the new study is that when we cross-compare Figure 1 with Table S3 (in the supplemental information) we find that the patient with the largest brain (after the hemispherectomy operation) had the lowest IQ, and that the patient with the smallest brain had the highest IQ.  In Figure 1 the brain of the subject with an IQ of 80 (subject HS6) looks much larger than the brain of the subject with an IQ of 99 (subject HS4).  Such a result is not surprising under the hypothesis that your brain is not the source of your mind.  It should also be not surprising to anyone who considers the fact that the brain of the Neanderthals (presumably not as smart as we modern humans) was substantially larger than the brain of modern humans. 

Postscript: Below is a news story from 1951 referring to an increase in IQ after the removal of half a brain:

Cases of High Mental Function Despite Large Brain Damage

It has been known for decades that mental function can operate at a high level even though large portions of a brain are destroyed. This was proven by the memory experiments of Karl Lashley. Over many years, Lashley did extensive research in which he tested how memory and learning is affected when you take out various parts of an animal's brain. Lashley tested using three types of mazes of varying difficulty. Astonishingly, Lashley found that you could remove half of a rat's brain, and it had very little effect on the rats ability to remember either of the two simpler types of mazes.

Here are some startling results listed by Lashley:

1. Rats, trained to have a differential reaction to light, showed no reduction in accuracy of performance when the entire motor cortex of the brain, along with the frontal poles of the brain, was removed.
2. Monkeys were trained to open various latch boxes. The entire motor areas of the monkeys' brains were removed. After 8 to 12 weeks of paralysis, during which they had no access to the latch boxes, the monkeys were then able to open the boxes “promptly” and “without random exploratory movements.”
3. 13 rats were trained to solve mazes, and we read here "only one animal did not show evidence of the maze habit after removal of the frontal portions of the brain." 
4. Rats were trained to solve mazes, and the rats then had incisions made separating different parts of their brains. This produced no effect in memory retention.
5. Monkeys were trained to unlatch latch boxes.  After having their prefrontal cortex removed, there was “perfect retention of the manipulative habits.”
6. Lashley said, “A number of experiments with rats have shown that habits of visual discrimination survive the destruction of any part of the cerebral cortex except the primary visual projection area.”
   

Details on these experiments can be found online in Karl Lashley's paper, “In Search of the Engram,” and in the book here giving all of Lashley's main papers (a good that can be read online by registered users of www.archive.org). 

Recently there was published a superb scientific paper describing cases of very high mental activity despite very great brain damage.

Entitled "Discrepancy Between Cerebral Structure and Cognitive Functioning," the paper (authored by Nahm, Rousseau and Greyson, two PhD's and an MD) will be read by some who are merely interested in reading about weird curiosities. But a better way to read the paper is to examine its examples and ask: is the standard “mind from brain” dogma taught by neuroscientists (the dogma that minds are generated by brains) consistent with these examples? Together the examples seem to provide a very strong challenge to such a dogma.

On page 1 we learn of a case reported by Martel in 1823 of a boy who after age five lost all of his senses except hearing, and became bed-confined. Until death he “seemed mentally unimpaired.” But after he died, an autopsy was done which found that apart from “residues of meninges" there was "no trace of a brain" found inside the skull. How could the boy have seemed “mentally unimpaired” with almost no brain?

The paper then discusses a case examined by physician John Lorber, who studied many patients with hydrocephalus, in which healthy brain tissue is gradually replaced by a watery fluid. A mathematics student with an IQ of 130 and a verbal IQ of 140 was found to have “virtually no brain.” His vision was apparently perfect except for a refraction error, even though he had no visual cortex (the part of the brain involved in sight perception).

We are told that of about 16 patients Lorber classified as having extreme hydrocephalus (with 90% of the area inside the cranium replaced with spinal fluid), half of them had an IQ of 100 or more. The article mentions 16 patients, but the number with extreme hydrocephalus was actually 60, as this article states, using information from this original source that mentions about 10 percent of a group of 600. So the actual number of these people with tiny brains and above-average intelligence was about 30. The article states:

[Lorber] described a woman with an extreme degree of hydrocephalus showing “virtually no cerebral mantle” who had an IQ of 118, a girl aged 5 who had an IQ of 123 despite extreme hydrocephalus, a 7-year-old boy with gross hydrocephalus and an IQ of 128, another young adult with gross hydrocephalus and a verbal IQ of 144, and a nurse and an English teacher who both led normal lives despite gross hydrocephalus.

Lorber's cases date from several decades ago, but more recent cases have been reported of people with good mental functioning despite having almost all of their brains replaced by a watery fluid due to hydrocephalus. The scientific paper cites the cases below:

Another interesting case is that of a 44-year-old woman with very

gross hydrocephalus described by Masdeu (2008) and Masdeu et al.(2009). She had a global IQ of 98, worked as an administrator for a government agency, and spoke seven languages. In Leipzig, Germany, staff members of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences recorded a similar case. A man was examined because of his headache, and to his physicians' surprise, he had an “incredibly large hydrocephalus.” Villinger, the director of the Cognitive Neurology Department, stated that this man had “almost no brain,” only “a very thin layer of cortical tissue.” This man led an unremarkable life, and his hydrocephalus was only discovered by chance (Hasler, 2016, p. 18)

The paper informs us of cases of people who functioned well despite losing half of their brains. We are told of a 36-year-old man whose “intellect and language abilities were unimpaired” despite the fact that the left hemisphere of his brain was “almost completely lacking.” We are told of a boy who was an average student at a regular school, even though he had a “nearly complete absence” of the right hemisphere of his brain. The paper also cites cases of people who had large portions of their brain missing, but who did not notice any problem until they had seizures or headaches. The paper states this:

For example, Baudoin (1996) described the case of a 30-year-

old woman who had a large lesion on her right cerebral hemisphere. The right occipital and parietal lobes were entirely missing, as well as the inferior part of the right temporal lobe. The brain lesion was discovered only because of the patient's first seizures at the age of 30. Similarly, Duyff et al. (1996) presented the case of a 32-year-old lawyer whose brain showed a large arachnoid cyst in the right frontotemporal region that had displaced (or replaced) the temporal lobe and parts of the frontal and parietal lobes. His development had been completely normal, and no abnormalities were discovered upon neurological examination. His condition was discovered only because he had a persistent headache after a skiing accident in which he had fallen on his head.

Hemispherectomy is a surgical procedure in which half of the brain is removed. I knew that the procedure can be performed on young children suffering from seizures, with surprisingly little negative impact. But the paper also tells us on page 3 that “Although most hemispherectomies are performed on young children, adults are also operated on with remarkable success.”
 

 Schematic diagram of a hemispherectomy

Very interestingly, we are told that when half of their brains are removed in these operations, “most patients, even adults, do not seem to lose their long-term memory such as episodic (autobiographic) memories.” The paper tells us that Dandy, Bell and Karnosh “stated that their patient's memory seemed unimpaired after hemispherectomy,” the removal of half of their brains. We are also told that Vining and others “were surprised by the apparent retention of memory after the removal of the left or the right hemisphere of their patients.”

The paper then tells the case of Kim Peek, an autistic savant who had no corpus callosum (the “bridge” connecting the two brain hemispheres). Much of Peek's brain consisted of empty areas filled with cerebrospinal fluid. But still “he memorized more than 12,000 books, apparently verbatim.”

On page 59 of the book The Biological Mind, the author states the following:

A group of surgeons at Johns Hopkins Medical School performed fifty-eight hemispherectomy operations on children over a thirty-year period. "We were awed," they wrote later of their experiences, "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." 

In the paper "Neurocognitive outcome after pediatric epilepsy surgery" by Elisabeth M. S. Sherman, we have some discussion of the effects on children of temporal lobectomy (removal of the temporal lobe of the brain) and hemispherectomy, surgically removing half of their brains to stop seizures. We are told this:

After temporal lobectomy, children show few changes in verbal or nonverbal intelligence....Cognitive levels in many children do not appear to be altered significantly by hemispherectomy. Several researchers have also noted increases in the intellectual functioning of some children following this procedure....Explanations for the lack of decline in intellectual function following hemispherectomy have not been well elucidated. 

Referring to a study by Gilliam, the paper states that of 21 children who had parts of their brains removed to treat epilepsy, including 10 who had surgery to remove part of the frontal lobe, "none of the patients with extra-temporal resections had reductions in IQ post-operatively," and that two of the children with frontal lobe resections had "an increase in IQ greater than 10 points following surgery." 

The paper here gives precise before and after IQ scores for more than 50 children who had half of their brains removed in a hemispherectomy operation in the United States.  For one set of 31 patients, the IQ went down by an average of only 5 points. For another set of 15 patients, the IQ went down less than 1 point. For another set of 7 patients the IQ went up by 6 points. 

The paper here (in Figure 4) describes IQ outcomes for 41 children who had half of their brains removed in hemispherectomy operations in Freiburg, Germany. For the vast majority of children, the IQ was about the same after the operation. The number of children who had increased IQs after the operation was greater than the number who had decreased IQs. 

It also should be remembered that brain-damaged patients taking standard IQ tests may have higher intelligence than the test score suggests.  A standard IQ test requires visual perception skill (to read the test book) and finger coordination (to fill in the right answers using a pencil). Brain damage might cause reduced finger coordination and reduced visual perception unrelated to intelligence; and such things might cause a subject to do below-average on a standard IQ test even if his intelligence is normal. 

At this URL there was recently published a case of a man with a 9-centimeter (3 inch) wide "air-filled cavity" in the right frontal lobe of his brain.

Although the paper is entitled "The man that lost (part of) his mind," the paper indicates no sign of mental damage:

An 84-year-old man was referred to the emergency department by his general practitioner having been complaining of recurrent falls and feeling unsteady over several months. He then developed a 3-day history of left-sided arm and leg weakness. There was no confusion, facial weakness, visual or speech disturbance, and he was feeling otherwise well.

The man showed good judgment in declining a risky operation that wasn't vitally necessary. But how could someone have so little damage from a giant hole in a part of the brain that supposedly is involved in language, memory, and judgment? Cases like these are inconsistent with dogmas about minds being generated by brains.

Now for another similar anomaly that is even more amazing. This is a case in which a human managed to function well in society as a French civil servant, even though he had almost no functional brain. The case is discussed here in a story entitled “Man lives normal life with abnormal brain”:

Inside a normal brain are tiny structures called lateral ventricles that hold brain fluid. In this man's case, the ventricles had swollen up like balloons, until they filled almost all of the man's brain. When the 44-year-old man was a child, doctor's had noticed the swelling, and had tried to treat it. Apparently the swelling had progressed since childhood. The man was left with what the Reuters story calls “little more than a sheet of actual brain tissue.”

But this same man, with almost no functioning brain, had been working as a French civil servant, and had his IQ tested to be 75, higher than that of a mentally retarded person. The Reuters story says: “A man with an unusually tiny brain managed to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, caused by a fluid buildup in his skull.” The case was written up in the British medical journal The Lancet in a paper entitled “Brain of a white-collar worker.”

In a later "ScienceAlert" story on this case, a cognitive psychologist states, "Any theory of consciousness has to be able to explain why a person like that, who's missing 90 percent of his neurons, still exhibits normal behavior." 

90 percent of his neurons lost, and normal behavior -- that's radically inconsistent with the "brains make minds" dogma.

In the medical paper “Revisiting Hydrocephalus as a Model to Study Brain Resilience” by de Oliviera and Pinto, we are shown a photo of a patient with almost no brain, because he had hydrocephalus that has replaced almost all of his brain tissue with a watery fluid. But the patient is described in the paper as “normal,” and is contrasted with another patient with a similar condition who had cognitive problems. Apparently this “normal” patient suffered few cognitive effects from having lost almost all of his brain. The paper is at the URL here.

At the URL here you can find a book chapter entitled, “Memory

consolidation, retrograde amnesia, and the temporal lobe.” Tables 4 and 5 of this paper give us detailed information on 16 cases of severe brain damage documented in the medical literature. The patients had damage in between three and ten different parts of their brain, with an average of about four or five different brain areas being damaged. The tables give IQ scores for these 16 patients, and the average score was 99 – just one point less than 100, the average IQ. But how could their average intelligence be so normal, if they had such heavy brain damage?

As discussed here, years ago a man named Pat Martino had an operation in which 70 percent of his left temporal lobe was removed. But today he plays virtuoso jazz guitar flawlessly, and you can see his impressive performances and instructional guitar videos on youtube.com, made after his operation. You would never guess there was any problem in his brain.

In his essay “A Map of the Soul,” neuroscientist Michael Egnor states the following:

I have scores of patients who are missing large areas of their brains, yet who have quite good minds. I have a patient born with two-thirds of her brain absent. She’s a normal junior high kid who loves to play soccer. Another patient, missing a similar amount of brain tissue, is an accomplished musician with a master’s degree in English.

The same author tells us here that the patient with two-thirds of her brain absent made the honor roll at school. The paper "Neuropsychological and neurophysiological evaluation of cognitive deficits related to the severity of traumatic brain injury" studied the IQ of 90 patients, dividing them into three categories: mild traumatic brain injury, moderate traumatic brain injury, and severe traumatic brain injury. The mean IQ in each of these groups was about the same, being either 103 or 104. We read that "a surprising finding was that specific intelligence subtests did not show [sensitvity] even for differentiation between severe and mild injury." Such a result is surprising only to those who think your brain makes your mind, not those who reject such an idea.

It is often claimed that certain mental capabilities such as intelligence come from a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. But the authors of a scientific paper say “we have studied numerous patients with bilateral lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal (VM) cortex” and that “most of these patients retain normal intellect, memory and problem-solving ability in laboratory settings.”  On page 342 of the book Developmental Neuropsychology we read the following about brain surgery on children: "Removal of benign astrocytic and oligodendrocytic tumors in one of the cortical hemispheres had little effect on personality and intelligence; 72 percent of 42 consecutive cases had no problems in school on follow-up (Hirsch et al. 1989)."

Such cases are powerful evidence against the dogma that our minds are merely a product of our brains. Repeated countless times in mainstream literature, but never proven, such a dogma is also discredited by both the inability of neuroscience to plausibly account for consciousness and very-long-term human memory, and the inability of a "mind from brain" dogma to account for psychic phenomena such as ESP, remote viewing, and near-death experiences. Nature never told us that minds come from brains. It was merely neuroscientists who told us that, without having sufficient evidence to support such a claim. Don't confuse such ideologically-motivated scientist speech customs with facts.

Alternatives to the "mind from brain" dogma include the idea of a human soul and the idea that human consciousness may have some mysterious consciousness infrastructure as its source, possibly something cosmic in scope. When asked "Where do your smartphone games come from," a child may answer with great certainty, "From the smartphone, of course." But such games may actually come from some mysterious information infrastructure involving the Internet and remote servers, something the child knows nothing about. Similarly, our minds may have as their main source some mysterious non-biological consciousness infrastructure we know nothing about.

In this post I have merely listed some of the very many cases showing high mental function despite large brain damage. See this post for many more such cases.  

Postscript:  In the paper "Does brain tumor histology influence cognitive function?" Anne E. Kayl and Christina A. Meyers give us a study of dozens of patients who had very severe brain tumors. Noting a lack of any relation between the size of the brain tumors and mental function (contrary to what you would expect from "brains make minds" dogma), they state this:

"Statistical analyses failed to detect a significant effect of tumor histology or tumor volume on intellectual, memory, language, executive, or motor function. In fact, regression and correlation analyses suggest that patient age is of greater importance than tumor histology or tumor volume for determining neuropsychological test performance. Tumor volume was neither predictive of, nor reliably associated with cognitive performance in this patient sample. While these results affirm age as a marker for a worsened prognosis for the more advanced forms of anaplastic glioma, the statistically nonsignificant relationship of tumor volume to cognitive function was unexpected."

Below is a very notable case of the almost complete destruction of a brain by a brain tumor, but with a high preservation of mental function. It comes from page 71 of the document here (and the newspaper story here repeats the same details).

Below is a news story from 1951 referring to an increase in IQ after the removal of half a brain: