More Old Newspaper Stories Relevant to Whether Brains Make Minds

The Chronicling America web site allows you to make a full-text search of many decades of American newspapers. Below are some interesting clips from old newspaper articles, all having some relevance to whether the human brain makes the human mind.  

The news account below is from 1957:

You can read the report here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1957-09-02/ed-1/seq-3/

The account below is from the nineteenth century. We hear of a man who apparently did not suffer intellectual damage from losing half of his brain. 

You can read the 1876 account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84038123/1876-01-21/ed-1/seq-1/

The newspaper account below is from 1898:

You can read the story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1898-07-03/ed-1/seq-19/

Using an OCR feature of the page above, I get this quotation of its middle part:

"In instances in which it was discovered after death that the connecting bridge between the hemispheres

was entirely wanting, neither derangement in intellect was observed, nor any other abnormality of life in the way of movement or sensation. Thus, in the notable case of Bichat, one of the foremost anatomists of his day, one lobe of his brain was found markedly smaller than the other. He was, in fact, deficient in one-half of his brain, and yet his mental and physical life was in its way notably of a high order. In another case, reported by Cruveilhier, a man died in the hospital at the age of 42 years from heart disease. He exhibited no lack of intelligence, yet after his death it was discovered that his left brain was practically destroyed and replaced by a watery substance. Another case, reported by Andral, was of a man who died at the age of 2S. He had suffered from a fall when three years old, and as a result was paralyzed on his left side. The right half of his brain had practically disappeared, so that the parts below this half constituted the floor for an empty space. Andral says of this

man that he 'had received a good education, and had profited by it; he had a good. memory; his speech was free and easy; his intelligence was such as we should expect to find in an ordinary man.' "

Below is a news story from 1938. We read of a girl "with half a brain" who carried on in a "remarkably satisfactory manner":

You can read the news story here:

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A1837343?solr%

We have below a report that is not at all what we would expect if the brain produces the mind.  The report is of patients who underwent surgeries that surgically severed the two halves of their brain. But instead of this producing a drastically different mind, or two minds, we have apparently minimal effects:

You can read the story using this link:

https://digitalcollections.lib.umanitoba.ca/islandora/object/uofm%3A2307311?solr%5Bquery

The 1905 newspaper account below tells us of a man who seemed to have suffered little mental damage from losing most of his brain:

You can read the account here:

https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=teh19051201-01.1.8&srpos=6&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-%22half+a+brain%22---------

Here is a news account from 1987 telling us of a big improvement in reading ability after half of a girl's brain was removed. 

You can read the full story here:

https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=jou19870907-01.1.4&srpos=3&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-%22half+her+brain%22---------

A fact contrary to all claims that brains make minds is the fact that very severe pain can be completely cancelled by the use of hypnosis. Below is a news story documenting the effect. 

On pages 27-28 of a book by Dr. James Esdaile he lists a host of dramatic painless surgeries he performed without using anesthesia, but only hypnosis on patients. The list includes about 20 amputations, and 200 removals of scrotal tumors ranging from 10 pounds in weight to more than 100 pounds in weight. Another book on this topic by Esdaile can be read here. 

In the following quote from a nineteenth century work, we learn of a great irony: that physicians took up a chemical method of anesthesia, one which would often kill people, rather than using hypnotic methods of anesthesia that were proving very safe and effective:

"In Dr. Brown Sequard's lectures upon 'Nervous Force,' delivered in Boston in 1874, he speaks of this form of anaesthesia as follows : 

'As regards the power of producing anaesthesia, it seems to me unfortunate that the discovery of ether was made just when it was. It was, as you well know, in 1846 or 1847 that the use of ether as an anaesthetic was begun. It started from this city (Boston). At that time in England, Dr. Forbes was trying to show from facts observed in England, and especially in India, from the practice of Dr. Esdaile, that something which was called Mesmerism, but which, after all, was nothing but a peculiar state of somnambulism induced in patients, gave to them the idea that they were deprived of feeling ; so that they were in reality under the influence of their imagination, and operations were performed that were quite painless. I say that it was a pity that ether was introduced just then, as it prevented the progress of our knowledge as to this method of producing anaesthesia. My friend Dr. Broca took it up in 1857-8 and pushed it very far; and for a time it was the fashion in Paris to have amputations performed after having been anaesthetized by the influence of Braidism or Hypnotism. A great many operations were performed in that way that were quite painless. But it was a process that was long and tedious, and surgeons were in a hurry and gave it up. I regret it very much, as there has never been a case of death from that method of producing anesthesia, while you well know that a great many cases of death have been produced by other methods.' "

They Lost Huge Parts of Their Brains, But Their Knowledge and Recollection Were Preserved

 When people think of neuroscience experiments, they typically think of experiments done with mice. If they think of neuroscience experiments involving humans, they may think of some experiment involving the use of some drug, with a test to see whether the drug affects mental performance.  Such experiments are formally designed with things such as a set of test subjects, a set of control subjects that do not have any intervention occurring to them, and so forth. 

But some of the most important experiments in neuroscience have been those that were not part of some procedure declared as an experiment. The experiments have occurred when some large part of a human brain was removed in surgery. Whenever such an operation is done, it is an important experiment that tests the credibility of the claims that neuroscientists so often make. 

Neuroscientists are always claiming that learning occurs through some brain action, that memories are stored in brains, and that recall of a memory occurs by some action of the brain. Neuroscientists senselessly keep making such claims despite their lack of any credible theory describing how any such things could be done by a brain. When a neuroscientist is asked to explain how a brain could store some newly learned knowledge, a scientist will typically engage in some vague, vacuous hand-waving which typically consists of merely reciting some little slogan or sound bite such as "synapse strengthening." There is nothing to speak of behind such a phrase, which is a mere vacuous catchphrase. When asked to explain how a human can instantly recall some knowledge, a neuroscientist will typically say nothing but the most vacuous phrase such as "stored information is recalled." 

Although not called "experiments," every time a large part of the brain is removed from a human, a very important experiment is being performed, one that sheds light on whether neuroscientist claims about memory are credible.  Under the theory that memories are stored in brains and retrieved by brains, we should expect to observe certain things:

(1) We should expect that there should be some deterioration in the ability of humans to learn new information. Such a deterioration might be small or large, depending on where brain tissue was extracted, and how brain tissue was extracted. 

(2) We should expect that there should be some loss of learned knowledge and episodic memories. Such a deterioration might be small or large, depending on where brain tissue was extracted, and how much brain tissue was extracted. 

Item (2) is often overlooked, but is obviously something to be expected under the theory that brains store memories. Imagine if someone writes down what happened to him each day, in a large book that originally consisted of blank pages. Obviously if you were rip out a large chunk of these pages and burn them, that would cause a large loss of the information that had been recorded.  It is just as obvious that if memories are stored in brains, then surgically removing some large chunk of the brain should cause some large loss of what a person had learned or the memories the person had. 

If memories are stored in the brain we should expect that a surgical removal of a large amount of brain tissue might produce effects such as these:

(1) A loss of the ability to understand some words in a person's language. Each recognition of a word that occurs when a person hears something involves the use of some learned knowledge that a person acquired sometime in his life.  

(2)  A loss of the ability to speak or write some words in a person's language. Each use of a word that occurs when a person speaks something or writes something involves the use of some learned knowledge that a person acquired sometime in his life.  

(3) A loss of the ability to recognize various types of images such as particular faces or particular words or particular symbols. Every time a person recognizes a word or a face or an object or a symbol, that involves the use of some  learned knowledge that a person acquired sometime in his life.  

(4) A loss of the ability to recall various concepts and facts that the person had learned at some time in his life. For example, a person might no longer remember what country or city he lived in, or what his name was, or what his address was. Or a person might no longer be able to explain who some famous historical figure was, someone such as Jesus or Napoleon. 

(5) A loss of episodic memories. For example, a person might no longer be able to tell you the story of his life, or tell you what type of activities he engaged in last year. 

To test whether memories are stored in brains, we can track down case histories of people who had large amounts of brain tissue surgically removed, and examine which, if any, of the effects above occurred.  Let's look at some examples of such cases. 

First, let's look at the case of Beth Usher of Storrs, Connecticut (part of the USA). Beth was mentioned in an article in the LA Times, which says she was one a group of epileptic children who had half of their brain removed, to stop very bad seizures that drugs could not stop. The article stated this:

 "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.'" 

We have here the explicit claim that Beth's memories survived the removal of the left half of her brain.  The article mentions specific things that Beth could still remember, and makes no mention of any memory or knowledge that was lost after half of her brain was removed. 

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."  

The discussion of the patient's retention of previous knowledge is rather frustrating in its lack of a comprehensive treatment. 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 test. No mention is made of schooling occurring during the first six months of 1966. 

According to the paper here, "In the fifth postoperative month, E.C. showed sudden recall of whole old familiar songs (e.g., My

Country 'Tis of Thee, Home on the Range, church hymns)."

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. 

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. The tester speaks a word corresponding to one of the pictures, and the subject tested is asked to point to the correct picture matching that word.  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. 

The 2021 paper "Preserved Cognition After Right Hemispherectomy"  by Mark Bowren, Jr,  Daniel Tranel and Aaron D. Boes tells us the fairly recent case of a woman who had almost the entire right half of her brain removed, but is apparently suffering very little cognitive damage from this removal. We read that the woman had a brain stroke at age 29, and that doctors treated her brain problem by removing almost all of the right half of her brain, in an operation called a hemispherectomy. We read that "In the days after surgery, she was described as alert, cooperative, and having normal language and interactions with her providers." We read no mention in the paper of a loss of acquired memories.  

The phrase "having normal language" is a very important indication that learned knowledge was preserved after almost all of the right half of the brain was removed.  Every time a person uses language in speech, that involves a use of acquired memories. Every single use of a particular word requires a memory of the definition of that word.  

Also we read that two months after the stroke, this patient CB had "intact expressive language and reading comprehension."  The paper does not tell us how many weeks after the stroke there occurred the removal of almost all the right half of the brain. But from the timeline given we know that this sentence refers to some time less than two months after the operation occurred.  Because you cannot learn a large fraction of a language in less than two months, we can presume that the patient had "intact expressive language and reading comprehension" directly after having had almost all of the right half of her brain removed, particularly given that we are told that the patient had "normal language" days after the operation. 

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 that is cited. 

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 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.

Entitled "Man With Half a Brain," the 1912 newspaper article below (which you can read here) tells us of a soldier who was shot in the head. First, we are told that he lost his memory, but then the article says that "gradually his memory has returned, and he recollected what happened in his childhood." Then the article tells us this: "And now he remembers everything up until the third day before he was shot." 

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 surgery 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 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. 

They Did Well After a Huge Loss of Brain Tissue

The 1935 newspaper account below (which you can read here) is entitled "Half a Brain Good As Whole." We read of operations removing a half a brain, "without the least reduction of intellectual  ability."

An article on Buzzfeed.com is entitled "Autopsy Professionals Are Revealing The Most Bizarre Anomalies They've Seen, And Wow, The Human Body Is Truly A Wonder."  We hear some amazing stories about autopsies revealing brains that are mostly gone. 

The accounts are anonymous, giving them less credibility than testimony from named witnesses. But only a very tiny fraction of the population seems to realize the philosophical significance of an autopsy report showing someone who had few symptoms had huge brain tissue loss. So we can rather safely assume that these stories are not being made up to score points in the debate about whether the brain is the source of the mind. 

One user reports this coming up in an autopsy:

"An old woman with an incredibly thick skull all the way around. Her brain was much, much smaller than it should have been, but according to her family, she was fully functional and displayed no deficits of any kind. She actually ran her own cheese-making company and died from a carbon monoxide leak. Strangest case I ever saw!"

Another user reports this:

"I did an autopsy of a young kid, around 10 years old, who had hydrocephalus and was quadriplegic, yet retained some of his normal functions, like talking and understanding — albeit minimally. When I opened his skull, there was no brain. I was shocked. This was my first time witnessing something like this. There was approximately 1.5 liters of fluid and just an empty skull. The brain was so severely atrophied it was smaller than a golf ball."

How can someone do talking and understanding without a brain? Only if the brain is not the source of your mind. 

Another user reports this:

"I observed a lot of things during my professional autopsies. The most notorious was a guy with four .22 bullets in his cranium. He didn't claim pain and apparently lived a normal life."

We can only imagine how much brain tissue must have been lost in total when the last of these four bullets appeared in the person's brain. But nonetheless we are told he "lived a normal life."

Compared to such a case, the case reported below is much less impressive:

"An 85-year-old patient had a tumor in her brain. It was the size of a golf ball on her right lobe — unknown to her before death." 

The 2024 article here is entitled, "Doctors Successfully Remove a Tennis Ball-Sized Tumor in an 8-Hour Surgery." We read of a woman who had a huge brain tumor of 7 to 8 centimeters. We have a visual showing the tumor. The tumor appears as a whitish mass. 

We get a vague listing of some symptoms the patient suffered, without  much of anything in the way of specifics. Referring to resection of the tumor (which means removal) we read this:

"Radhika underwent a successful bifrontal craniotomy, guided by navigation and tumor fluorescence technology, allowing for complete excision of the tumor. Remarkably, within one week of the surgery, she returned to her normal life."

She returned to her normal life? That's not what we would expect after the removal of so large a part of the brain, under the hypothesis that your brain makes your mind. 

The story below (which you can read here) describes children who had half of their brains removed to treat epilepsy. The story flatly states that the children "do not lose any of their intelligence, but their fits and antisocial behavior disappear, according to Dr. Eugene P. Spitz of Children's Hospital, Philadelphia." 

Below (from the news account here) is a description of tests on the surgical removal of half of the brain of monkeys. The result is one we might expect under the idea that the brain is not the source of the mind. 

Here is a new story from 1933 noting "no changes in intellect" after an operation that removed "almost all of the right half of a woman's brain."

Below we have a 1937 newspaper account (which you can read here) of a woman who had the right half of her brain removed in an operation. We are told that after this operation she had an IQ of 115, which is 15% higher than average. This is not what we would expect under the hypothesis that the brain is the source of the human mind. 

Below from a 1957 newspaper is another case of someone doing very well intellectually after the removal of the right half of the brain. 

In the news story here, we read that "Mark, of Palm Bay, Fla., is reading better and playing longer since the left side of his brain was removed in May." Note the exact words: "reading better," not reading worse. The news article here tells how a brain tumor of between 5 and 7 centimeters (about 2 to 3 inches) was discovered in the brain of the manager of a major league baseball team. The tumor was in the left front part of the brain, the same part reputed to be involved in executive functions. The manager had just successfully managed the American League team to victory in the All Star game. 

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 surgery 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 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.' "

I have by now published posts describing many different cases in which learned knowledge and episodic memories were well-preserved after the destruction of the left half of the brain. I have also published posts describing many other cases in which learned knowledge and episodic memories were well-preserved after the destruction of the right half of the brain. You can read about such cases in the text above and in my posts here, here and here. Such cases are all cases deserving the closest study by any neuroscientist claiming that brains store memories. The failure of most neuroscientists to collect and study cases of this type is a severe example of dereliction of duty, and a bad example of people failing to study whether a very important claim such people are making (the claim that brains store memories) is supported or discredited by observational evidence. 

Then there is the case of Sharon Parker. She 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.' "

Old Newspaper Stories Relevant to Whether Brains Make Minds

The Chronicling America web site allows you to make a full-text search of many decades of American newspapers. Below are some interesting clips from old newspaper articles, all having some relevance to whether the human brain makes the human mind. 

Below is a clip from an 1899 newspaper article, one suggesting there is no relation between brain size and intelligence:

You can read the article here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86064199/1899-09-26/ed-1/seq-2/

Here is a news story from 1912:

You can read the news story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89053729/1912-09-20/ed-4/seq-2/

The news story below tells us that a man who lost part of his brain "larger than a teacup"  is "nearly as well as before," with the weird detail that doctor's put part of a calf's brain in his head. 

You can read the story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86092151/1899-06-16/ed-1/seq-1/

Below is a clip from an old newspaper story, one ending with a statement "more than half his brain was destroyed, and yet he retained his mental faculties in full force till he died":

The newspaper story can be read here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84020422/1876-03-01/ed-1/seq-4/

The newspaper account below discusses some topics relevant to whether brains make minds:

You can read the story using the link below:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016209/1875-10-29/ed-1/seq-1/

The following is part of a news article that appeared in 1936:

You can read the full article here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1936-09-11/ed-1/seq-30/

According to the Guinness Book of World Records article here, the largest human brain ever recorded was a brain of 2850 grams (about 100 ounces), which belonged not to some genius, but to a man with "intellectual difficulties." 

Below is a news story from 1904, telling of a man whose "intellectual capacity was not effected in the slightest" despite a very serious brain injury:

You can read the story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024827/1904-08-10/ed-1/seq-7/

Here is a similar story of a man who shot himself through the head in an attempt to kill himself, but still survived so well that he "talks rationally":

You can read the story here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038489/1912-04-30/ed-1/seq-1/

I've saved the best for last. It is an account to be found on page 603 of the September 17, 1936 edition of the periodical Light, and deals with the widely noted phenomenon called terminal lucidity:

You can read the account using the link below:

http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/light/light_v56_n2906_sep_17_1936.pdf

She Didn't Seem to Need the Right Half of Her Brain, and Losing It Did Not Seem to Dim Her Memories

The 2021 paper "Preserved Cognition After Right Hemispherectomy" is another example of a case that should have been "the talk of the town" in the world of science, but which instead seems  to have received almost no attention from the press.  The paper by Mark Bowren, Jr,  Daniel Tranel and Aaron D. Boes tells us the fairly recent case of a woman who had almost the entire right half of her brain removed, but is apparently suffering very little cognitive damage from this removal. 

We read that the woman had a brain stroke at age 29, and that doctors treated her brain problem by removing almost all of the right half of her brain, in an operation called a hemispherectomy. We read that "In the days after surgery, she was described as alert, cooperative, and having normal language and interactions with her providers." We read no mention in the paper of a loss of acquired memories.  

The failure of scientists and doctors to study the exact memory effect of removing half of the brain is a major scandal of neuroscience. Whenever a person has a large portion of the brain removed, you have a great opportunity to test the hypothesis that memories are stored in the brain. This is because if it is true that human memories are stored in the brain, you should see some great loss of memories whenever a large chunk of the brain is removed.  But senselessly, neuroscientists and medical authorities seem to fail to test a loss of acquired memories after removal of large portions of the brain. 

Doing such a test would be quite easy. For example, a person could be given a test of the definition of 200 common words and could be given a multiple-choice test involving 200 commonly known facts; and such tests could be given both before and after the removal of the large amount of brain tissue. A sharp decrease in the score on such  tests would indicate that the person had lost much of the school-learned knowledge that he previously had. Also, a person could be asked to write a 1000-word autobiographical essay, both before and after the removal of the large amount of brain tissue. From the facts in such an essay written before the surgery, you could make a set of 25 or 35 questions and answers.  This set of questions and answers could be asked both before the surgery and after the surgery.  If it was found, for example, that the person given the brain surgery could no longer answer 10 of the autobiographical questions  that the person could answer before the surgery, this would be an indication that the brain surgery had caused the person to lose some of his episodic memories. 

Senselessly, doctors and neuroscientists fail to do tests like this before and after removing large portions of the brain.  Or, if they do such tests, they fail to publish them.  So we are left having to deduce how much of an effect the brain removal had on acquired memories, using other clues, and using the failure to report a loss of acquired memories and episodic memories as evidence that no great loss of such things occurred.  In the case of this woman, we can do that. The paper has failed to mention any loss of conceptual knowledge and has failed to mention any loss of episodic memories. From this we may infer  that there was no such loss.  

Also, the paper has stated this about the aftermath of the dramatic surgery in almost all of the right half of the brain was removed: " In the days after surgery, she was described as alert, cooperative, and having normal language and interactions with her providers."  The phrase "having normal language" is a very important indication that learned knowledge was preserved after almost all of the right half of the brain was removed.  Every time a person uses language in speech, that involves a use of acquired memories. Every single use of a particular word requires a memory of the definition of that word.  

Also we read that two months after the stroke, this patient CB had "intact expressive language and reading comprehension."  The paper does not tell us how many weeks after the stroke there occurred the removal of almost all the right half of the brain. But from the timeline given we know that this sentence refers to some time less than two months after the operation occurred.  Because you cannot learn a large fraction of a language in less than two months, we can presume that the patient had "intact expressive language and reading comprehension" directly after having had almost all of the right half of her brain removed, particularly given that we are told that the patient had "normal language" days after the operation. 

While the authorities involved failed to properly test for a loss of acquired knowledge and episodic memories, they did do a good job of testing the patient's cognitive skills at a time 5.3 and 7.8 years after the operation. They have given us the visual below, which neatly summarizes in a single visual the loss of brain tissue that occurred and the results of the cognitive tests:

As you can see from the visual above, the patient scored in the "Average" range for almost all of the 29 tests. In only two of the dozens of tests did the patient get an "Impaired" score: a test involving symbol search and a test involving copying figures.  We read this:

"Neuropsychological test performances (data collected 5.3 and 7.8 years after the onset of the stroke; figure)4 were notable for normal performance on most tests, including on most nonverbal tests, such as the Block Design test, the Matrix Reasoning test, the Visual Puzzles test, the Judgment of Line Orientation test, the Benton Visual Retention test, the Spatial Span test, and the Faces I and II tests. In addition, she performed within normal limits on several tests of executive functioning, including the Wisconsin Card Sorting test, part B of the Trail Making test, the Color-Word Interference test, and the Similarities test (a test of abstract verbal reasoning and comprehension of implied meanings). Regarding attention, she performed within normal limits on the Line Cancellation test, a test of hemispatial inattention (neglect), and there was no evidence of hemispatial inattention on other neuropsychological tests. Focused and complex attention were within normal limits on parts A and B of the Trail Making Test, respectively."

So how does this data fit in with the claim that your brain makes your mind? It doesn't.  The data defies such a claim.  The case also defies claims that the brain is the storage place of memories.  The paper has failed to mention any loss of acquired knowledge or episodic memories from the removal of half a brain, and has given us some indications that no big loss of that type occurred. 

A page describes a book by Antonio M. Battro, a book entitled "Half a Brain Is Enough" about a boy named Nico. The page states this: 

"Half a Brain is Enough is the extraordinary story of Nico, a three-year-old boy who was given a right hemispherectomy to control his severe intractable epilepsy. Antonio Battro, a distinguished neuroscientist and educationalist, describes his work with Nico over several years and explains how a boy with only half a brain has developed into a bright child with relatively minor physical and mental impairment. Eight years later, he runs and plays with only a slight limp. So far, there is no significant cognitive or affective disorder and it appears that Nico's so-called right-hemisphere skills--mathematics, visual arts, and music--have migrated to the left hemisphere. At school, he performs as a child of his age in arithmetic and music; only his draftsmanship and handwriting are poor for his age, but he has not lost his cognitive spatial ability. Battro and his colleagues have been studying and teaching Nico with computers and he is mastering written language with a word processor and is able to make good graphic designs with a computer. Nico performs well above average verbally, a left-brain skill."

Surprising Studies on Memory Loss or IQ Changes After Brain Surgery or Brain Damage

Neuroscientists typically claim that memories are stored in the brain. There are some very complex ways and very simple ways in which such a hypothesis can be tested. A very complex way would be to use dissection to see whether any sign of human memories can be found. You could do this in two different ways: (1) by dissecting the brains of people who had recently died, looking for learned information such as facts learned in school; (2) by analyzing tissue removed from the brains of living people, to look for  learned information such as facts learned in school. There are plenty of opportunities for the second of these methods, because brain tissue is often removed to treat diseases such as epilepsy. Sometimes an entire half of the brain is removed in an operation called a hemispherectomy, to treat very severe and frequent seizures. Epilepsy is also treated by less severe operations that involve removing much less than half of the brain. 

Examining removed brain tissue has never produced any support for the claim that memories are stored in brains. No one has ever seen any words or letters by looking at brain tissue through a microscope. No one has ever used a microscope to look at brain tissue of some particular person, and seen images corresponding to sights that person  previously saw. No one has ever seen any sign of encoded information by looking at brain tissue through a microscope,  other than genetic information which is not information that anyone learns through school or experience.  

The method described above is a very complex method that might require the use of very sophisticated equipment such as electron microscopes. But there is a very simple way of testing the hypothesis that memories are stored in brains. You can simply do what may be called a  "loss of learned information" test, testing someone both before and after the person had surgery to remove some of their brain tissue. You can look for loss of memories and learned information that had been acquired before the operation. 

Such a test would be different from a typical memory test. A typical memory test might measure how well someone can remember some new information he was asked to memorize. But a "loss of learned information" test would only test whether something learned or remembered before some brain surgery had been lost by the act of surgery itself. 

You would think that scientists eager to prove their claims that memories are stored in brains would often do such a "loss of learned information" test.  But it seems very hard to find examples of such tests in the scientific literature. 

Let us look at some papers that may be relevant to discussions of whether human brains store memories.  We must carefully distinguish between two types of tests:

(1) A "performance on new learning" memory test will test how well some person can still acquire different types of new memories after having lost some brain tissue.

(2) A "loss of old memory" test will test whether a person lost some memory he had acquired, because of some loss of brain tissue.  

The second type of test is more relevant to whether the brain stores memories.  Removal of some brain tissue might damage your senses or perception in a way that might decrease your ability to learn new things and acquire new memories. But that would not show that your previous memories acquired before such a removal were stored in your brain. Similarly, if you make a person blind, that will reduce his ability to learn, but that does nothing to show that brains store memories. 

We must also carefully distinguish between a random pool of brain tissue loss subjects, and a pool of subjects who have been selected because they showed symptoms of memory loss. I have looked at quite a few papers in which we are told that some pool of subjects was selected for both brain tissue loss and also memory problems. Tests of the extent of memory loss in such persons may be giving a very misleading impression, because only subjects having memory loss were selected for the tests. Such studies may merely show that "people with memory problems have memory problems." 

It seems that our medical professionals are usually bad about testing preservation of memories after doing operations that remove half of a brain or a large fraction of the brain. I think this may be because they do not want to do a test that will produce results that contradict their dogma that memories are stored in brains. But here and there in the scientific literature you will be able to find some tests that serve as tests of how well memories were preserved after half of the brain was removed. In some other cases, we will be able to infer that there was  little or no loss of memories acquired before the operation, either because of a lack of mention of any such thing (which would be noteworthy and worthy of mention if it occurred), or because of some general assurance that the operation usually produced "no serious complications," a claim that should only be made if previously acquired memories were well-preserved.  

Let us look at some of the papers that might be relevant. 

• The paper here ("Unexpected amnesia: are there lessons to be learned from cases of amnesia following unilateral temporal lobe surgery?") tells us that "Cases of amnesia following unilateral temporal lobe surgery are rare." It tells us that "Davies and Weeks (1993) did report one case of postoperative amnesia in a series of 58 cases of unilateral temporal lobectomy, whereas Walczak et al. (1990) found one case of marked deterioration in memory from a preoperative normal state in their series of 100 patients who underwent such surgery." The authors state, "We were able to locate nine definite cases of amnesia following unilateral temporal lobe surgery in the English language literature." But the paper gives us no interesting accounts describing amnesia in any of these cases. We do have a Table 3 that has "before" and "after" columns for seven of the nine cases. The table fails to mention much of anything backing up claims that the patients had amnesia in the sense of loss of memories or learning they had acquired before the surgery. We have "before and after" IQ scores for the first five subjects, which show no significant difference (there sometimes being an increase).  For patient 6 there is no data, and for patient 7 we read "postoperative scores on executive and language function similar to preoperative scores." In the column labeled "Post-surgery memory functioning" we hear of some declines in memory performance tests for some of the subjects, but we hear nothing about a loss of memories that they had acquired before the operation.  And some of the results in that column involve tests taken years after the surgery, so we don't know whether any declines reported were the result of the surgery. In short, the paper fails to provide any good evidence that memories or learned information can be lost by temporal lobe surgery for epilepsy. 
• The paper "Memory outcome after temporal lobe epilepsy surgery: corticoamygdalohippocampectomy versus selective amygdalohippocampectomy" fails to discuss any measurements or observations about how acquired memories or learned knowledge declined after brain surgery that removed substantial tissue. It does tell us that for 63 patients IQ went up by about five points after such surgery, and that for another 60 patients IQ increased by nearly five points. The paper tells us that "General intelligence increases after epilepsy surgery." 
• Almost the same claim is made by the paper here ("Psychiatric and Neuropsychological Problems in Epilepsy Surgery: Analysis of 100 Cases That Underwent Surgery"), which tells us, "The full IQ score of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Revised (WAIS-R) was increased after temporal lobectomy in 75% of the cases (p < 0.01; n 4 44)." 
• The paper "Retrograde amnesia in patients with diencephalic temporal lobe or frontal lesions" has some interesting graphs showing memory tests in a group of subjects that included "15 patients with dicephalic lesions, 15 patients with temporal lobe lesions, 15 with frontal lobe lesions and 20 healthy control subjects." We have graphs showing performance on tests that include tests of autobiographical incidents, news recall and famous faces. All of the patients with lesions are able to produce scores ranging from about 70% to 30% of the scores produced by control subjects.  This is not a very impressive result, considering that the paper says, "The patients were selected in all cases on the basis of their having significant anterograde memory impairment in association with clinical and CT scan evidence of pre- dominantly focal lesions in either the temporal or frontal lobes or the diencephalon."  Since both having brains lesions and being not good at remembering the past was a requirement for being chosen in the study, the paper fails to show a link between the lesions and the memory performance. Similarly, if you did a study that only accepted subjects who were both gay and alcoholic, that would do nothing to show that being alcoholic tends to make people gay. 
• The paper "Retrograde amnesia in patients with hippocampal, medial temporal, temporal lobe, or frontal pathology" suffers from the same shortcoming.  We have some graphs showing inferior memory performance on five patients, on tasks of autobiographical recall, recalling famous news events, and recalling famous faces. But the paper eventually tells us that these patients "were selected on the basis of significant anterograde memory loss and MRI evidence that regional brain atrophy was restricted to the medial temporal lobe structures."  So the result merely tells us that people who have trouble remembering what they learned have trouble remembering what they learned. A random sample of five subjects with the same brain tissue loss might tell a very different tale. 
• The paper "Clinical outcomes of hemispherectomy for epilepsy in childhood and adolescence" (about surgeries removing half of a brain) tells us that "the overall developmental/cognitive category was unchanged following surgery in 23 out of 27 children," and that "two children showed a >15 point improvement in DQ/IQ following surgery,"  referring to a substantial increase in intelligence as measured by IQ tests. 
• The paper here "Seizure control and developmental trajectories after hemispherotomy for refractory epilepsy in childhood and adolescence" (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. 
• The paper "With childhood hemispherectomy, one hemisphere can support—but is suboptimal for—word and face recognition" involved tests on 15 left hemispherectomy patients, 24 right hemispherectomy patients, and 58 age-matched control subjects. A hemispherectomy typically involves removal of one-half of the brain to stop very frequent epileptic seizures. According to Figure 5, most of the patients who had a hemispherectomy were only "mildly impaired" in their ability to recognize words and faces, with a few being "moderately impaired," a few others having "average" performance, and one having "above average" performance.  The tests performed seemed to have been purely "performance on new learning" tests. We read that "Childhood hemispherectomy patients showed above 80% accuracy on tasks of face and word recognition," and the paper calls this "surprisingly good performance."
• A 2015 scientific paper ("Brain abscess: surgical experiences of 162 cases") looked at 162 cases of surgery to treat brain abscess, in which parts of the brain undergo the cell death known as necrosis, often being replaced with a yellowish pus. The article contains quite a few photos of people with holes in their brains caused by the abscesses, holes in their brains of various sizes. The paper says that “complete resolution of abscess with complete recovery of preoperative neuro-deficit was seen in 80.86%” of the patients, and that only about 6% of the patients suffered a major functional deficit, even though 22% of the patients had multiple brain abscesses, and 30% of the abscesses occurred in the frontal lobe (claimed to be the center of higher thought). Interestingly, the long review article on 162 brain abscesses treated by brain surgery make no mention at all of amnesia or any memory effects, other than to tell us that “there was short-term memory loss in 5 cases.” If our memories really are stored in our brain, how come none of these 162 cases of brain abscesses seem to have shown an effect at all on permanent memories?
• Similarly, a scientific paper ("Brain abscess: clinical aspects of 100 patients") about 100 brain abscess cases (in which one fourth of the patients had multiple brain abscesses) makes no mention of any specific memory effect or thinking effect. It tells us that most of the patients had “neurological focal deficits,” but that's a vague term that doesn't tell us whether intellect or memory was affected. (A wikiepdia.org article says that such a term refers to "impairments of nerve, spinal cord, or brain function that affects a specific region of the body, e.g. weakness in the left arm, the right leg, paresis, or plegia.")   The paper tells us that after treatment “80 (83.3%) were cured, eight (8.3%) died (five of them were in coma at admission), seven had a relapse of the abscess,” without mentioning any permanent loss of memory or mental function in anyone.
• Another paper ("Epidemiology of brain abscess in Taiwan: A 14-year population-based cohort study") discusses thousands of cases of brain abscesses, without mentioning any specific thinking effects or memory effects. 
•  Another paper ("Retrospective analysis of 49 cases of brain abscess and review of the literature") refers to 49 brain abscess patients, and tells us that "the frontal lobe was the most common site," referring to the place that is claimed to be a "seat of thought" in the brain. But rather than mentioning any great intellectual damage caused by these brain holes, the paper says that 39 of the patients “recovered fully or had minimal incapacity,” and that five died.
• A paper tested the ability to recognize faces and words in a group of control subjects and about 39 subjects who had undergone hemispherectomy, typically to remove half of their brains. Most of those who had the hemispherectomy operation performed almost as well as the normal controls.  We read, "This performance level is perhaps surprisingly high, relative to the brain volume resected  [removed] (often close to 50%), hinting at a nonlinear degradation of function with resection. Second, the patients' accuracy was not dependent on the hemisphere removed. That is, the single LH or RH of patients showed comparable performance on face and word recognition."
• The paper "Memory outcomes following hemispherectomy in children" fails to mention in its abstract any loss of episodic or conceptual memories after hemispherectomy operations typically involving removal of half a brain. It says, "Undergoing hemispherectomy was not necessarily associated with declined memory performance, with the majority of patients showing stable scores."
• The paper "The Cognitive Outcome of Hemispherectomy in 71 Children" describes outcomes of operations typically removing half of a brain to stop very frequent seizures. The paper gives us in Table 7 the pre-operation and post-operation IQ scores for 31 different children. The decline in IQ is only small. The children went from an average IQ of  80.5 to an average IQ of 75.7. 26 of these children were given a test called the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. For these 26 children the average score increased from 79.0 to 82.1. This test is very important because it is effectively a test of previously acquired knowledge. In the test a person is shown a series of four pictures, and is asked a question such as "Which picture shows laughing?" The test therefore measures previously acquired knowledge. The increase in the score on this test is most remarkable. It is not at all what we would expect if the human brain stores memories. Under the hypothesis that the brain stores memories, removal of half of a brain should cause a sharp decline in performance on this test. Similar results are shown in Table 9. We have pre-operation and post-operation IQ scores for 15 different children (not the ones described in Table 7). The decline in measured IQ is less than a single point. Scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test rose from an average of 43.0 to an average of 51.7. Another paper summarizes these results by saying, " Pulsifer et al. ... reported cognitive outcomes in 71 children who underwent hemispherectomies and found little changes in cognitive performance pre- and post-surgery."
• The paper "Long-term functional outcomes and their predictors after hemispherectomy in 115 children" did not test for IQ or memory, but reports on things such as speech ability, walking ability and reading ability. We read 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."
• The paper "Hemispherectomy in adults patients with severe unilateral epilepsy and hemiplegia" discusses "25 adults who presented severe unilateral epilepsy and hemiplegia and underwent anatomic or functional hemispherectomy in between 2006 and 2011."  16 of these were "anatomic hemispherectomies" apparently involving removal of half of the brain, and the other nine were "functional hemispherectomies."  Very remarkably, we are told "All of the patients’ postoperative scores of overall QOL, full IQ, verbal IQ and performance IQ improved compared with pretreatment scores."  We don't read anything about before-and-after tests of memory retention, but we read that "Hemispherectomy is a safe operation for epileptic adults with hemiplegia and serious seizures and seldom leads to severe complications."  We may presume that the people having these operations still preserve almost all their memories, seeing that the loss of much of your memories would certainly be a "severe complication." 
• The paper here ("Retrograde amnesia after traumatic injury of the fronto-temporal cortex") tells us of a man who suffered severe brain damage after falling from a horse. He was in a coma for 6 weeks, and his MRI showed very extensive brain damage in multiple areas. The man was given various tests of how good his acquired memories were preserved. He scored 33 out of 60 on the Famous Faces Test, and 70 out of 100 on the Semantic Knowledge Test.  He was able to remember 8 of 16 objects from his past. He scored 100 on an IQ test. Since the test was done four years after the fall, we don't know how much of this decline was caused by the fall. 
• The paper "The Effect of Early and Late Brain Injury upon Test Scores, and the Nature of Normal Adult Intelligence" is behind a paywall. But from the freely available first page we get the interesting information that after searching for IQ scores recorded about brain surgery, the author found 15 subjects, and found that they had an average post-operative IQ of 108.   The author also found another group of 23 brain surgery patients who had an average post-operative IQ of 107. We are told "in none was there postoperative loss" of IQ.
• The paper "When only the right hemisphere is left: Studies in language and communication" reports on the case of a patient BL of "above normal intelligence" who underwent a left hemispherectomy at age five. Despite lacking the left half of his brain, BL "attended regular elementary and high school and graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree with a double major in business and sociology," he "played the baritone horn in a band," and worked "several years as an accountant in international business." The paper reports BL scoring normally on most of the cognitive tests he took.
• The paper "Functional consequences of hemispherectomy" gives us in Table 1 before-and-after IQ scores for 12 children who had half of their brains surgically removed. The worst result was a decline in IQ of 11 points, occurring for only one of the subjects. The best result was an increase in IQ of 8 points, which occurred for three different subjects. Overall, there was more of an increase in IQs than a decrease.  
• The paper "Long-term outcome of hemispheric surgery at different ages in 61 epilepsy patients" examines the IQ effects of removing half of a brain.  Near the bottom of Table 2 we are told that out of 55 patients, only 5 experienced post-surgical "intellectual deterioration," with 50 categorized as "not worse" in regard to "intellectual deterioration." 21 of these 55 patients are called "better" in regard to "intellectual improvement," and 34 are called "not better."  We read, "More than 80% appeared improved or unchanged in intelligence following surgery." We don't hear much specifics on memory, but we get the claim that these "remove half the brain" operations have "low risk of adverse cognitive effects." 
• In 1994 Simon Lewis was in his car when it was struck by a van driving at 75 miles per hour. The crash killed Lewis' wife, and “destroyed a third of his right hemisphere” according to this press account. Lewis remained in coma for 31 days, and then awoke. Now, many years later, according to the press account, “he actually has an IQ as high as the one he had before the crash.” In 1997, according to the press account, Lewis had an IQ of 151, which is 50% higher than the average IQ of 100. How could someone be so smart with such heavy brain damage, if our brains are really the source of our minds?  
• 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" by Vining and others, 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. " We are told "language recovers after removal of the dysfunctional left hemisphere," and the authors speculate about why it is they saw "intellectual improvement in these children after removal of half of the cortex." The authors state, "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." The final statement is very important. Although the authors do not give us the results of exact tests documenting a preservation of memory, the statement I just quoted suggests they observed a preservation of episodic and factual/conceptual memory after half of the brain was removed. 
• The paper "Cognitive Impairment 3 Months After Moderate and Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: A Prospective Follow-Up Study" gives us the result of cognitive tests on people who had brain injuries as the result of events such as falls and traffic accidents.  We have some tables that are hard to read. In the Discussion section we read that after moderate Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), "most patients had a normal neuropsychological assessment," with no more than 1 score much below normal (or, to put it more technically, no more than 1 score below 1.5 standard deviates below the norm).  We read that "even after severe [brain] injury, normal performances were found in one third of patients." The authors say, "This was unexpected." We are told that the average total IQ score of 35 subjects with moderate traumatic brain injury was an above-average score of 109, and the average total IQ score of 26 subjects with severe traumatic brain injury was an above-average score of 103. There is a reason to suspect that some subjects may deliberately perform poorly in such tests. Some of the subjects (such as those injured in a crash) may have pending law suits, and may think that good performance in cognitive tests may reduce their chance of being rewarded lots of money in a law suit. 
• At the page here, we read an account of a girl who had the left half of the brain removed in a hemispherectomy operation, to try to stop severe seizures. We hear of a successful operation. We are told, "In addition to the seizures, Rehab also struggled with being able to remember things before her surgery." In the next sentence we hear one of the girl's parents saying, "Her memory was so poor, but now she remembers everything."  This is the opposite of what you would expect under the "brains make minds" hypothesis. 
• The paper "Neuropsychological functioning during the year following severe traumatic brain injury" studied cognitive functioning in 65 subjects who had severe brain damage, mostly after road traffic crashes. The patients were rated with a level of impairment of "mild" or "severe" on various measures, based on tests 6 months after the injury and 1 year after. Fewer than half of the subjects were rated as having "severe" impairment in memory performance tests taken at the 1-year mark. Only 9% of the subjects were rated as having "severe" impairment in one test of executive function at the 1-year mark, with a minority rated as having "severe" impairment in another test executive function at the 1-year mark. One test of attention at the 1-year mark result showed only 8% with a severe impairment, and another test of attention at the 1-year mark result showed only 28% with a severe impairment. There is a reason to suspect that some subjects may deliberately perform poorly in such tests. Some of the subjects (such as those injured in a traffic accident) may have pending law suits, and may think that good performance in cognitive tests may reduce their chance of being rewarded lots of money in a law suit. Moreover, we must also wonder whether the scientists selecting the subjects had a bias in looking for subjects with particularly bad memory problems. The average IQ of the brain-damaged subjects was 93, and we don't know whether this below-average result was caused by brain injury.  There is reason to suspect that the set of average people suffering from traffic accident brain damage may be slightly below average in IQ, given that higher IQ might tend to avoid such accidents. 
• The paper "Association of Traumatic Brain Injury With Dementia and Memory Decline in Older Adults in the United States" used a very large sample of 9,794 patients who had an assessment of traumatic brain injury.  The study says, "There was no significant relation between history of TBI [traumatic brain injury] with LOC [loss of consciousness] and memory score or memory decline." We read this: "In a nationally representative prospective cohort of older adults free of dementia at baseline, we did not find evidence for any long-term associations between history of TBI [traumatic brain injury] with LOC [loss of consciousness]  (of unknown frequency and severity) and risk of dementia over 14 years of follow-up. " We read that "similarly, decline in memory performance did not differ between participants with or without history of TBI with LOC." The authors state, "our findings showing no association between TBI history with LOC and dementia are consistent with the results of several other recent studies looking at dementia, AD [Alzheimer's Disease], or AD biomarkers or neuropathology." 
• The paper "Working Memory after Traumatic Brain
  Injury in Children" tested working memory in eighty children with mild or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The paper has nice easy-to-read graphs comparing the performance of the brain-injured with controls, and the first two of the graphs show no appreciable difference in performance in two working memory tests, even when comparing the severe cases with control (uninjured cases).  
• The paper "Central executive system impairment in traumatic brain injury" is one that does not give us a random sample of patients with traumatic brain injury, because the paper tells us this about its 64 patients: "Patients were selected for participating in the study if they complained of lack of attention, poor
  memory or loss of efficiency in everyday life." Despite such a selection bias, Table III of the paper tells us that the majority of the subjects had "normal performance" in long-term memory acquisition, long-term memory storage, long-term memory delayed recall, sustained attention and short-term memory, with an average of about 60% of the subjects being normal in such areas.  
• At the University of Chicago page here, we read, "Nordli recalled a patient whose IQ rose to 100, a normal intellect, from 80 before hemispherectomy." The patient seemed to get much smarter after they took out half of the brain. 
• The very interesting paper "Preserved Cognition After Right Hemispherectomy" gives us extensive performance tests for a woman who had almost all of her right brain removed after a severe stroke at age 29. We have a very good visual showing that her performance on a wide variety of cognitive tests is average or slightly below average. 

A 2020 paper gives us an indication of the appalling failure of neuroscientists and doctors to properly test for losses of pre-surgical episodic memories and pre-surgical learning in people who had hemispherectomy operations. We read this:

"Only four studies have investigated memory functioning prior to and following hemispherectomy surgery. It is worth noting that all used short-term memory tasks, typically involving immediate repetition or recognition and did not test for more challenging aspects of memory involving recall or recognition over longer delays."

The authors of a 2017 paper tell us something similar. Referring to hemispherectomy operations in which half of the brain is removed, it says this:

" Physicians have long wondered about the surprising finding that one can lead a normal life with only one hemisphere....

The discrepancy between cerebral and cognitive functioning in these cases is strikingly highlighted by the fact that most patients, even adults, do not seem to lose their long-term memory such as episodic (autobiographic) memories. Even so, this puzzle, and possible explanatory models for this retention of long-term memory, is only rarely

discussed in the medical literature dealing with hemispherectomy. Although memory features are sometimes assessed by using the Wechsler Memory Scale (e.g., Loddenkemper et al., 2004), we were unable to find a single peer-reviewed publication in which the peculiar retention of the patient's autobiographic memory was explicitly addressed. That said, this remarkable phenomenon was at least casually mentioned by authors such as Dandy (1933) and Bell and Karnosh (1949), who stated that their patient's memory seemed unimpaired after hemispherectomy. Similarly, Vining et al. (1997) were surprised by the apparent retention of memory after the removal of the left or the right hemisphere of their patients. Dorman (1991) described the extraordinary case of a subject who was able to perform brilliant calendar calculations, although his left hemisphere had been removed several years before."

Despite this appalling failure to properly test whether episodic memories and learned information are preserved after removing half of a brain, several of the studies quoted above make statements strongly suggesting that such memories are preserved after removal of half a brain, contrary to the dogma that memories are stored in brains. And when studies such as the ones above tell us that there are usually no major cognitive effects of removing half of a brain, we can regard this as being a rather clear indication that episodic memories and learned information are well-preserved after removal of half of a brain, as any major loss of such  episodic memories and learned information would be a severe cognitive effect that should be reported. 

The quote above refers to Dandy. Here is the basis of the reference. The case of Dandy's patients are reported in the American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Jul., 1934), pages 500-503. We read this: 

"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 removed 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." How could the memory of patients be "unimpaired for immediate and remote events" if memories are stored in brains?

The quote above also refers to the Vining paper I quote from above. The quote also refers to Bell and Karnosh, who in 1949 referred to 4 operations they had done, stating, "In all cases the relative freedom from severe physical handicap and gross mental defect after removal of almost half the cerebrum was striking" (pages 285-286). That is not a quote anyone would make if patients had lost their episodic or learned memories. 

All in all, the results discussed above are consistent with the idea that the human brain is not the storage place of human memories and is not the source of the human mind.  The results are not the results we would get if brains stored human memories and brains produced minds. 

Postscript: In the article here, we read of a doctor who has performed hundreds of hemispherectomy operations.  We get this quote: 

" 'I've had hemispherectomy patients go to college, get married, have children, have a family, and be cognitively completely normal with one side of the brain,' Bingaman said. 'How that happens? We don't understand it.' "