He "Retained All His Faculties" Despite Losing the Left Half of His Brain

One of the very great investigation failures of today's psychologists and neuroscientists is their tendency to only search scientific papers when writing scientific papers. The fact is that there are huge additional sources of information providing very important cases of medical case histories. Those include newspapers and magazines. It is not hard to search for medical case histories documented in newspapers. For example, the free Chronicling America site allows you to search through more than 100 years of American newspapers. You can use the site by using the link below:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/

 Below is one of the very interesting cases I get when using the phrase "brain gone." We read about how Guy Morrison "retained all his faculties with half his brain gone." 

You can read the news account using this link:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn86069021/1908-12-04/ed-1/?sp=3&&r=0.125,0.083,0.648,0.31,0

The article tells us of a man who had a hunting accident which left him without a left half of his brain. But we are told that he "retained all his faculties." Later another shooting accident killed him. At the end of the story, we read this speculation: "The fact that he retained all his faculties with half his brain gone, the doctors say, was due to the fact that he must have been using the right lobe exclusively before his first accident." The speculation makes no sense. Nobody with two brain halves would be using only one of those halves. 

The case history above is quite compatible with my claim that the brain is not the source of the human mind. The case is not compatible with typical claims of neuroscientist literature, such as claims that speech arises from the left side of the brain. 

To read about many other cases in which people suffered little after losing the left half of their brain, read my series of posts here. 

A Neurosurgeon's Case for the Soul Is Good, But Could Have Been Much Better

The year 2025 book The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon's Case for the Existence of the Soul by Michael Egnor and Denyse O' Leary is a book that covers many cases that have been discussed on this site since the year 2018. On page 10 Egnor says this:

"As a busy neurosurgeon who has performed over seven thousand brain operations, a medical school professor who has taught young medical school students and aspiring neurosurgeons for forty years, and as a researcher who has applied the rigorous methods of science to discoveries about how the brain works, I have come to see that the human soul is real and that human beings are not mere machines made of meat."

On pages 5-6 Egnor says this:

"I saw many patients with brain damage, whether from birth, bullets, blood clots or tumors. And yet their minds -- their ability to think and reason and believe and desire -- didn't seem as damaged as their brains."

On page 6 he describes a woman who had a brain tumor in her left frontal lobe. He says this:

"During the surgery, I spoke with her continuously as I was quietly removing most of her left frontal lobe. She maintained a perfectly normal conversation throughout the surgery."

On pages 16 to 17 Egnor recalls performing his first split-brain operation. This is an operation in which surgeons sever the corpus callosum, a bundle of fibers that connect the left half of the brain with the right half of the brain. The radical operation is sometimes done to stop very bad seizures resistant to drug treatment. Egnor recalls that his patient named Sam seemed normal after the operation:

"His vision was normal, and so was his speech. In fact, the only thing different about Sam....was that he was no longer having major seizures. And he certainly seemed like a single, unified person....He told me repeatedly that his inner experiences were just the same as before the surgery."

On page 17 Egnor says this:

"Since I operated on Sam, I've cared for a number of patients who had split-brain surgery. Like other neurosurgeons, I found no evidence, either from ordinary clinical examination or events in their lives, that indicates their minds were split, even though their brains were."  

On pages 36-37 Egnor recalls his surgery on a boy named Charles who had a severe head injury. Egnor removed half of the boy's cerebellum, a part of the brain involved in muscular activity. Egnor says that four weeks after the operation "I could find no neurological defect at all." He says, "His cognition, speech and motor skills were like that of any other four-year-old, even though he was missing half of his cerebellum." Many years later Egnor learned that Charles was in the NCAA "playing basketball at a high level." Egnor says on page 37, "Neurosurgeons routinely remove large parts of the cerebellum to treat strokes and tumors, and most patients retain normal coordination."

On pages 46-47 Egnor tells of a patient named Katie. We see a brain scan picture showing most of the child's brain missing. In an article Egnor  says Katie "had a third of the brain that her sister had," her fraternal twin. In the article Egnor tells us that Katie "sat and talked and walked earlier than her sister," "made the honor roll," and "will soon graduate high school."

On page 48 mentions a patient named Maria who had only two-thirds of her brain, but who "finished her Master's Degree in English literature." On the same page he mentions a Jesse who had a brain that was half full of water. He says Jesse "became a normal happy middle schooler." On the same page he mentions that 25 percent of those born with no corpus callosum (the nerve fibers connecting the two hemispheres of the brain) show no symptoms. He references the paper "Structural neuroplastic responses preserve functional connectivity and neurobehavioural outcomes in children born without corpus callosum" which you can read here. That paper tells us that one child born without a corpus callosum had an IQ of 126, far above average. 

On pages 49-50 Egnor tells us that a Chinese woman who had lived a normal life was found by a brain scan to have no cerebellum. We read that a paper making a search of the medical literature found nine cases of people born without a cerebellum, one of which was completely normal, and two of which were mentally normal. 

Later Egnor begins to discuss near-death experiences. On page 100 he cites a case of a nine-year-old boy named Eddie who had a near-death experience, and reported seeing his sister Teresa in heaven. The boy was told that Teresa was actually at college. But it was then discovered that Teresa had died in a car accident shortly before Eddie's experience. 

Whenever discussing accounts such as these, it is important to track down the original account. Egnor quoted a paper by Bruce Greyson (a very interesting paper discussed at length in my 2014 post here entitled They Seemed to Know of Deaths They Should Not Have Known Of"). But Greyson is not the original source of this account. The original source is pages 44 to 45 of the 1995 book "Children of the Light: The startling and inspiring truth about children's near-death experiences and how they illumine the beyond" by Brad Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger.  Below are those pages:

The source of the account is identified two pages earlier as "Doctor K. M. Dale, who practiced medicine for many years in the Pittsburgh area." The boy is identified as Eddie Cuomo. 

Egnor and O'Leary make a good case for the soul, and a good case against the claim that the brain is the source of the human mind. But their case could have been much stronger. Oddly, they have almost completely failed to discuss the topic of human memory. A deep dive into that topic could have led to very many other strong reasons for believing in a human soul, such as the failure of neuroscientists to ever discover by microscopic examination any evidence of learned information in the brain, the failure of neuroscientists to advance any credible theory of how a brain could store memories, a failure of neuroscientists to present any credible theory explaining the wonder of instant human learning, the failure of neuroscientists to explain the lifelong preservation of memories, and the failure of neuroscientists to present any credible theory explaining the wonder of instant human recall of correct detailed answers when someone is asked a question. Egnor and O'Leary also fail to discuss the very important topic of brain physical shortfalls: all the physical limitations of human brains (such as unreliable synaptic transmission and the short lifetimes of synapses and synaptic proteins) that rule out claims that brains are the source of human minds and the storage place of human memories.  Egnor and O'Leary also fail to discuss many things that today's scientists generally fail to study, but which provide strong additional evidence for a human soul: things such as apparition sightings, deathbed visions, and the strong evidence for clairvoyance and ESP.  So while Egnor and O'Leary's case for a human soul is good, it is much less strong than it could have been. 

He Lost a Tenth of His Brain, But Still Had Above Average Intelligence

One of the very great investigation failures of today's psychologists and neuroscientists is their tendency to only search scientific papers when writing scientific papers. The fact is that there are huge additional sources of information providing very important medical case histories. Those include newspapers and magazines. It is not hard to search for medical case histories documented in newspapers. For example, the free Chronicling America site allows you to search through more than 100 years of American newspapers. You can use the site by using the link below:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/

 Below is one of the very interesting cases I get when using the phrase "brain gone." In the 1927 news account, we read of a boy (Alfonso Bedra) who lost five ounces of his brain. The average ten-year-old boy has a brain with a weight of about 40 to 50 ounces. We read that the despite this large loss of brain tissue, the boy had above average intelligence. You can read the story here. 

Use the link here to read other post of mine describing cases of people who retained above-average intelligence despite losing very large parts of their brain.

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)."

She "Seemed Entirely Undamaged in Mental Capacity" After They Removed Half Her Brain

 Below is a news report that appeared in the November 10, 1933 edition of a newspaper called the Sedalia Democrat, a news report you can read here. 

In the story above we read this:

"Dr. Gardner removed the entire right half of the brain. The patient recognized friends immediately on recovering from  the anesthetic and seemed entirely undamaged in mental capacity."

The headline refers to Dr. Dandy.  The case of Dandy's patients is 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 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." 

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

Here is a quote from the newspaper article you can read here:

"Three seven-year-old chil­dren. Albert has had half his dam­aged brain removed by surgeons. Charley has millions of dead cells in his brain but has responded to nonsurgical treatment. Billy has a nor­mal brain. Yet all three are equal in intelligence."

So Albert who had half his brain removed (probably to treat epilepsy) had an intelligence equal to Billy who had a normal brain. That's not what we would expect under "brains make minds" assumptions. 

In the AP newspaper article here, we read, "One man had the right front lobe of his brain removed, con­scious and answering questions all the while, with one needle in his face below the cheek bone, and three in the top side of his right foot."

Below we read a report by a doctor (Logan Clendening) who attended a conference of the American Medical Association. In the bottom right corner, we hear he heard about a young girl who had "one-half of her brain removed for epilepsy." We are not told about any problem that the girl suffered, but merely told that "she is able to conduct her life and affairs with considerable success." 

Below is a similar newspaper account you can read here. We read of "mental faculties entirely unimpaired," even though the patient (John Daly) had "the larger part of his brain removed by an operation."

A Bullet to Their Brains Caused Little Mind Damage

 One of the very great investigation failures of today's psychologists and neuroscientists is their tendency to only search scientific papers when writing scientific papers. The fact is that there are huge additional sources of information providing very important cases of medical case histories. Those include newspapers and magazines. It is not hard to search for medical case histories documented in newspapers. For example, the free Chronicling America site allows you to search through more than 100 years of American newspapers. You can use the site by using the link below:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/

 Below are some of the very interesting cases I get on that site when using the search phrase "brain gone." An account you can read here is entitled "Part of Brain Gone, But Galloway Lives."  We read of a man who tried to kill himself, by shooting himself in the head. We hear that he seemed to recover well, and "talks rationally" despite the fact that he destroyed part of his brain. We read nothing mentioning any mental damage. 

Another account similar to the one above is the account below, which you can read here. We read of a man who lost four ounces of his brain (about 8 percent) after shooting himself in the head. Despite the bad brain damage, after shooting himself the man learned how to play checkers (which he had not learned before), and also apparently played checkers very well. Soon after the shooting he died. 

A similar account is below. We read of a young boy who is of an "unusually bright mind" even though he was accidentally shot through the head.

A similar account is below, from 1910. We read of a boy who "carries on an intelligent conversation" even though he has lost "five square inches" of his brain. We may presume the "five square inches" means "five cubic inches," which is about 7% of a boy's brain. 

A similar account is below. In the 1908 account we read of a man who was shot through the head, losing about 4 ounces of brain, about 6% of the brain. But after this bad brain damage, he is "appparently...in possession of all his mental faculties."

The article below appeared in the New York Times. We read of a person who was left with half a brain after he shot himself in the head, with the wound being treated by surgeons removing additional brain tissue. The patient is described as "rational." We are told "it was believed a few days ago that he would recover completely." No one would have said such a thing unless the subject had relatively little damage to mind and memory. 

The 1912 article below (which you can read here) discusses the case of a soldier who was left with about half a brain, after he was accidentally shot by another soldier, and after surgeons operated on him. We are told that after five weeks the man was "about again as usual." We hear of damage to his ability to read and write, which was restored after five months of training. Other than that, we read no mention of any damage to his memory or intellect.  The claim that he was "about again as usual" five weeks after losing half of his brain suggests there was no very great damage to his mind or memory or speaking ability. Damage to reading and writing skills could be caused by damage to perceptual and muscle ability, and does not necessarily involve any memory loss. 

Her Mind Was "Much Improved" After They Removed a Huge Part of Her Brain

 One of the very great investigation failures of today's psychologists and neuroscientists is their tendency to only search scientific papers when writing scientific papers. The fact is that there are huge additional sources of information providing very important cases of medical case histories. Those include newspapers and magazines. It is not hard to search for medical case histories documented in newspapers. For example, the free Chronicling America site allows you to search through more than 100 years of American newspapers. You can use the site by using the link below:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/

Another good site for this purpose is the University of California site here:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/

 Below is one of the very interesting cases I get when using the phrase "brain gone." We get a 1935 account of a woman whose mind was "much improved" after "an operation that removed nearly the entire 'thinking portion' of her brain." We can presume this "thinking portion" of her brain was the prefrontal cortex or the frontal lobes, as those were presumed at 1935 to be the "thinking portion" of the brain.  You can read the account here. We read that the woman's intelligence was average despite this loss of so much of her brain. We read that the woman's power of concentration sharply improved after this removal of most of the supposed "thinking portion" of her brain. The whole story is the opposite of what we would expect under "brains make minds" assumptions. 

Read my post here for a discussion of other cases in which intelligence reportedly increased after much brain tissue was removed. 

At the University of California site, using the search phrase "brain gone," I get the interesting account below, which you can read here. We read that after a bad accident, sixty grams was removed from the frontal lobe of the brain of Martin Strabowski. This was about 12 percent of his frontal lobes, because the frontal lobes of the human brain weigh about 500 grams. Despite the removal of this big chunk of the part of the brain claimed to be responsible for thought, the removal apparently caused no damage, because the story tells us that Martin's mind "fully recovered."

She Had Above-Average Intelligence With Only About 15% of Her Brain

 The failure of neuroscientists to adequately study minds is a very severe failure. You can get a PhD in neuroscience while making only a perfunctory study of human minds.  An examination of the courses required to get a Master's Degree in neuroscience will typically show that only one or two courses in psychology are required. Doing a neuroscience PhD dissertation typically involves some highly specialized research on some very narrow topic, research that does not require much in the way of additional study of human minds and the mental capabilities and mental experiences of humans.  The topic of human minds and human mental experiences is a topic of oceanic depth, requiring years of deep study for someone to get a good grasp of the full range of human mental states, human mental capabilities and human mental experiences. Very strangely, a typical neuroscientist is someone who will feel qualified to pontificate about what causes mental experiences, mental states and mental capabilities, even though he typically has done little to very deeply study mental experiences, mental states and mental capabilities.

Ask a neuroscientist to describe the best examples of high capacity and high accuracy in human memory recall, and you will be likely to get a shrug of the shoulders, or an answer that is wrong.  Ask a neuroscientist to describe the best examples of human performance in tests of extrasensory perception (ESP), and you will be likely to get a shrug of the shoulders, or an answer that is wrong. Ask a neuroscientist to describe the best examples of humans learning or memorizing things very quickly, and you will be likely to get an answer showing no study of such a topic. Ask a neuroscientist to describe the fastest examples of human calculation involving no use of any objects such as pencil, paper or blackboards, and you will likely get an answer that fails to describe the most impressive cases. 

Rather amazingly, it also seems true that most or very many neuroscientists are not very deep and very thorough scholars of the topic of human brains. A typical neuroscientist may be able to tell you in very great detail about some particular aspects 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. Ask that neuroscientist how quickly the average brain signal travels, and you will typically get an answer that is wrong, an answer failing to take into account all of the relevant factors such as the very strong slowing factor of cumulative synaptic delays, and the very strong slowing factor of the relatively slow transmission speed of dendrites. 

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? 

Luckily there are some web sites that contain very many of the most relevant examples of such medical case histories that are relevant to the question of whether the human mind is the source of the mind and whether the human mind is the storage place of human memories. One of those sites is the very site you are reading.  In my series of posts labeled "High Mental Function Despite Large Brain Damage," which you can read here, I describe many of the most important case histories that are  relevant to the question of whether the human mind is the source of the mind. Now let me provide some more such cases. 

The first case involves a case of hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus is a disease in which a brain has excessive watery fluid. In cases of hydrocephalus a brain may end up in a state that is mostly watery fluid. The brain scan of someone with severe hydrocephalus might look something like the schematic visual below. The black part in the middle is a watery fluid that has basically no neurons. 

The case of Sharon Parker is described in a 2003 news story entitled "Success of Nurse Who Lost Most of Her Brain." You can read the story here. We read this:

"When she was a baby, Sharon Parker's parents were told a rare and incurable condition meant she would not reach her fifth birthday.

She was left with only 15 per cent of her brain and there was little hope she could lead a normal life. But she defied the experts to become an astonishing success story.

Now 39, Mrs Parker is a nurse with a high IQ who is happily married with three children....She was diagnosed with congenital hydrocephalus - water on the brain - when she was nine months old. Doctors drained the liquid from her skull with a tube but her brain mass had been compacted in the outer edges of her skull, leaving a gaping hole in the middle....As a 16-year-old, she passed eight O-Levels and her IQ was later found to be 113, putting her in the top 20 per cent of the population.

The hydrocephalus has left her with a below-average short-term memory so she carries a notebook to remind herself to do things. However, tests have found that her long-term memory is better than average.

After leaving school, Mrs Parker decided to become a nurse and soon after starting her training, she met her future husband David, a builder who is now 45. The couple were married three years later and have three children...

She often participates in studies, including one recently in Ohio when she was examined by one of the world's leading experts on brain mass. Graham Teesdale, Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Glasgow, said she demonstrated how adaptable the brain can be even when it is incomplete. 'She shows how the brain has an immense capacity to cope and adapt,' he said. 'Some people with the same acute problem experience problems in thought processes but others are able to function totally normally.' "

A materialist who believes that the brain is the source of the mind may wince after reading about this case history. But there is another hydrocephalus case that may be even better as evidence that brains do not make minds. Coincidentally, this case also involves someone named Parker, but someone other than Sharon Parker: a male with almost no brain. 

We read about the case on the page here. 

"Parker was born on September 9, 2008, with hydrocephalus, or excess fluid on the brain. Parker’s parents received the diagnosis at 20 weeks in the pregnancy that there was a blockage between the third and fourth ventricles of Parker’s brain, which was preventing the cerebrospinal fluid from draining into the body. As a result, the fluid would build up and compress Parker’s brain matter against his skull, making it almost non-existent, threatening to severely hinder Parker’s early neurological development. At birth, the average baby has 90–95% brain matter and 5–10% fluid within the cranial cavity; Parker had over 98% fluid and less than 2% brain matter, amounting to a mere 8 millimeters of brain matter at birth."

Later on the same page we read this

"He attends a special-needs kindergarten class, where he continues to thrive and demonstrate an inexplicable intellect and remarkable social skills.

Parker is truly a miracle – the child who once was thought may never walk or talk now plays, dances, sings, never stops talking (having never met a stranger) and hopes to one day become a sportscaster. Parker has far exceeded every expectation of his doctors and also adds being named the 2015 Ace All-Star to his long list of remarkable achievements."

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.' "

A Neuroscientist Mentions "Bad Brain but Good Mind" Cases, But Fails to Put Two and Two Together

 An article this year co-authored by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga is entitled "Is Your Brain Really Necessary for Consciousness?" The article begins by discussing some important case histories of people with very badly damaged brains but good minds.  We read references to these cases:

• The 72-year-old woman with "asymptomatic hydrocephalus."  The woman's case is reported in the paper "Asymptomatic Hydrocephalus" which you can read here. We see brain scan photos showing the brain of a woman whose brain tissue was almost entirely replaced by watery fluid. But the woman is described as "asymptomatic," a word meaning "without symptoms."  We read this: "The patient lived independently...Her developmental history was unremarkable; she had finished high school and had worked in various retail jobs. When our team examined her, she was alert and oriented, and did not report headache, visual disturbance or cognitive changes; her neurologic examination (including a Mini-Mental State Examination) was normal." The MMSE examination referred to is a test of cognitive ability often used to detect dementia.  You can only get a "normal" score on such an exam by doing most of a series of mental tasks such as counting backwards by 7 and correctly naming the current date and remembering three random words you were asked to speak five minutes ago. 
• The bilingual guitar-player with near-normal language skills but little brain tissue. The title of the paper (which can be read here) was "Volumetric MRI Analysis of a Case of Severe Ventriculomegaly."  We have brain scan visuals showing that almost all of the 60-year-old man's brain was gone, with only a thin sheet remaining. But nonetheless the man's verbal IQ was a near-normal 88 (100 is average).  He could also speak two languages, and we are told he "plays guitar well."
• The French civil servant. The case is discussed here in a Reuters 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.” It is as if the authors tried to make these facts be noticed by as few as possible, by giving their story the dullest title they could. 

Below  is Figure 1 from the paper here describing the first case discussed above We see the "almost gone" brain of a woman who scored "normal" on a standard cognitive test (the MMSE). Photos B and C are closeups of particular brain portions. Photos A, D and E show the full brain from different angles. The black part are cavities filled with watery fluid, where the brain was hollowed out. 

At first when reading the beginning of this article I foolishly had a fleeting glimmer of hope that maybe Michael Gazzaniga had been able to put two and two together after analyzing such cases. But such a hope was quickly dashed. In the rest of the article Gazzaniga gave us the silliest sophistry in response to such cases. 

What we got from Gazzaniga was the most bungling example of the fallacy of equivocation.  The fallacy of equivocation is what goes on when you use some reasoning that depends on a switch of the definition of a word, a switch that goes unannounced. Here is an example of reasoning guilty of the fallacy of equivocation:

Premise 1: It is not disputed by those in the music industry that Taylor Swift is a star. 

Premise 2: A star is defined by astronomers as a giant self-luminous sphere of gases such as hydrogen and helium. 

Conclusion: Therefore Taylor Swift is a giant self-luminous sphere of gases such as hydrogen and helium. 

Of course, this reasoning is nonsensical, and depends on an unannounced switch in the definition of the word "star" between Premise 1 and Premise 2. (In English the word "star" is defined both as a major entertainment person such as a well-known singer or well-known actor, and also an astronomical body such as the sun.)

It is just such equivocation nonsense that Gazzaniga engages in. He attempts to explain cases like the ones in the bullet list above, by arguing that we should not be surprised that brains can work well when their volume is low, because music can be good even when played at volumes that are low.  Gazzaniga states this:

"The volume of music is not the sole determinant of whether a song is good. The volume – the overall amount of sound participating at any given time—is one dimension of music, but there are many other components: the rhythm (low frequency waves which entrain the entire song), the harmony (higher frequency waves which structure the sound), the melody (highest frequency waves which tell the story). Music is the elaborate interplay between waves of sound, or vibration, in small, medium, and large (fast, medium, and slow), which braid together in a way that seems beautiful.

Similarly, the 'volume' of brains is not the sole determinant of whether a brain is good. The volume —the overall amount of brain participating at any given time—is one dimension of brain activity, but there are many other components: the circadian rhythms (low frequency waves which entrain us to the Sun and seasons), the central pattern generators (higher frequency waves which structure our heartbeat and our breathing), the real-time brain activity (highest frequency waves which allow us to analyze the world and tell the story)."

Notice the goofy equivocation word trick going on. Without any announcement of the change in definition, the definition of "volume" has been changed in the second paragraph. In the first paragraph "volume" means "the loudness level." In the second paragraph a switch is made to an entirely different definition of "volume," a definition of "the amount of space occupied by something."  The fact that the quality of music does not depend on the volume that music is played has no relevance to explaining cases of mostly-vanished brains combined with good minds. While giving this goofy equivocation fallacy reasoning, Gazzaniga goes off the rails by claiming that mere brain waves "allow us to analyze the world." The erroneous standard story of neuroscientists is that brains think, not that brain waves think. 

Gazzaniga continues this equivocation nonsense in three later paragraphs I won't quote, again making unannounced switches of the definition of the word "volume," trying to make it sound as if the volume at which music is played has some relevance to the anomaly that minds can function very well when there is very little volume of brain tissue. The two topics have no relevance to each other. 

Gazzaniga tries fruitlessly to beef up his glaringly fallacious reasoning about music and brains and minds, by making various false assertions. He claims that the brain is physically arranged like a symphony orchestra. That is not true, because viewed from a balcony a symphony orchestra is like a flat plane rather than something with a height as great as the width, and the left side of a symphony orchestra is not the mirror image of the right side. Gazzaniga makes this mostly untrue claim: "Neuroscientists have determined which part of the brain does what—we can point to a spot on a brain scan and tell you who sits there and what part they play—language is here, vision is there, memory is in that section." To the contrary, neuroscientists have failed to identify any part of the brain where memories are stored, and microscopic examination of brain tissue has never discovered any learned knowledge anywhere in the brain. No one has ever found a single word of human language by microscopically examining brain tissue. 

Gazzaniga has failed to pay attention to the case histories he has mentioned. The case history of the 72-year-old woman with almost no brain tissue (because of the replacement of brain tissue by a watery fluid) is a case of a woman who got a "normal" score on the Mini-Mental State Examination, an examination requiring good language skills for you to get a "normal" score. That case is inconsistent with the localization-of-function claims Gazzaniga is making. 

In his "memory is in that section" claim, Gazzaniga is probably appealing to the myth that the hippocampus is necessary for memory (a myth that collapses upon careful study, as shown in my post here).  It is interesting that Gazzaniga's own words later in the article help to discredit that myth. Referring to the case histories he mentioned (discussed in my bullet list above), he says, " Our friends above proved you can lead full and functional lives with 'only' a cortex." But that statement contradicts claims that the hippocampus is necessary for memory, because the hippocampus is not part of the cortex, and not near the cortex. You cannot live a "full and functional" life without having memory. 

In the remainder of the article, we have more music-analogy nonsense from Gazzaniga. Gazzaniga starts using the word "consciousness" to describe the human mind, using the trick I call shadow-speaking, which is when one misleadingly describes something to make it look like a mere shadow of what it is. Making one of the sillier statements I have ever heard a neuroscientist make, he states, "Consciousness is not an object—it’s a rhythm." 

Let us consider this word "consciousness."  It is basically the most tiny-sounding word you could possibly use to describe the human mind. According to one very common definition, consciousness merely means awareness.  So consider an ant that is aware there is a bread crumb next to itself. Is that consciousness? It would seem so. Is that awareness? It would seem so.  We see then how ridiculously diminutive the word "consciousness" is.  It is a word so slight-sounding that it can be reasonably used to refer to what goes on for a mere ant.

Is the term "consciousness" an appropriate word to use to describe the human mind? No, it is not.  You are engaging in very bad shadow-speaking if you use the word "consciousness" to describe the human mind. The reason is that human minds are almost infinitely more complex than mere consciousness. 

 The problem of human mentality is the problem of credibly explaining the thirty or forty most interesting types of human mental experiences, human mental characteristics and human mental capabilities. These include things such as these:

• imagination
• self-hood
• abstract idea creation
• appreciation
• memory formation
• moral thinking and moral behavior
• instantaneous memory recall
• instantaneous creation of permanent new memories
• memory persistence for as long as 50 years or more
• emotions
• speaking in a language
• understanding spoken language
• creativity
• insight
• beliefs
• pleasure
• pain
• reading ability
• writing ability
• ordinary awareness of surroundings
• visual perception
• recognition
• auditory perception
• attention
• fascination and interest
• the correct recall of large bodies of sequential information (such as when someone playing Hamlet recalls all his lines correctly)
• eyes-closed visualization
• extrasensory perception (ESP)
• dreaming
• volition
• out-of-body experiences
• apparition sightings 

Explaining these things is a very big and wide problem that we can call the problem of human mentality origination. It is a huge mistake to try to shrink that problem into some million-times smaller problem that you call "the problem of consciousness," and to speak as if it was merely consciousness that needs to be explained. 

Gazzaniga goes "all in" on this silly reductionist shadow-speaking, by first talking as if we had a mere problem of explaining "consciousness," and then further engaging in shadow-speaking by telling us that consciousness is a rhythm.  It's an enormously misleading trick in which Gazzaniga is trying to make the human mind sound like almost nothing. 

Deceptive shadow-speaking trick #1: Keep describing the human mind (something a million times more complex than mere consciousness) as "consciousness."

Deceptive shadow-speaking trick #2: Describe consciousness as a mere rhythm.

Engaging in equivocation, misleading statements and shadow-speaking, Gazzaniga  has failed to learn the main lesson taught by such neuroscience case histories he has discussed, cases of people with little brain tissue  or very damaged brains but normal or near-normal minds. For every case he discussed, there are more than ten other cases just as dramatic, and you can read about them in my post here, describing dozens of such cases. Gazzaniga seems like someone who just cannot put two and two together on the topic of whether brains make minds. He spent quite a few years studying cases of split-brain patients, patients without the nerve fibers connecting the two hemispheres of the brain. As I discuss at length here, such people with two separated brain halves retained a single unified mind, contrary to what we would expect under "brains make minds" assumptions.  Gazzaniga failed to put two and two together by realizing the very obvious implication of such cases of split-brain patients with a single unified mind and cases of people with little brain tissue but high mental abilities: the implication that the brain is not the source of the human mind.