People often ask me, “Julian, just how much of your brain can you live without?”
But they always say it in kind of a mean way.
Hello people with brains, probably, Julian here for DNews!
Imagine this scenario: the zombies are coming and they want what any zombie wants.
Your brains.
If you had to give up some of your brain to distract them while you make your escape like
a lizard losing its tail, what could you actually afford to chuck at the moaning hoard?
Definitely not the brainstem, that’s for sure.
That little bit at the top of your spine controls your heart, lungs and blood pressure.
Injuries to it are extremely serious.
There is actually a case of a boy who lived for 12 years with nothing but a brainstem.
Trevor Waltrip was born in 2001 with a condition called hydranencephaly.
He was blind and couldn’t speak, had to eat with a feeding tube and have therapists
stimulate his muscles and joints.
But he lived.
He was a rare case, but demonstrates that if you want to be alive, you better at least
have a brain stem.
If you have more brain to work with, losing parts of it aren’t as severe because of
the brain’s ability to rewire itself.
People have lived mostly normal lives with large bits of brain totally absent.
Like a woman in China, who was born without a cerebellum, the little cauliflower looking
bit at the back of your brain that controls voluntary movement.
She started walking and talking late, but still didn’t even know part of her brain
was nonexistent until she was 24 and went into a hospital complaining of nausea and
dizziness.
She’s one of nine people to have lived without a cerebellum... that we know about.
Don’t forget that your brain doesn’t just control your body, it’s also responsible
for who you are as a person.
Take the famous case of Phineas Gage, a railroad worker in 1848 who had a 43 inch long (109.22
cm) iron spike shoot through his skull.
He was using the inch and a quarter wide (3.175 cm) death-javelin to pack dynamite into a
hole because apparently safety wasn’t invented until the 1950s.
When the totally predictable happened, he was left with a hole through his left cheek
and out the top of his head, the tamping iron had bored a hole clear through parts of his
frontal lobe.
He survived, but the accident…
changed him.
He was more impulsive and profane because the part of his brain responsible for executive
functions like planning and response inhibition were suddenly feeling a bit drafty.
He lived for another 11 years but died after a series of seizures.
But these are just bits and pieces.
You want to know just how much of your brain you can do without, right?
You could live a nearly normal life with about half less brain, according to the late John
Freeman, a neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University.
In fact, some people are even better off with half a brain!
An anatomical hemispherectomy, which is exactly what it sounds like, is used in cases where
people suffer from frequent seizures that are not responsive to medication and originate
in one side of the brain.
If left untreated, the seizures could cause damage that spreads to the other side, so
sometimes the best option is to take the hemisphere out entirely and let the void fill with cerebrospinal
fluid.
Usually the procedure is done on children between the ages of 5 and 10, and amazingly
their memory and personality develop normally.
In fact, many even improve academically.
There are downsides: patients lose the use of the hand and visual field opposite of whichever
hemisphere was removed.
The left hemisphere also handles language, so if it’s taken out the right brain has
to take on those functions and patients may have trouble with their speech.
Otherwise though, you’d never know half their head was empty.
Don’t misunderstand me, you can’t just go around banging your head into table corners
and be totally fine.
But if something does happen, at least you know you’re brain’s a pretty amazing thing
and it’s got your back…
Literally…
It’s connected to the spinal cord.
Obviously you’re here because you care about your brain and want to nourish it with interesting
facts.
But how do you nourish it with nourishment?
Julia covers the best way to feed your
brain here.
So, back to that zombie scenario: what part of your brain would you give up to stay alive?
Motor functions, vision, personality?
Let us know in the comments.
Or if you’ve a person whose brain works in an unusual way, we’d love to hear about
that too.
Subscribe for more and I’ll see you next time on DNews.