You may have heard the legend Humans use only 10 % of their brains. This statement is clearly incorrect – most people use all their brains, all the time. But for people who survived stroke, painful brain injuries, or brain excision, things become less clear. In fact, many of these cases indicate that the person does not really do it Need 100 % of their brain to live, or even to work normally.
So how much brain Do you really need to survive?
Neuroscientists are still achieving this question, and there will be no black and white answer. The quality of a person who practices anyone after suffering from the brain damage – or when he lacks a part of his brain completely – can depend on many factors, such as the brain region that was affected, how and why the brain area was affected, and how old it was when they were exposed to brain damage. But how many of your mind can live without it, and it may surprise you normally.
Normal life with an abnormal brain
Take A case for exampleA woman who goes with her first letters to protect her privacy. When I entered EG to conduct a related medical examination, I discovered that she was fully lacked Temporal lobeA large part of the brain is located near the ear and is responsible for auditory treatment, memory and language. Doctors believe that anomaly stems from a bag (a liquid -filled bag) that has evolved early in her childhood and causes brain damage.
Despite the loss of a large part of its brain, the EG was living completely a regular life. While the left temporal lobe includes some decisive language centers for the brain, they can Read naturallyHe had a better vocabulary than average, and even spoke Russian as a second language.
Evelina FedorenkoAnd associate professor of brain and knowledge sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that EG’s brain has renewed itself to take into account the lost area. While the tasks related to the language will illuminate the left temporal lobe in people with typical brains, the language related to the language has moved to the right side of the EG brain.
Related to: Can we recover memories from the brain of a dead person?
Live with half a brain
The brain is very flexible so that some people can live without half. Dr. William BingamanThe nerve surgeon in Cleveland Clinic performed more than 500 in the hemisphere, where one side of the brain is separated in a process. The hemisphere is generally performed for severe cases of epilepsy that does not respond to other treatments.
In this procedure, surgeons separate the nerve fibers that connect an aspect of the brain to the other and the rest of the body, which prevents this side of the brain functional. The separate hemisphere is left in place because its removal requires a more serious surgery with more possible complications.
The recovery process can be intense, but many patients continue to restore the job. One of the Bengam patients, Mora LeibHe had 50 seizures per day as a baby. Soon she became a candidate to remove the hemisphere, and after undergoing surgery at the age of 9 months, she returned to the skills of the new baby.
Mora had to re -learn how to smile and wrap, and the progress was slow. But with the help of the therapists, she was able to develop her speech and engine skills. Now a teenager, Mora is still talking slowly treating the language, but it is clear that the remaining half of her brain has taken functions of the lost side.
Bengaman said although surgery is clear, but doctors still do not understand how their patients are well recovered.
Bingaman said: “I have suffered from patients of removing the ball in the globe, marrying, giving birth to children, and they have a family, and to be completely natural with one side of the brain,” said Bingaman. “How does that happen? We don’t understand it.”
Parts of the brain that you cannot live without
There are parts of the brain that do not touch Bingaman. For example, the brain’s stem, mulch, or basal nodes are not separated. These are deep structures within the brain responsible for the basic functions of breathing, heart rate, sensory treatment, and engine control, respectively.
These structures are necessary to survive.
“The strokes in the brain will kill people most of the time,” said Vidorinko. Strokes or injuries that people recover from occurring in the outer layer of the brain, which are called dandruff. A person’s age can play a big role in the brain damage.
“In general, the more damaged in the brain, the better,” she said. In the hemisphere it has better results in Children under two years of ageFor example. One of the exceptions from this rule is the damage to the cerebellum, a region of the brain necessary for movement, balance and coordination. She said that the cerebral damage in children tends to lead to more severe problems, as it grows quickly during childhood and plays a major role in many stages of development.
However, there were a few documented cases of people who lack the cerebellum. A woman entered in her twenties before learning I was born without brainsAlthough she faced problems with both speech and movement. It is actually possible that more people have more stereotypes than scientists realize; Many brain abnormalities are caught only during unrelated imaging tests.
With all these cases in mind, Fedorenko said that it is time to expand “error tapes” when it comes to thinking about the quality of work with an athuma brain.
“There is a lot of knowledge that we lack about the minds that seem completely different from the typical brain, but it can maintain human perception fine,” said Vidorinko.
Brain Competition: Test your knowledge of the most complex organs in the body