How can a brainless person change

In daily life, when people describe a person, they often say that the person has no brain, or they may even say that they have no brain. In fact, this phenomenon is very common. The human brain is a very important organ. It is the supreme commander of the body. If a person has no brain, it will not only leave a bad impression on others, but also affect daily life and work. So how can a person without a brain change?

In the 1980s, British neurologist John Lorder reported cases of people whose brains were virtually empty except for cerebrospinal fluid but who nonetheless led normal lives.

Let us first understand cerebrospinal fluid. Cerebrospinal fluid, also known as cerebrospinal fluid, is a transparent body fluid that fills the subarachnoid space between the skull and the cerebral cortex in the brain. This fluid acts like a shock absorber, ensuring that the brain is not disturbed or damaged by certain substances in the blood in the body.

There is a student in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Sheffield in northern England. He has always had a high IQ and has performed well in all exams. He is deeply loved by his classmates and teachers. Later, during a physical examination, Professor John Lorder, a neurologist at the University of Sheffield, unexpectedly discovered while doing a CT scan on him that this student with a high IQ actually had no brain at all.

Normally the two brain hemispheres fill the cranial cavity and are about 4.5 centimeters thick, but this student had less than 1 millimeter of brain tissue covering the top of the spine. There are other similar examples, such as where the brain should be, there is only body fluid and a thin layer of brain tissue. In fact, these people's brains are only 5% of the normal brain volume.

In pathology, the disease is supposed to be fatal, and even if the patient survives, the patient will be severely disabled. However, the report shows that many of them lead completely normal lives, have families and good jobs, and some are even certified accountants.

If an ordinary person suffers from this disease, he may have a big head for the rest of his life, because hydrocephalus is a disease caused by internal or external obstacles in the production and circulation of cerebrospinal fluid, which increases the amount of cerebrospinal fluid and expands the intracranial volume occupied in normal times, thereby causing a secondary increase in intracranial pressure, just like an inflated balloon.

After investigation, it was found that there are actually some people who have almost no brains but their IQ has reached 100 (the level of normal people) or even higher.

However, similar situations have been discovered repeatedly in the past few years.

In 2007, Wired reported the story of a 44-year-old French brainless man. The French man came to the Mediterranean University in Marseille for medical treatment because of weakness in his left leg. After performing a CT and MRI scan of the patient's brain, the doctors were surprised to find that the patient's ventricles almost filled the entire internal space of the skull, while the actual brain tissue was so thin due to being severely squeezed by the cerebrospinal fluid that it was only as thick as a piece of paper.

What is incredible is that not only did he marry and have children like a normal person, he even worked as a government official and was the father of two children.

How can we live well without a brain?

The key is to understand how the brain can coexist harmoniously with something we generally think is incompatible (hydrocephalus).

Some believe that, over decades of slow change, other parts of the brain have replaced the brain tissue that should have been there and are functioning normally.

Others believe that there is a high degree of functional redundancy in the normal brain, and that a small remnant could represent the missing two hemispheres.

Because only 10% of its original mass, the brain still has about 10 billion brain cells, which are essential for normal human life. We do not have an accurate conclusion about some important parts and functions of the brain, which also shows that our current understanding of the brain is far from enough.