If this much of the brain is not completely necessary for its function then there are all kinds of questions raised.<p>What is the minimum viable human brain? If our brains are indeed highly-redundant scale-free networks, would it be possible to eliminate a precisely targeted 99% of neurons without significant degradation? Can we simulate 1% of a brain on today's supercomputers? How about emulating an existing brain? Do animals have the raw hardware to match or exceed human intelligence? Can we download human 'software' into modified animals instead of machines? Are we already being simulated?<p>This would keep me up at night too.
This reminds me of dropout regularization where you improve a neural network by removing random neurons from the neural network.<p>See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropout_(neural_networks)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropout_(neural_networks)</a>
and <a href="https://youtu.be/u4alGiomYP4?t=33m53s" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/u4alGiomYP4?t=33m53s</a>
Hemispherectomy patients do not decrease in IQ as much as one might assume. Typically less than 15 points. Some have no change and others even a slight improvement.<p>While not directly comparable, as these are brains with massive problems, you don't remove half just for the fun of it, it's still a testament to the resilience and redundancy of the organ.
“If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side”<p>The way I see it, the Human Brain increases its efficiency (Assuming the 10% Brain Efficiency Myth is true) in such cases, to be able to do all the work that otherwise an entire Brian would have done.
I'm curious what would happen if we were to somehow gradually disable parts of the brain, ensuring all functions of the Human Body are still intact, and then suddenly bring all of it back.
There are a few recorded examples of this. Peter Watts had quite a good blog post on them a while back:<p><a href="http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116" rel="nofollow">http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116</a><p>About 50% of the examples have above average IQ (he says).
I’ve heard that most processing in the brain happens near the surface, while the central brain regions are more connective. Is that accurate and could it be a factor here? If he’s got otherwise mostly normal brain function, my gut reaction is that maybe those connections were just displaced or formed in other ways.
I'm skeptical of these images. I can't find any follow-up scans on Lorber's patient, despite such an unbelievable finding. Unfortunately John Lorber has passed away (1996), making this patient impossible to track down.<p>Interestingly someone took it upon themselves to reclaim these images in 2012...<p><a href="http://retractionwatch.com/2016/09/08/authors-didnt-generate-key-brain-images-probe-finds/" rel="nofollow">http://retractionwatch.com/2016/09/08/authors-didnt-generate...</a><p>Only to get retracted in 2016.
I love the idea that <i>one of us</i> might be an example of a high performing "tiny brain".<p>What if it's you? Or me? How would we know without a brain scan? Would it matter? Would it change the way you think about yourself and stop you trying?<p>Probably best to never find out!
Another thread on HN points to article [1] that starts:<p><i>For decades now, I have been haunted by the grainy, black-and-white x-ray of a human skull. [...] The image hails from a 1980 [...]</i><p>Anyway to actually trace back that patient? Do we know who he is (I would like to read about his story and daily life; nothing creepy).<p>Do we know if he/she is still alive??<p>[1] <a href="http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116" rel="nofollow">http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116</a>