You don't need too many brains to be a French civil servant

[WhatIsAUserName]

http://www.reuters.com/article/scien...0?feedType=RSS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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, French researchers reported on Thursday.

Scans of the 44-year-old man's brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue.

"He was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant," Dr. Lionel Feuillet and colleagues at the Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille wrote in a letter to the Lancet medical journal.

The man went to a hospital after he had mild weakness in his left leg. When Feuillet's staff took his medical history, they learned he had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away hydrocephalus -- water on the brain -- as an infant.

The shunt was removed when he was 14.

So the researchers did a computed tomography (CT) scan and another type of scan called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They were astonished to see "massive enlargement" of the lateral ventricles -- usually tiny chambers that hold the cerebrospinal fluid that cushions the brain.

Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled, either.

"What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life," commented Dr. Max Muenke, a pediatric brain defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute.

"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," added Muenke, who was not involved in the case.

Fascinating. Maybe this can be used as an argument against those who think that "unlocking" the unused 90% of one's brain will be a gateway toward superhuman abilities. BTW, check out the MRI scan. I mean, you see this massive empty space, and then a handful of grayish lumps which happen to be the man's brains. I wonder if the rest of his brain decayed, or was never there in the first place though. Even more surprising is that his IQ isn't that of one with mental retardation.

[Sagat]

While I also find the article impressive, I grow tired of the myth that we only use 10% of our brain. We may understand only 10 %, but we use 100% of it.

[Manhattan_Project_2000]

While I also find the article impressive, I grow tired of the myth that we only use 10% of our brain. We may understand only 10 %, but we use 100% of it.

Actually, this folk lore is more of a misquote. People use an average of 10% at any one time, but they use much more then 10 percent of it total.

[Lunafreya Fleuret]

O.o... Holy crap.

[Eris]

Actually, this folk lore is more of a misquote. People use an average of 10% at any one time, but they use much more then 10 percent of it total.

Some people think that you can unlock your brain so you use 100% of it 100% of the time, becoming smarter. Though, that would be like using 100% of your computer 100% of the time, the printer spewing papers, the speakers playing 2175 songs simultaneously, every program installed running, etc.

In other words, it would make you dumber; not smarter.

[Azel]

Using a portion of your intelligence and a certain portion of your brain for a specific task is alot more beneficial to you. If you used one hundred percent of your brain one hundred percent of the time, biologically your mind couldn't function even remotely properly if functioning at all. There are processes in the brain that need to take place in order for a continuation of that process. Like a synapse signaling non-neuronal cells and thus allowing the neurons of the central nervous system to form interconnected neural circuits. If your brain is running one hundred percent there would be so many other processes working while this rather common process was happening, your brain, I would think, would basically overheat. Fry, to where you have no control over your perceptions or thoughts.