Strange Case Of A Man With No Brain
By James Donahue
An odd twist of research into the human brain was sparked some years ago at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, after a campus doctor treating a student for a minor ailment discovered that his patient had no brain.
As the story goes, the doctor noticed the student’s head was a little larger than normal, and he referred the man to the late Professor John Lorber for further examination. When examined by CAT-scan, it was discovered that this man, a mathematics student with an IQ of 126, had virtually no brain at all.
Instead of two hemispheres filling the cranial cavity, some 4.5 centimeters deep, this student had less than one millimeter of cerebral tissue covering the top of his spinal column. His head was expanded because the student was suffering from hydrocephalus. That means the cerebrospinal fluid, instead of circulating around the brain and entering the bloodstream, became dammed up inside the skull.
Doctors say this condition is usually fatal during the first months of childhood, and if the individual survives, he or she is usually seriously handicapped. What was strange about this case was that the man was living a perfectly normal life, and graduated from college with an honors degree in mathematics.
The discovery led Professor Lorber to a study of the brain in which he projected the question, do humans need their brains at all? A better question might have been, do humans use any of their brains? Also if we did learn to turn on the full capacity of our brains, what more could we achieve in the course of our lives?
It apparently did not occur to either Lorber or other professors of the universities’ neurology department to ask the important second question.
This, of course, leads us directly to a thesis that the human race has been misdirected for thousands of years into not bothering to evolve intellectually and spiritually. But if true, why has this happened? Could it be the result of a learned behavior perhaps caused by the intervention by false religious belief systems?
Example of these religious villains has been Christianity, where followers live blissfully on "faith" in a magical invisible external god and angelic beings that surround them to guide them blindly through life. Followers accept the story that when their existence ends, if they follow the rules, they will be rewarded with eternity in a beautiful kingdom called Heaven.
Could it be that his belief system has made humans lazy and unwilling to work to develop both spiritual and mental capabilities?
There is a fear factor also included to assure that the Christian agenda is followed faithfully. It contains a threat that failure to submit to the spirit of the Jesus figure is a sin that condemns the individual to eternal damnation in a place called Hell. This clinker in the religious system creates a fear-based life style that paralyzes humans into being totally unwilling to listen to any arguments contrary to what they are taught from childhood to believe.
It should be no surprise, then, that a man with no brain at all can fit perfectly well into the social structure created around us. It suggests that in spite of the fact that most humans are created with magnificent bicameral brains, few of us ever learn to really use them. We thus appear to be living with a fantastic tool in our skull that remains turned off and shut down throughout our wasted lives.
When an occasional "genius" emerges from our midst, showing IQ's of 140 to 160, we regard this as a rare occurrence. A few of these "genius" types like the late Albert Einstein or Harvard professor Stephen Hawking make such a name for themselves they are honored for their achievements.
Unfortunately, society tends to make it difficult for smarter people to rise above the masses. Students in public schools, for example, ridicule and degrade the so-called "nerds" that show mental aptitude above that of their peers. This often forces these brighter children to submit to the demands of the society in which they exist, all for the sake of belonging and being accepted.
Is this to be the conclusion we face when confronted by a living and successful human who lacks any more of a brain than that of the household cat?
By James Donahue
An odd twist of research into the human brain was sparked some years ago at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, after a campus doctor treating a student for a minor ailment discovered that his patient had no brain.
As the story goes, the doctor noticed the student’s head was a little larger than normal, and he referred the man to the late Professor John Lorber for further examination. When examined by CAT-scan, it was discovered that this man, a mathematics student with an IQ of 126, had virtually no brain at all.
Instead of two hemispheres filling the cranial cavity, some 4.5 centimeters deep, this student had less than one millimeter of cerebral tissue covering the top of his spinal column. His head was expanded because the student was suffering from hydrocephalus. That means the cerebrospinal fluid, instead of circulating around the brain and entering the bloodstream, became dammed up inside the skull.
Doctors say this condition is usually fatal during the first months of childhood, and if the individual survives, he or she is usually seriously handicapped. What was strange about this case was that the man was living a perfectly normal life, and graduated from college with an honors degree in mathematics.
The discovery led Professor Lorber to a study of the brain in which he projected the question, do humans need their brains at all? A better question might have been, do humans use any of their brains? Also if we did learn to turn on the full capacity of our brains, what more could we achieve in the course of our lives?
It apparently did not occur to either Lorber or other professors of the universities’ neurology department to ask the important second question.
This, of course, leads us directly to a thesis that the human race has been misdirected for thousands of years into not bothering to evolve intellectually and spiritually. But if true, why has this happened? Could it be the result of a learned behavior perhaps caused by the intervention by false religious belief systems?
Example of these religious villains has been Christianity, where followers live blissfully on "faith" in a magical invisible external god and angelic beings that surround them to guide them blindly through life. Followers accept the story that when their existence ends, if they follow the rules, they will be rewarded with eternity in a beautiful kingdom called Heaven.
Could it be that his belief system has made humans lazy and unwilling to work to develop both spiritual and mental capabilities?
There is a fear factor also included to assure that the Christian agenda is followed faithfully. It contains a threat that failure to submit to the spirit of the Jesus figure is a sin that condemns the individual to eternal damnation in a place called Hell. This clinker in the religious system creates a fear-based life style that paralyzes humans into being totally unwilling to listen to any arguments contrary to what they are taught from childhood to believe.
It should be no surprise, then, that a man with no brain at all can fit perfectly well into the social structure created around us. It suggests that in spite of the fact that most humans are created with magnificent bicameral brains, few of us ever learn to really use them. We thus appear to be living with a fantastic tool in our skull that remains turned off and shut down throughout our wasted lives.
When an occasional "genius" emerges from our midst, showing IQ's of 140 to 160, we regard this as a rare occurrence. A few of these "genius" types like the late Albert Einstein or Harvard professor Stephen Hawking make such a name for themselves they are honored for their achievements.
Unfortunately, society tends to make it difficult for smarter people to rise above the masses. Students in public schools, for example, ridicule and degrade the so-called "nerds" that show mental aptitude above that of their peers. This often forces these brighter children to submit to the demands of the society in which they exist, all for the sake of belonging and being accepted.
Is this to be the conclusion we face when confronted by a living and successful human who lacks any more of a brain than that of the household cat?