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Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book is Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Buy it here.
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Category: Neuroscience
Posted on: June 29, 2006 10:15 AM, by Jonah Lehrer
Did you know that we can thrive with only half a brain? Weird. The New Yorker has a wonderful article documenting the lives of patients who live through these hemispherectomies. The strangest thing is that no one knows how they do it:
When I asked the surgeons how it's possible for people with half a brain to live, let alone have a life, each of them spoke about plasticity, flexibility, redundancy, and potential, and then they smiled and said the same thing: "We don't really know."
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Comments
Ironically, you can also live comfortably with one testicle.
Posted by: wholesomedick | June 30, 2006 2:04 AM