"YOU ONLY USE 10% OF YOUR BRAIN.," TO SOME ITS NOT TRUE.
You know the irritating myth that humans can only harness 10% of our brains?
Well, a French man is the exception that proves the rule. Sort of.
Experiencing weakness in his leg, the 44-year-old went to the hospital.
Dr. Gregory House, M.D was (possibly) consulted, told everyone it wasn’t lupus, then told one of his lackeys to scan the chap’s brain:
Good news: your leg is fine.
OK, so Hugh Laurie and his American accent weren’t involved, but the rest is true.
The man had something called non-communicating hydrocephalus — an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. Scientists believe the large chunk of his brain isn’t missing, but has been compressed into the thin layer you can see in the images.
You’d think the owner of said skull (and contents) would be slightly inconvenienced, but no, the man was (reasonably) healthy and functional.
He had an IQ of 84, was married with children, and worked as a civil servant.
Doctors were shocked — they’d never tested a civil servant with such a high IQ.
This raises a lot of questions about consciousness. How was the man able to retain a sense of self?
Cognitive psychologist Axel Cleeremans came up with “The Radical Plasticity Thesis,” hypothesising that consciousness is something the brain learns, rather than being born with: The Radical Plasticity Thesis: How the Brain Learns to be Conscious
Either way, his wife’s insults that he had nothing between his ears must have hit harder after his diagnosis.