How much brain

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Moog
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30 Dec 2010, 2:14 am

can be removed from a human without killing them?

I'm doing research for a story. I'm not good at phrasing things for google.

I'm interested in serious answers, jokes, guesses, poems or drawings on this subject.

Cheers!

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Kaybee
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30 Dec 2010, 2:31 am

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auntblabby
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30 Dec 2010, 2:38 am

Moog wrote:

can be removed from a human without killing them?

when i worked at hospital, there was an admission of a soldier who in battle had the top half of his head traumatically amputated by a malfunctioning piece of ordnance, and he had little more than a brain stem keeping him alive. no ears/nose/mouth/eyes/thinking brain. he was a vegetable. the poor man was in a living death. what an awful way to end up. but he was alive, for whatever that was worth.
there are rare cases of incurably epileptic individuals who have submitted to surgical hemispherectomies, in which one hemisphere of the malfunctioning brain was removed. they lost major body functions [like speech] and were mostly paralyzed but they were still alive.

Last edited by auntblabby on 30 Dec 2010, 4:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

Moog
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30 Dec 2010, 2:55 am

auntblabby wrote:

Moog wrote:

can be removed from a human without killing them?

when i worked at hospital, there was an admission of a soldier who in battle had the top half of his head traumatically amputated by a malfunctioning piece of ordinance, and he had little more than a brain stem keeping him alive. no ears/nose/mouth/eyes/thinking brain. he was a vegetable. the poor man was in a living death. what an awful way to end up. but he was alive, for whatever that was worth.
there are rare cases of incurably epileptic individuals who have submitted to surgical hemispherectomies, in which one hemisphere of the malfunctioning brain was removed. they lost major body functions [like speech] and were mostly paralyzed but they were still alive.

Hmm, that's grisly, but just the kind of thing I'm interested in. I'm thinking that theoretically, a person could be reduced to just a brainstem, and a bit of the inner brain (reptile bit; I don't know the technical term). They wouldn't recognizably be human, but they could survive in that state temporarily?

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Moog
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30 Dec 2010, 3:02 am

Kaybee wrote:

So funny

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Kaybee
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30 Dec 2010, 3:18 am

Moog wrote:

So funny

Ever helpful, I am.

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Ahaseurus2000
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30 Dec 2010, 4:36 am

Inner brain is Limbic System?

If you removed just the pre-frontal cortex, would you have just an animal? there are cases of people with pre-frontal cortex injury who lost ability to manage impulses and urges...

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auntblabby
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30 Dec 2010, 4:48 am

Ahaseurus2000 wrote:

Inner brain is Limbic System? If you removed just the pre-frontal cortex, would you have just an animal? there are cases of people with pre-frontal cortex injury who lost ability to manage impulses and urges...

google phinneas gage.

Laz
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30 Dec 2010, 5:20 am

I worked with people who had Microcephilacy.

Some of them barely had any brain tissue or very tiny brains at the least.

They don't even look human to be blunt. Though they had enough awareness and senses to feel pain and pleasure. So in some respects there was still the possibility for having a reasonable quality of life.

Most of them it was a miracle they had made it to the age of 18 to begin with.

Ahaseurus2000
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01 Jan 2011, 12:52 am

auntblabby wrote:

Ahaseurus2000 wrote:

Inner brain is Limbic System? If you removed just the pre-frontal cortex, would you have just an animal? there are cases of people with pre-frontal cortex injury who lost ability to manage impulses and urges...

google phinneas gage.

Fascinating. Makes one wonder about lateralisation of brain function and redundancy in the neurological functioning. How was Gage's personality affected? Left Frontal Lobe affected... Was he less rational/intellectual and more creative/dreamy?

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auntblabby
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01 Jan 2011, 1:06 am

Ahaseurus2000 wrote:

the short-and-sweet of it was that he became radically unlike the former phinneas t. gage, who was an abstemious sort. he became mr. hyde to his previous dr. jeckle, a boorish sociopathic neer-do-well who lost his ability to plan for his own best self-interest. a tragedy.

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