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From: lonetto@phri.UUCP (Michael Lonetto)
Newsgroups: net.sci
Subject: Re: darwinism
Message-ID: <315@phri.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Jul-85 20:35:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: phri.315
Posted: Mon Jul  8 20:35:56 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 05:44:33 EDT
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Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 32

> > Good points, Sarima.  These persons were given the tomography because
> > they were KNOWN to have suffered accidents either prenatally, at birth,
> > or in early years, that very likely caused brain damage.
> 
> 	This does not exclude the fact that they were able to do
> above average level work with a few percent of their brain cells.
> Suppose all of us were born with 95% of our brain cells damaged, then
> since we would be working at an above average level anyway, how do we
> know that we needed the other 95% of our brain cells ?

I unfortunately missed the TV show in question, but have been exposed to
a little neurobiology.  I believe the key word here is YOUNG.  Many
functions and the connections that allow them are established AFTER 
birth.  The connections in the visual cortex that allow visual acuity
are NOT made in blindfolded or dark raised animals, or for that matter,
in children with cataracts.  It is quite reasonable that normal function
can be established with a much smaller number of brain cells than is
normal.  There is undoubtedly a great deal of redundancy in the normal
brain.  It probably does come in handy, since brain cells don't divide,
but do die off constantly throughout life.  However, since most of us
didn't start out with 5% of our cerebral cortex we would definately notice
the loss of 95% of our brains.  It will be interesting to see how these
people fare as they age.  No mention was made of how old they are now,
does anyone out there know?
-- 
____________________

Michael Lonetto  Public Health Research Institute,
455 1st Ave, NY, NY 10016  
(allegra!phri!lonetto)

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