OT: losing memories (was Re: How many of you are Extreme Programmers?)

[Erik Max Francis]

Max M wrote:

> If only 10% of the brain is used, why don't we hear:
> 
> "Well he was shot in the head, but the bullet only went through the
> 90%
> of the brain that he doesn't use. So no sweat mate."

In all seriousness, there are cases of severe brain injury (volume wise)
which result in surprisingly little actual impairment of abilities. 
There's obviously the Phineas Gage case (who, after having been involved
in a railroad construction accident had a very large piece of metal fire
through his brain, destroying most of the left frontal part of his
brain) retained most of his mental acuities but had some emotional
behaviorial changes).  More dramatically, there was a recent case (I saw
it on either Nova or Scientific American Frontiers; the latter sounds
more likely) where a young man (whose name I don't know, I could dig it
up) had lost literally more half the volume of his brain (as in, the
shape of his head was quite clearly abnormal due to the lack of skull
and brain tissue) due to some sort of severe trauma and showed very
little sign of significant impairment.

The human brain is really an amazing organ.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, USA / 37 20 N 121 53 W / &tSftDotIotE
/  \ The actor is not quite a human being -- but then, who is?
\__/ George Sanders
    Bosskey.net: Unreal Tournament 2003 / http://www.bosskey.net/ut2k3/
 A personal guide to Unreal Tournament 2003.