Man Lives A Normal Life Despite Missing 90% Of His Brain, Doctors Wonder How

Scientists have discovered a case of a French man who lives a normal life even though he is missing 90 percent of his brain. This led experts to question what it really is that makes humans conscious.

According to iflscience.com, the case was first studied by The Lancet, where doctors presented something that even doctors found hard to explain.

The case revealed that a 44-year-old man, a civil servant, who had lived quite a normal life even if he didn't have a normal sized brain. The French man had himself checked in the hospital after having weakness in his left leg for two weeks. After the doctors took the scans of his brain, they were surprised to find a huge chamber filled with fluid.

A report by Tech Insider said that doctors concluded that the majority of the man's brain was gradually destroyed by the build of fluid in the brain, which they said is a condition known as hydrocephalus. Doctors also said that the man had been diagnosed with the condition as an infant, and was treated with a stent. However, the stent was removed when he was 14 years old and the majority of his brain started to erode since then.

Even though the man doesn't have a lot of brain tissues left, he wasn't mentally disabled. Reports said that he had a low IQ of 75, but was working as a civil servant. He was also married, with two children and had lived a rather healthy life.

Meanwhile, the case study had caused scientists to ask what it really takes to survive having that small of a brain, and also wondered what consciousness really is.

Science Alert reported that researchers in the past have claimed that consciousness may be related to different specific parts of the brain, example the thin sheet of neuron running between brain regions (the claustrum) or the visual cortex. However, if their theories were indeed correct, then the man with 90 percent of his brain missing shouldn't have been conscious.

"Any theory of consciousness has to be able to explain why a person like that, who's missing 90 percent of his neurons, still exhibits normal behavior," Axel Cleeremans, a cognitive psychologist from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, told Quartz.

In that case, consciousness is not solely dependent on one specific region of the brain.

Cleeremans has instead come up with a theory based on the brain learning consciousness repetitively rather than just being born with it. It also simply means that its location can be flexible and learnt by different brain regions.

"Consciousness is the brain's non-conceptual theory about itself, gained through experience - that is learning, interacting with itself, the world, and with other people," he explains.

Cleeremans also explained that although the man's remaining brain was small, the neurons that were left could still generate a theory about themselves meaning that the man was still very much conscious about his actions.