90% of Your Brain: Difference between revisions

 

* [[Truth in Television]] to an extent; humans can still function (though not to full capacity, obviously) if parts of their brains are removed. Most notably, the practice of lobotomizing criminals was considered a humane alternative to the death penalty for quite some time. Splitting the corpus callosum (the tissue connecting the two hemispheres of the brain) was a common cure for seizures in the 70s (and is still occasionally done in severe enough cases);<ref>Disconnecting the two sides of the brain prevent the seizure from spreading to both hemispheres and limits the severity of the episode.</ref> the side-effects only occur in very specific, usually engineered scenarios, and even then are much preferable to the seizures in the first place. Removing a damaged hemisphere can even result in a significant ''improvement'' in cognitive function.

* One source of the myth itself (of many possible ones) is a series of experiments done on rodents in whch the poor creatures had large parts of their brains burned away but could still run a particular maze. However, all this proves is that memory is distributed in the brain rather than localized; the rodents still lost other functions. Besides, mice aren't men.

* Approximately 90% of cells in the brain are not actually neurons, but glial helper cells that keep the neurons alive and functioning. So only 10% of the cells are used directly; the other 90% are vital to keeping that 10% healthy and alive.{{citation needed}}