You must have heard about people with half brains like literally half brains, but they are living completely normal life. These were individuals in whome hemispherotomy was performed due to severe treatment resistant epilepsy. There has been a case reported in which a 24 year old women was completely lacking her cerebellum, young child lost right occipital lobe and a part of right frontal lobe due to surgery but was still able to live and see like a normal child, another most striking case of a man from France suffering from hydrocephalus missing 90% of his brain and living a normal life. Such cases depict plasticity and degenracy of brain which essentially refers to flexibility of brain where different regions can compensate for each other and can take up different activities. This means brain doesn’t always follow rules as to which region is always supposed to take up which activity. We might call some standard diagrams as ideal brain but there are numerous cases reported where individuals lacking big regions of brain are actually living quite normal life. Degeneracy help us survive not just because parts of our brain could perform certain functions but because we could perform same function even in absence of those regions. Degeneracy, complex property of brain is followed by many systems in nature. Today we might not know the exact reason and mechanism of this but degenracy sure is the reason for nature to select human race to continue as it promises adaptability and innovation at cellular levels.
This leads us to question what exactly is the full potential of a human brain?
MBH/PS