Not a Halloween/Frankenstein themed post.
Nearly twenty years ago now I spent some time with the acclaimed Vietnam war photographer Tim Page. He told me how an exploding shell sent a piece of shrapnel through his head and tore out about a third of his brain. Afterwards, he couldn’t walk, talk, write, and had to re-learn all his functions. But re-learn he did, over time, and the neural mechanism for each activity shifted to a new part of the brain, a recognised effect. When I met him, you couldn’t tell he’d been so devastatingly injured.
That discussion was part of an ongoing fascination I’ve had with consciousness studies. It’s a science that’s been through one or two revolutions over the years. For instance, one of those things that everyone knows is that brain cells can’t be regenerated. That’s based on a piece of 1928 research which was completely turned on its head seventy years later.
Thus, this: