June 06, 2008
The California Paradox
What if the word California completely disappeared from your universe? Yet you still lived there?
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The human brain never ceases to fascinate.
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something-something, Here I come!
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How bizarre. And sad.
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Strangely, in other patients with damage to specific, or even large areas of the brain, such neurological effects are not seen. There are even cases of people with massive areas of the brain filled with nothing but fluid, who lead perfectly normal lives (and yet others with the same problem who are drastically disabled). I shall have to search thru my books, but I believe there was a case of a guy with mostly fluid filled brain, only the outer layers were actual brain tissue, and he was in university, got a degree. So in some cases the brain appears to re-route specific functions to other areas, suggesting that brain tissue is something like holographic storage, where the whole is held in each part, and in others it doesn't. Which is weird.
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I love those fluid-brain stories!
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Reminds me of this heart-breaking story. Spoiler: Tigana is cursed so that people are unable to hear the name if it is spoken, or read it if it is written. Only the original inhabitants of Tigana can hear or see the word, or indeed, remember it.