• Question: Can a person survive with only half a brain? If so, why?

    Asked by anon-249483 to Xiaohan on 19 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Xiaohan Li

      Xiaohan Li answered on 19 Mar 2020:

      Hi,
      This is a brilliant question! However I don’t know the accurate answer from a scientific point of view (I wish I could be a neurologist to answer this question!). I can only guess that the rare cases where some people survive with half of a brain is that different parts of the brain may or may not be essential for minimum requirement for living…

Comments

  • Photo: Sophie

    Sophie commented on :

    I don’t know about a person surviving with half a brain. But birds and dolphins (and some more) can ‘shut down’ half of their brain at a time. While that half of the brain is shut down, it basically means that that part of their brain is sleeping but the other half stays awake so they can stay alive and watch for predators and so on