High mental functioning despite brain injury

Well, the most interesting EM fields for me are the very weak patterned EM fields, where we have for example, plenty of behavioral studies showing effects in animals exposed to weak oscillating magnetic fields, and also Prato et al 2013 showing hyperweak oscillating MF's mediate post traumatic stress like behavior in rodents. But these fields seem far too weak for heating/chemical effects to be responsible for the researchers results. These fields are very weak, it's quite amazing they have any effect on the behavior of animals, some studies have shown effects from fields as low as 1 nanoTesla, that's about 40,000 times weaker than the local geomagnetic field, but most are around 1000 times weaker. One would have thought the effect from such weak fields would have been drowned out by more powerful competing fields.

The results from these studies are a challenge, so researchers are having to consider new mechanisms... a variety have been proposed, but none appear as yet to solve all the issues. The most interesting recent paper I have read suggests that we start considering a mechanism at a more fundamental level, one operating on the magnetic moment of the organism itself.

My only issue is your statement electromagnetic radiation brain activity is not a direct result of brain activity.

A few excerpts from the paper, thought-provoking to all except closed-minded materialists.

Concerning extreme hydrocephalus:

"The most remarkable and well-known case concerns a highly intelligent student of mathematics. ...The aforementioned student of mathematics had a global IQ of 130 and a verbal IQ of 140 at the age of 25, but had “virtually no brain”..."

(a brain scan showed, instead of the normal 4.5-cm thickness of brain tissue between the vesicles and the cortical surface, there was just a thin layer of mantle measuring about a millimeter. His cranium was filled mainly with cerebrospinal fluid.) 

"Still, the student apparently developed normally throughout his childhood. ....his vision was perfect apart from a refraction error. Nevertheless, later studies showed the apparent absence of a visual cortex..."

Concerning memory processing, especially in savants: 

"In this respect, Kim Peek (1951–2009) was most remarkable in that he seemed to possess a perfect memory: he forgot nothing he ever read and remembered complete  melodies, even if he heard them only once. Most remarkably, his brain showed considerable malformations that included a deformed cerebellum, abnormalities of the left hemisphere, and the complete lack of the corpus callosum, as well as the anterior and posterior 
commissures. In addition, much of the skull interior comprised empty areas that were filled with cerebrospinal fluid, as in hydrocephalic subjects. Nevertheless, he memorized more than 12,000 books, apparently verbatim, the contents of which amounted to an encyclopedic knowledge in multiple areas of interest. Typically, he would read a page in eight to ten seconds, and then turn to the next page. He even read two pages of smaller books such as paperbacks simultaneously, using one eye each for each page. Moreover, he had impressive calendar calculating abilities. 

One may wonder about a plausible neural mechanism to explain Peek's ability to remember practically everything."

...............................

"...it remains unknown how the barrier to savant skills can be overcome, especially on a neurophysiological level... How activated circuits of neurons, being under constant input stimuli, can mediate the perfect memorizing of every single piano note heard is still essentially unknown. This is an important issue because, as Treffert noted, no model of brain function, in particular with regard to memory, will be complete until it can account for these remarkable feats. This appraisal is, of course, also valid for memory processing with only one hemisphere (examples given elsewhere in the paper). 

Moreover, it is important to recall that the fundamental question of how biochemical reactions of molecules and electrical activities of neurons are translated into self-conscious experience, including autobiographical memory, intentionality, and volition, is still unsolved."

I really do get tired of hearing the flimsiest reasons remarkable brain functioning despite trauma indicates this is a problem for materialism. Such expression is miraculous because it cannot explain how it is a better explanation.

To be fair, if you’re tired of hearing it, you don’t have to be here. You could just choose not to respond.

One of the keys as to whether this is extraordinary in the hydrocephalus cases will be the accuracy of the estimations of how much brain matter is present, and I'm not sure that these estimates are all that accurate (e.g. http://mymultiplesclerosis.co.uk/ep/shar...ous-brain/).

Lorber's estimates were done back in 1984, and we have better methods now. I looked at the preview of his paper on those estimates, and there is no indication that his method was validated in some way. I tried to find some validation of the use of CT scan measures and I found this from 1979 (http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/jnnp/42/4/345.full.pdf). It indicates that the CT scan is likely to over-estimate, sometimes grossly, the size of the ventricles, which would have led Lorber to substantially under-estimate the amount of brain substance.

I guess we can wait and see whether this makes much of a stir among the readers of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

Linda