In watching a little of the NHL play-off game last evening, and seeing a quite devastating hit that led to hospitalization of the targeted player, it reminds us of the precious nature of our head! Yes, our brain resides there. Our brain is not very reparable. It is adaptable over time, but when severely injured, it can be a long time, or forever, before it heals with functional restoration. Our consciousness about the vulnerability of the head and the brain inside the skull has been raised in recent years. A renewed focus on traumatic brain injury rendered by accidents and by “contact” sports has made us realize that single or especially multiple blows to the head can have acute, cumulative and long-term consequences for the recipient of such events.
It makes me wonder why we did not see evolution of the brain as a distributed organ, such that one blow to the head does not cause irreparable, unfixable damage to our vital reigning organ of thought, perception, language, memory and emotion. Given that all of the exquisite processes of neurological and psychological competence are housed in our head, any given blow can take out several critical related and unrelated functions and capabilities. It is a little late now in the evolutionary progression for a distributed brain, but it would have been beneficial if there was a reserve house elsewhere than the head. We are gifted reserve in most organ functions of the body, needing only about 1/3 of lung or kidney function to maintain respiratory or urinary competence, needing only 80% of left ventricular function to maintain a good circulation, and so forth. But the intricacies of neuronal connections and networks leave the brain at risk of multi-functional loss for which there is little reserve.
I vote for a distributive brain!