Is your brain really necessary?
SEPTEMBER 30, 2019 (updated on October 17, 2023)
Table of contents
In January 2013, several conferences organized by the Mind and Life Institute [1] took place in India, in the presence of the Dalai Lama. One of them [2] saw the intervention of Geshe Dadul Namgyal, an important scholar in the field of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the author of several books on Buddhism and philosophy. He reported that states of consciousness have been observed in people with brain dysfunctions, including anencephaly and hydrocephalus.
Newborns affected by anencephaly usually have several handicaps: deafness, blindness, inability to feel pain… They are generally non-viable if the brain is completely absent. On the other hand, they can live for a few days if it is formed. In this case, it is the presence of the brain stem that ensures respiration and cardiovascular activity.
Brainless consciousness
This was the case for Nickolas Coke, a newborn baby who survived more than three years without the help of any doctor or tube. He even ended up smiling, laughing, showing emotions, and therefore signs of consciousness. How could that be possible if his brain was nonexistent?
Geshe Dadul Namgyal also reported on British neurologist John Lorber’s research on hydrocephalus. It is characterized by excess cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain, resulting in physical and intellectual disabilities in most patients.
However, a significant number of patients seem to escape these functional deficiencies despite an exaggeratedly abnormal brain structure. In 10% of cases, ventricular expansion fills 95% of the skull. Yet half of these patients have an IQ over 100, including a British student with an IQ of 126 who is perfectly adapted socially, although he has virtually no brain. After compiling a lot of data, John Lorber gave a lecture with the skillfully provocative title: « Is Your Brain Really Necessary? » » [3].
Neuroanatomist Adrian Bower, who has taken an interest in his work, points out, however, that « although Lorber’s work does not show that we don’t need a brain, it does show that the brain can function under conditions that we would have thought impossible » [4]. Neither evokes a link with consciousness, but one may still wonder how information is received, processed and restituted in the absence of a large part of the brain?
Dead (or not dead)
Impossible memories?
The case of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) is also worth mentioning. Indeed, many people testified to a state of consciousness even though no brain activity had been recorded. Several of these testimonies were compiled by cardiologist Pim Van Lommel in his book « Dead or not dead ? » [5], published in 2012. Although he has followed a classical training in his discipline, this NDE specialist has nevertheless, over the years, let his scientific curiosity prevail over his academic knowledge. And this to the point of considering that consciousness is not a product of the brain.
He explains that when the heart stops, all brain activity – that is, all activity of the structures that are supposed to produce consciousness – ceases after 15 seconds. However, some people can testify to an experience of consciousness, although the memories related to that experience cannot be stored in their brain. For example, they may sometimes report conversations that they theoretically could not have heard, but which they should not be able to remember either.
What's the brain for?
This is what makes Pim Van Lommel say that the brain does not produce consciousness:
“I think the brain plays a facilitating role. It allows us to experience our awakened consciousness. But it is not produced by it, just as the millions of sites on the web are not produced by your computer but received and transmitted by it.
You can compare your brain to a television camera, which encodes images and sounds into electromagnetic information that can then be decoded. Coding and decoding, that’s what the brain does. To experience awakened consciousness, we need a functioning brain.
But consciousness is not localized in the brain, it has a non-local aspect, i.e. outside of space and time. It is to this conclusion that I have come from the content of the NDEs.”
PIM VAN LOMMEL [6]
Two inspiring testimonials
Two stories also confirm, in their own way, this vision of things. They are unique in that they recount the experiences of brain scientists Jill Bolte Taylor and Eben Alexander. They have been led, each in different circumstances, to question their certainties, including the fact that consciousness is limited to one’s « mental » experience of it. Their view of the relationship between the brain and consciousness, and consequently their view of life, has been radically altered as a result. Their testimony sheds an inspiring light on the nature of consciousness.
What’s more, their experiences are all about love. Jill Bolte Taylor and Eben Alexander have found their own doorway to that feeling. All the more reason for me to share their story on this blog…
Read the story of Jill Bolte Taylor
Read the story of Eben Alexander
Notes & references
[1] The Mind & Life Institute is an American institute whose aim is to promote a reciprocal contribution between Buddhism and science, and in particular to show the neurological effects of meditation.
[2] NAMGYAL Geshe Dadul. (2013, January 19). Neurosciences, neuroplasticité, bouddhisme [Neuroscience, Neuroplasticity, Buddhism], In : Fleurs du dharma, Mind and Life XXVI – Esprit, cerveau et matière, free translation.
[3] LEWIN Roger. (1980, December 12). Is your brain really necessary ? In : Science, VOL. 210, traduction libre, p.1232
[4] Ibid, p.1234
[5] VAN LOMMEL Pim, Mort ou pas ? [Dead or not dead ? ], Les dernières découvertes médicales sur les EMI, Paris : Inter Editions, Collection Nouvelles évidences, 2012.
[6] VAN LOMMEL Pim. (2010, December 23). Conscience et cerveau : le point de vue d’un cardiologue [Consciousness and brain: a cardiologist’s point of view]. In : INREES – Inexploré, free translation
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