I s your brain really necessary? This seems like a very strange question. Surely I must have a brain, otherwise how would I exist? This is the sort of question you’d expect to see answered in a YouTube video with someone making a model of an empty head and then pranking a friend. But try googling the question now and you’ll be surprised. The first hit on YouTube is a remarkable documentary first broadcast in 1982: www.tinyurl.com/y9sej97p. To be fair, it takes a bit of patience to watch it because it is partly in Dutch, but stick with it because there is enough English in it to get a good understanding and also some great images.
The focus of this video, and also an article published in the prestigious journal Science (Lewin 1980), was on the work of John Lorber. Lorber was professor of paediatrics at Sheffield University and worked at the children’s hospital in the city. He specialised in the treatment of spina bifida (a condition where an individual’s neural tube doesn’t develop or close properly). The title for the article and the television documentary came from a tongue-in-cheek conference presentation to his colleagues. Lorber is quoted as saying:
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