This is the hallmark of a robust biological system: political parties can perish in a tragic accident and the society will still run, sometimes with little more than a hiccup to the system. It may be that for every strange clinical case in which brain damage leads to a bizarre change in behavior or perception, there are hundreds of cases in which parts of the brain are damaged with no detectable clinical sign.
David EaglemanHumans have discovered that they cannot stop Death, but at least they can spit in his drink.
David EaglemanThe first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.
David EaglemanWe are made up of an entire parliament of pieces and parts and subsystems. Beyond a collection of local expert systems, we are collections of overlapping, ceaselessly reinvented mechanism, a group of competing factions. The conscious mind fabricates stories to explain the sometimes inexplicable dynamics of the subsystem inside brain. It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems doing what they do best while we overlay stories about choices.
David Eagleman