Scientists have long realized that people only use a fraction of their brains. It must be a tiny fraction. Now it seems you can remove a full 50% of your brain and nobody, including you, would even notice the effects. It might even make you smarter.

Scientific American reports that anatomical hemispherectomy -- the removal of an entire hemisphere of the brain -- does not significantly impact function or personality and even improves academic performance. The procedure, usually done on children between the ages of five and ten years old, is a last-ditch but effective treatment for severe and disabling seizures. Neurosurgeons have performed the operation on children as young as three months old. To the surprise of mostly everyone, these children grow normally and often do better in school once their seizures are gone.

Now this doesn't mean that you should run out and have half of your brain removed. The downside to this is that you lose use of the hand and vision opposite the hemisphere that was removed. But given the brain's plasticity-particularly in younger patients, many children who've had anatomical hemispherectomies grow up with little discernible impediments.
Considering the good that comes out of it, that's not half bad.

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