Image: NASA

My son has been watching a BBC series on the incredible nature of the human brain. He has a personal interest in the subject and discussion is inevitable. The more he learns, the more excited he has become about the unfathomable potential of that least understood of organs. Although many things have changed since his brain injury, he is, he assures me, still blessed with residual awesomeness.

This is no mere boast… he has a point. Though damaged, his brain seems capable of bypassing damage in a number of different ways, either finding new mechanisms to replace the unrepairable or finding new routes for the messages transmitted. Drawing upon one illustration given in the documentary, my son explained that the brain could be likened to a city where, if one road was destroyed, another could be found… a very basic example. Extending it, he suggested that the economy…