my boss is one of them.

I remember reading once about a teen-age girl, a successful and very outwardly normal high school student, who had a similar condition. Apparently, this dysfunction began in childhood and the brain simply transferred activities to those parts of the cerebral cortex which were still present. The details were sketchy, and there was no information as to exactly how extensive the damage was, or if the midbrain and lymbic system which handle autonomic functions were also affected.

The question arises, if many of those anatomical structures are not really necessary, why do we have them in the first place?