This merely supports my hypothesis that neuron systems are what is needed... you will notice nobody is claiming that there are conscious people with 0% brain matter remaining.
You wrote this:
"We know people can have only 50% of a full brain"
And so the question is how you define a full brain.
Neuron systems are network. It might as well be that a network is needed not the neurons per se.
Read this:
http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116