Lost your head? Just grow a new one

Well, obviously you can’t regrow your head and brain, but Planarian flatworms can… and the discovery of the gene that (probably) makes this possible has the media doing their customary pulp-sf extrapolation thing and suggesting (albeit sarcastically in the case of El Reg) that we’ll soon be able to grow ourselves a new bonce By Using Science [via SlashDot].

It has a certain Frankensteinian charm, I’ll admit… but surely it’d be marginally more useful to discover a gene that could regrow the rest of the body from the neck downwards? Or am I just falling into the trap of assuming that the nexus of consciousness (and hence personhood) is located between the ears?