Bigger Brains Not Always Smarter

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

This foxnews story was about the most informative and interesting article I have read recently. It is about the human brain and the argument that the bigger the brain does not always mean the smarter the person. This argument is being carried out in the magazine called Current Biology by a variety of researchers on the subject of brains in comparison to the size of brains in animals.


I’ve always thought that the bigger the brain the more intelligent a person could be. But this article suggests that even though there are more neurons in the bigger brain that the only advantage that has been found is possibly memory might be better and not a persons thinking ability. How disappointing I think to be compared as one university professor did in this statement to a computer saying, "To use a computer analogy, bigger brains might in many cases be bigger hard drives, not necessarily better processors." "In bigger brains we often don't find more complexity, just an endless repetition of the same neural circuits over and over. This might add detail to remembered images or sounds, but not add any degree of complexity."


I don’t really have any opinions on this article as it is written very informative about the human brain and does not seem to have any bias written into it. I’m still wondering why some research says our brain is shrinking though, as this is not explained at all. I found it very interesting to think that insects have brains and are capable of thinking and even counting. I always thought that they were just hard wired for instinct and not thought processes. I’m wondering how the researchers also completed this study to learn that honeybees could count. The article does explain that maybe certain parts of a brain are the reason some animals are smarter than others. I guess that could account for the fact that some dogs are smart and other breeds like the cocker spaniel is quite dumb. I think the same could be for people even though our brains weigh about 3 pounds according to the article, some people might use their very tiny amount of neurons very well indeed and some may never use any neurons for thinking at all. This research also helps explain to me how you can develop a brain by exercising some neurons no matter what the size of brain. I had read something in the past about babies and how you could stimulate their brains and make them smarter by exposing them to things like tasting pickle juice in order to help nerve cells react and grow.


I really don’t care about brain size at all but this article was an interesting read and I will probably not try and strike up a conversation with a honeybee or anything. If I ever see a whale I’ll be thinking he only has a big brain to make his huge body work even though as a child I thought Moby Dick was extremely clever and must have been using every bit of his brain to get at that ship captain.