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Bigger Brains Make Smarter People Study Says
udderly writes "People with bigger brains are smarter according
to a Virginia Commonwealth University industrial and organizational
psychologist, Michael A. McDaniel, Ph.D.
McDaniel, who is a professor in management at
VCU's School of Business. He reviewed 26 previous studies comparing brain size
and intelligence and found that brain volume has a strong correlation to
intelligence. According to McDaniel, 'for all age and sex groups, it
is now very clear that brain volume and intelligence are related.' So, how
big of a hat do you wear?"
If you thought as good about everything as a savant thought about one thing, I believe it would show that with proper organization a well wired smaller mass can be capable of greater predictions of the environment than a larger brain mass.
But considering that we all share the same assembly instructions, apples to apples maybe bigger is better.
Shh.
I know its heresy, but, think about it. Maybe he just more hacked away at his stuff until he got it to "work" than he was actually a genius.
This is my sig.
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....which race has, on average, the biggest brain? Any talk of brain size vs intelligence always leads to this question. It will be interesting to see what kind of conclusions are drawn, and how they will be interpreted by the general public.
Whats neat is that the folding is a fractal structure which when unfolded has a very large surface area vs. it's actual size when folded. So I don't know about more folds implying a more complex wiring pattern, instead providing more neurons to be wired in some way.
Shh.
I was discussing this recent line of discussions about brain size and intelligence. From my recollection the Math department at my school had the highest concentrations of big headed people. There were several I had in my diff eq and analysis lectures that at first glance you would say were borderline hydrocephalic. Obviously they weren't, but they did have some big noggins.
It's interesting you should mention dual cores - the human brain is effectively a collection of specialized brains working together as one machine.
The best example I can think of is vision, and the section of the brain that handles processing that is actually broken down further into motion detection, shape recognition, & color identification, and probably a couple of other items I've forgotten.
There's also hearing, language, emotion, memory, autonomic functions, touch, voluntary motor control... each with a dedicated 'processor'.
What is really interesting is that some minor damage can destroy these functions almost entirely, yet in some rare cases of massive damage, the remainder of the brain successfully picks up the slack - which indicates a certain amount of functional plasticity.
I had thought this correlation was old news, and that the direction of causality was that people who use their brains more develop more ganglia, etc.... Neural plasticity continues throughout one's life. People who don't use their brains experience faster brain shrinkage when their older, putting them at higher risk for dementia. This is why the elderly are advised to do crossword puzzles and whatnot (from the nun and related studies).
What's disturbing is the age at which our brains start to shrink and our cognitive functioning declines. I've done a lot of neuropsych assessment, and the norm tables for the instruments show turning points (depending on what is being measured) as early as age 17, and as late as the late 20s. I believe I remember reading that brain size significantly begins shrinking in the early 30s, and the rate is positively correlated with blood pressure.
Use it or lose it. Avoid salt.
Wasn't Oliver Cromwell's brain something like twice the size of a normal man? Wasn't that info in an article in Scientific American about four months back that said that new studies showed brain size to be irrelevant? Clearly, my pea brain is too small to hold the info, but if someone with a few ounces more grey matter is capable of looking it up...
...had bigger brains: 1200-1700 cm skull capacity (slightly greater than modern humans), which made them too smart for their own good and were driven out of the marketplace by the slightly less smart (modern humans). A quick scan of current news gives ample evidence that the current model of hominidae is successful not for it's intelligence so much as it's predisposition for lying, cheating, killing, and, well, dominating.
Committee for Symmetric Distribution of the Future
Ah, but the dolphins lack a whole layer of cortex, which reduces the data processing capability considerably.
Sharks and bears have smaller brains than humans do. Elephants have larger brains than we do. However they have a MUCH larger body mass. Considering they also have over 50 muscles just in their trunks, it is clear that more of their brains are devoted to controlling their bodies. However, elephants ARE extremely intelligent animals. I used to work at a summer rennaisance festival which included some elephants customers could ride. They knew over 200 voice commands as well as names of 20 or so assorted foods. I've never met any dogs or parrots with that kind of vocabulary.
In general, you can get a good estimate of an animals intelligence from their brain mass to lean body mass ratios. On this scale humans and dolphins come out on top, follwed by elephants, chimps, and african grey parrots. I dunno about whales, though. I don't think info about their body mass or brain mass are that easy to come by.