#brain size

The Scientific Research Notes of S. Sunkavally. Years: 1986 - 1990.

Theyre currently studying your fucked up little brain right now, its a new scientific mystery

Who's studying my brain? I am a neuroscientist after all, maybe I know the people studying my fucked up* [average sized] brain.

Difference between Human brain and animal brain Humans are considered to be the most intelligent living organisms on earth. Humans have the ability to think and react to situations, whereas, animals do not. Human brain is considered large compared to the animal brain. Let us see the important difference between the human brain and animal brain. Human Brain vs Animal Brain Following are the…

How did human intelligence evolve? Anthropologists have studied this question for decades by looking at tools found in archaeological digs, evidence of the use of fire, and so on, and changes in brain size measured from fossil skulls.

However, working with colleagues at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, we have found a new way to estimate the intelligence of our ancestors.

By studying fossil skulls, we determined how much blood – and how much energy – the brains of ancient hominins required to keep running. This energy use gives us a measure of how much thinking they did.

https://neurosciencenews.com/child-deprivation-brain-size-15408/Severe childhood deprivation has longstanding impacts on brain size in adulthood

In other words, male and female brains are more similar than different.

Nothing here said that brains have a "gender" that can be found in the opposite sex.

Also, brains are plastic and will mould and shape to societal expectations or desires on the part of the individual.

Smaller brain does not equal dumber. They found that women outperformed men in science when the women were not exposed to sexist expectations while growing up.

Men have a larger amygdala, but women who become mothers tend to have an activated amygdala for the rest of their lives. Women have more grey matter. It's possible smaller brains have more grey matter to compensate.

Building Bigger Brains

A distinctive feature of the human brain is its greatly-expanded neocortex, a section of the brain’s outer layer, or cerebral cortex. Its size is thought to be linked to the human-specific gene ARHGAP11B, and to be caused by the proliferation of a particular type of neural progenitor cells, the basal radial glia (bRG). Putting ARHGAP11B into mouse embryos causes an expansion of their neocortex, but mice have too few bRG to adequately investigate their role. By contrast, ferret brains (pictured, with neocortical neurons in green) possess a larger neocortex and more bRG. Introducing ARHGAP11B into ferret embryos leads to greater numbers of bRG, giving rise to neurons for longer during development, and ultimately producing more neurons in the brain’s upper layers. Our uniquely-large neocortex is involved in our most sophisticated cognitive skills, so investigating its developmental origin is one way of exploring the complex biological underpinnings of human intelligence.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Image by Nereo Kalebic and Carlotta Gilardi

Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany

Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)

Research published in eLife, November 2018