Does the size of your brain determine your intelligence?

This is a question that generates controversy among the scientific community.Read reading so that you find out what some neuroscientists.

do your brain size determines your intelligence?

In the Neuwrite West Blog of the Stanford University, of its Institute of Neurosciences, periodically publish the series "Questions to the expert", where at conferences the graduate students collect questions from the public and answer them in the aforementioned blog.

One of the questions was precisely the one that gives title to our article.The answer was not long in coming.

It turns out that This issue, that of the relationship between brain size and intelligence-both among humans and in other species-has not been well defined.In general, human beings like to feel special and we believe that our exceptional cognitive abilities should indicate that we reign on the planet in terms "cereb rales ”, or at least as far as the brain/body relationship is concerned.

Does the size of your brain determine your intelligence?

It is known that whales and elephants have a brain much larger than ours, and we have approximately the same mass ratio brain/body than mice.As this would be little less than admitting that we are not "so" special, scientists designed a third measure of brain size called "encephalization ratio", which would be the ratio of the actual mass of the brain in relation to the established brain mass for the size of the animals (this ratio is based on the assumption that larger animals require less brain mass in relation to their size, compared to very small animals).

With this new measure, the humans return to the top, with a ratio of 7.5 , surpassing the dolphin, which has 5.3, and the mouse, with a 0.5.Obviously, larger brains correspond to larger brains, and therefore the brain mass is taken into account in proportion to the total body mass.In our human case, the percentage is 2%.

Does the size of your brain determine your intelligence?

But This doesn't really answer the question.Does a bigger brain really make you smarter ? According to the aforementioned study, it seems so.

In another investigation, neuroscientist Christof Koch, president and scientific director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, noticed that the size average brain volume in adult men is 1,274 cm3, and that of women 1,131 cm3, difference that does not mark a milestone between both sexes, that is, although women have a smaller brain that of men does not influence intelligence tests at all.

According to Koch, if there would be a correlation between size and intelligence , although there are no clear or conclusive data that prove that a person is intelligent by having a larger brain, or on the contrary, if the brain is larger by being more intelligent.

On the other hand, there is what is called fluid intelligence , which would be the ability to solve problems in unknown or new situations, finds r patterns and reasoning.These tests take into account rather the particular connections of certain regions of the brain , rather than their size.

Does the size of your brain determine your intelligence?

In the "search" for brain traces of intelligence, a genome association study was conducted, which included 20,000 people, and the “IC gene” was discovered.This work was widely disseminated, and according to the results, certain variations in the HMGA2 gene, which encodes a protein that helps regulate cell growth and DNA transcription, correlate with the increase in intracranial volume and IC.

It is obvious that none of this is conclusive, not even the fact of having a Very high IQ guarantees that you can solve all your problems.The important thing here is that we understand by intelligence , and many neuroscientists now believe that the cellular complexity and molecular organization of neural connections is what really determines the capacity of your brain.

Therefore, although having a larger brain might suggest that you are smarter, it is most likely that your intelligence depends much more on how efficiently the different parties communicate with each other.of your brain.

And so that you understand better, read how many types of intelligence exist, and which one predominates in you.

Images: Aaron Goselin , GreenFlames09 , Kalvicio de las Nieves

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