Menopause

Bigger brain size, what does it mean smarter?

Table of contents:

Anonim

He said people with bigger brains are smarter. Many also judge the size of a person's brain from the width of his forehead. For example, if someone has a forehead that is "jenong" or wide, it is definitely said to be a smart person.

The human brain is basically different, but is it true that the size of the human brain is an indicator of a person's intelligence? Check out the following explanation.

Is brain size related to human intelligence?

A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews states that having a large brain is not a guarantee for someone to have a high IQ. Currently, IQ is still one of the instruments used to measure a person's ability rationally.

Researchers from Austria, the Netherlands, and Germany compared IQ test results and correlated them with participants' IQs. Brain size was measured using brain imaging methods over several studies.

The result, from 148 studies involving more than 8,000 people found a weak relationship between brain size and a person's intelligence level.

From this collection of observed studies, it appears that brain volume plays only a minor role in IQ test performance in humans. Although there are certain things that can be observed, the relationship between brain volume and intelligence is very small.

The structure and integrity of the brain have a more important role in the biological foundation of a person's level of intelligence. The researchers found that men tended to have larger brains than women, but overall there was no difference in intelligence levels based on gender or gender.

Researchers have different opinions

If in previous studies researchers found brain volume played only a small role in human IQ, other studies do not think so.

The reason is, scientists who have researched the relationship between the brain and intelligence have different answers, it is not uncommon for this to lead to debates that have not found a definite point.

So, the answer to statements about the effect of brain size on a person's intelligence actually depends on which scientist we ask.

Anthropologists use the interior volume of the skull and compare it against body size to roughly estimate intelligence, a measurement known as quotients encephalization . Although the research is not yet perfect, it has shown that if a person's brain size is large, he has a high IQ.

Michael McDaniel, an industrial and organizational psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, has claimed that bigger brains do make people smarter.

Many researchers, however, disagree with McDaniel's conclusions. His research, published in 2005 in the journal Intelligence, shows that across all age groups and genders, brain volume is linked to a person's intelligence.

Brain size can be lowered by genes

In studies conducted on identical twins (having the same genes) and fraternal twins (having half the genes in common), there was a greater association in brain size with identical twins.

Researchers also found that if the relationship between intelligence and the amount of gray matter in the frontal lobe - which is controlled by genetics, the results show that parents pass intelligence to their children.

So, the different brain sizes may be due to genes at birth as well as environmental factors that also play a role in brain development.

Albert Einsten might be an easy example if brain size is not an indicator that makes someone smart. Einstein's brain was not much bigger than the average human brain - had a normal brain.

However, there are certain parts of the brain that play a more important role. It can influence thinking about mathematics worldwide.

Scientists have also discovered that there are strange things that can increase the size of the human brain, for example the brains of London taxi drivers enlarge and change when they learn difficult routes.

The taxi driver who has been navigating the streets for years has significant structural changes in this part of his brain. This is especially so in sections posterior hippocampus the bigger one and hippocampus the front is a little smaller.

Conclusion

One thing scientists agree on, if the size of the brain cannot be equated with a person's intelligence. Instead, scientists looked at brain mass versus body mass to make speculations about each creature's cognitive abilities.

Basically a person's intelligence increases due to the habit of the brain in learning something. There are parts of the brain that play a greater role in influencing a person's abilities, for example Einstein.

Bigger brain size, what does it mean smarter?
Menopause

Editor's choice

Back to top button