Fact or Fiction-A Bigger Brain Means You Are Smarter

Fact or Fiction-A Bigger Brain Means You Are Smarter

When it comes to biology, one of the biggest mysteries involves the brain. Despite centuries of studies, researchers have not come close to knowing exactly how the brain works, such as how the neurons communicate during thought processing or how various diseases like Alzheimer’s disease occur, among other numerous things. Due to this mystery, many theories have been argued about the brain that almost always end up being accepted without being proven if they are fact or fiction. One example of these theories is that having a bigger brain makes one smarter than those with average-sized brains. Our assignment writing services will allow you to attend to more important tasks as our experts handle your task.

The theory that having a bigger brain makes one smarter is fiction. Going back to the roots of this theory, some of the earliest investigations were based on racism, whereby scientists tried to prove that individuals of African descent ranked last on the intelligence scale due to their brain sizes (Opara et al., 2022). Secondly, by looking at the brains of other animals, one takes up a new perspective; for example, a human brain is about three pounds, while that of a sperm whale is almost six times that of a human. But the sperm whale, despite having the largest brain in the world, is not smarter than humans. Notably, a comparative neurologist, Barbara Finlay, showed that the sperm whale’s intelligence level is similar to that of a hummingbird (Finlay et al., 2001). Therefore, despite all the surface area in the sperm whale’s brain that supposedly should increase its intelligence according to this theory, the whale’s intelligence level is similar to that of a very tiny bird.

Secondly, the world’s largest brain is alleged to be that of one of the greatest English poets, Lord Byron, and weighed about 4.85 pounds. On the other hand, the brain of one of the most intelligent people and the greatest scientists ever, Albert Einstein, weighed about 2.712 pounds; this is less than the average adult male brain of 3.086 pounds. Looking at these two individuals and their accomplishments, it is obvious that they were both intelligent people. The variation in their brain sizes shows no link between their intelligence and their brain size. Suppose this was the case; Einstein would not have been as smart as he was and would probably have been said to have a very low IQ. Further, autistic people are known to have two characteristics: bigger brains and most of them also have low IQ (Ward, 2015). If bigger brains meant that one was smarter, this would make a significant percentage of autistic people smarter than others because most of them tend to have bigger brains. Instead, the opposite is evident in this case. Lastly, studies that try to prove that bigger brains make one smarter, such as Voracek and colleagues, have shown a very weak relationship between the two (Pietschnig et al., 2015) ). Notably, these results are known to be illusory because scientists tend to be biased in publishing their findings, which leaves even more doubt about the results published.

In conclusion, looking at the various arguments presented above, it is evident that the statement that a bigger brain means being smarter is not true. If this were the case, then humans and dolphins would not be considered some of the smartest species on earth because there are numerous other species with bigger brains than those of humans and dolphins.

References

Finlay, B. L., Darlington, R. B., & Nicastro, N. (2001). Developmental structure in brain evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(2), 263-278.

Opara, I. N., Riddle-Jones, L., & Allen, N. (2022). Modern Day Drapetomania: Calling Out Scientific Racism. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 37(1), 225-226.

Pietschnig, J., Penke, L., Wicherts, J. M., Zeiler, M., & Voracek, M. (2015). Meta-analysis of associations between human brain volume and intelligence differences: How strong are they, and what do they mean? Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 57, 411-432.

Ward, J. (2015). The student’s guide to cognitive neuroscience. Psychology Press.

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Myth Busters: Fact vs. Fiction

Resource: “Ten interesting Facts About the Human Brain” in Chapter 2 in the text.

Fact or Fiction-A Bigger Brain Means You Are Smarter

You are a Myth buster/Fact finder in this discussion. There are many things that people think they know about the brain. Your job is to choose one of the topics below and find out whether it is a myth or a fact.

We use 10% of our brain.
We are either right or left brained.
A bigger brain means that you are smarter.
How would your myth or fact finding be supported by what you have learned about the brain and how it functions (myelination, neurotransmission, communication) from your reading in Chapters 1 and 2? Support your findings with reliable citations and references

Ref Book : The Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience 4th Edition by Jamie Ward