- 2078 -
Be Thankful for your Brain? It
took 1.5 million years of evolution. The
size of your brain does not mean that you have more neurons! How much energy does our brain power
take? It takes 25% of all the energy our
body consumes. Be thankful for your
brains and the calories to power it.
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----------------------- 2078 -
Be Thankful for your Brain
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The human brain is amazing? How
did it get that way? It took 1.5 million years of evolution. How did it get to be as good as it gets. You may be surprised at the answer.
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Why are our brains better? First
guess, our human brains are bigger.
Someone estimated the average human brain has 100 billion neurons. About the same number as the number of stars
in the Galaxy. About the same numbers as
the number of planets in the Galaxy. If
all brains are made the same the more neurons you have the bigger the brain the
smarter you are.
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But, that proportionality does not hold true:
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Cows and chimpanzees have the size brains.
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Human brains are --- 2.5 to 3.3 pounds
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Elephant brains --- 8.5 to 11
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Whale brains ------ 20
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The size of your brain does not mean that you have more neurons!
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Gorillas have much bigger bodies but their brains are 1/3 that of
humans, about 30 billion neurons. Humans
have 100 billion neurons. But, where did
this number come from? Who actually
counted the number of neurons? Suzana
Herculano-Houzel from Ted-Talk actually did count them.
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She reduced a brain to soup using detergents. The volume of the soup could be accurately
measured. Then a measured drop could be
put under a microscope. The number of
neurons accurately counted. Do the math
and she got 86 billion neurons in the average brain. 16 billion neurons were in the cerebral
cortex.
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Then there was the idea that all brains were made the same. But, when counting neurons was done on a
rodent’s brain it was discovered to have larger neurons. So for the same brain size it has fewer
actual neurons. A primate has much
smaller neurons for the same mass.
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primate needs only a 3 pound brain to hold 86 billion neurons. That with a body size of 145 pounds.
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rodent would have an 80 pound brain and a body size of 89 tons to have 86
billion neurons. Obviously rodents and
primates have different brains.
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All primate brains are the same.
It is just that humans have 16 billion neurons in their cerebral cortex
which we use to do studies on other animals that they can’t do on us.
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How much energy does our brain power take. It takes 25% of all the energy our body
consumes. We primates need 6 calories of
energy per billion neurons per day.
Neurons are expensive to operate.
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For gorillas to support their 30 billion neurons they must eat food 8
hours per day.
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For humans to support their 86 billion neuron brains they would have to
eat 9 hours per day of the same food. We
don’t! How do we get away with 3 small
meals per day?
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- ANSWER: We cook our food.
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Cooking predigests the food. We
get more energy out of every bite of the same food. Our ancestors invented this process 1,500,000
years ago. By cooking food, and 1.5
million years of evolution we got to have human brains. Now we do not have to eat 9 hours per day and
we can spend our time for other purposes, like writing this review.
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PROBLEM: Now that we have large
brains we are not using them to keep from getting fat. We need to reverse the process and start
eating more raw food like gorillas.
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Cooking made us human.
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No other brain cooks its food.
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Happy Thanksgiving - be thankful for your brains and the calories
to power it.
-------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- OTHER
REVIEWS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.:
-
- (1) Review #1998
- understanding yourself. If the brain were simple enough to understand
we would all be too simple to figure it out.
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(2) #1999 -
Brainology mindset. A trick
played on students was to convince them that the neurons in their brain formed
new connections every time they stretched their brains to failure. Over time they would automatically get
smarter. The Pygmalion Effect.
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(3) #1962 - The
human is a challenge for physics to explain down to the level of quantum
mechanics. This Review list 7 other
reviews available about the brain.
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- (4)
1403 - How to
become an athlete.
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- (5)
1405 - What makes your brain conscious.
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- (6)
1014 - The brain
works.
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- (7)
922 - Understanding
yourself.
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- (8)
868 - Seeing
with 1/2 a brain.
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- (9)
801 - What was
your memory just before you became conscious of it.?
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----- Comments appreciated and Pass it on to
whomever is interested. ----
---
Some reviews are at:
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http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
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email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
------------------------- Monday, April 23, 2018
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