• Question: if we had brains twice as big would we learn twice as much or twice as fast?

    Asked by aworswick to Tim, Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by maevelewisxo, mazzie10, mary98, boomitsgeorgiasbestfriend, jadoolan, bellabxxx, drstilesjlstermerrygold98.
    • Photo: Simon Bennett

      Simon Bennett answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hello,

      That is a good question, and I would say the answer is no. Gorrilas have larger brains than us, even when you do it as a percentage of mass. The reason the human brain is so powerful is because the folded surface creates more surface area and space for the connections between neurons. So if we had more connections in our brains we may be to learn more.

      Thanks.

    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi @aworswick and @marvelewisxo

      I agree with Simon that bigger brains wouldn’t necessarily mean more ability to learn or ability to learn more quickly.

      Also, imagine having a head that big, and how sore your neck would be, having to carry the weight!! Or even worse, imagine how wide a mother’s hips would have to be to give birth to a baby with a head twice the size!!! 🙂

    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I’m not an expert on the structure of the brain – I’ll leave that to the others! But I do know that, even with brains the size we have, we don’t use all of them – so I think that there’s a lot to do with the amount we can learn and the speed we can learn it at with our current brains, before we move on to having bigger ones, like this:

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