– Cowanchee
What makes the human brain so special? Yes, of course, it is big - but by no means the largest in existence. You've certainly heard that your brain consists of one hundred billion neurons - but where did this figure come from and how does it compare to other living beings?
You may think you know the answers to these questions, but chances are good that you have been seriously misinformed about why your brain is more specific than the brains of other living things on our planet. Here are four of the biggest myths about the human brain.
Myth 1: The human brain has one hundred billion neurons.
Neurons are the fundamental building blocks of any nervous system. These specific cells, whose tree-like processes radiate in all directions and come into contact with the same processes of neighboring cells, form the huge electrical and chemical network that is our brain, and process information about our environment, control our actions in accordance with this very environment, and even control our unconscious bodily functions. It is our neurons that allow our brains to perform various actions faster and more efficiently than any machine ever created.
Considering the indispensable role these cells play, you might assume that scientists have a couple of ideas about exactly how many neurons we have between our ears; and for many years we thought that was so. Flip through a few neuroscience textbooks, a couple of scientific studies, and scientific journals, and you'll find that many label the number of neurons in the human brain with a nice round number of one hundred billion—and usually do so without supporting references.
Why no links? According to neuroscientist Dr. Herculano-Housell, this is because no direct estimates of the total number of neurons in the human brain were made until 2009, when she and her team extracted the brains of four recently deceased people, brought them to the laboratory and liquefied them using technology. , called “isotropic fractionalization”. Herculano-Housell and her team dissolved each brain into a homogeneous emulsion of “brain soup” (her words, not ours), took samples from the soup, counted the number of neurons in each sample, and then extrapolated to get the total number of neurons in every brain “cake”.
We found that the average human brain contains approximately 86 billion neurons,” Herculano-Hausel says in a recent podcast for the journal Nature. She then continues: No brain we have examined to date has contained a hundred billion cells. And although this does not seem like a big difference, 14 billion neurons is the size of a baboon's brain, or almost half the neurons of a gorilla's brain. So it's actually quite a decent difference.
Myth 2: The bigger the brain, the better it is.
If you were able to put together a bunch of closely related species, open up their braincases, and scrape out their brains, you'd likely start to see correlations between absolute brain size and the animal's cognitive abilities. Among mammals, for example, primates (like us) and cetaceans (like dolphins) have larger brains than, say, insectivores (like the anteater), and have what most would recognize as proportionally greater mental abilities. Based on this observation alone, you might be inclined to consider brain size a good predictor of cognitive performance.
However, the “bigger is better” attitude breaks down as soon as you start comparing individuals different types. Cows, for example, have larger brains than almost any species of monkey, but unless they are very (very) good at hiding it, cows almost certainly have less mental capacity than most (if not all) “less brainy” primates. Similarly, the brain of a capybara may weigh more than seventy grams, but its cognitive abilities pale in comparison to those of the capuchin monkey, whose brain weighs only fifty grams.
Of course, for the purposes of our discussion on human brains, the most eloquent proof that “bigger is not better” will be a comparison of the size of our brain and the brain of the largest mammals, such as a whale or an elephant. In the picture you can see a comparison of the human brain with the much larger elephant brain. The average human brain weighs about 1200 grams, and the elephant brain is almost four times as much, but the largest brain is that of the sperm whale, and it weighs 6800 grams.
With a brain that weighs six times that of a human, why haven't sperm whales subjugated humanity yet?
Myth 3: The human brain is the largest in relation to body size.
This myth comes to us from the time of Aristotle, who in 335 BC wrote: “Of all animals, man has the largest brain in comparison with the size of his body.” It's easy to fall into this trap if you try to explain the difference between brain size and intelligence in, say, a human and a sperm whale. These days, many people use much the same explanation as Aristotle to convince themselves that the relationship between brain size and intelligence is not absolute brain weight or size, but rather the ratio of brain weight to body weight.
Take a closer look at this chain of logic and you will find that it gives us another inaccurate picture compared to what we actually observe in nature. Yes, the ratio of brain to body in humans is enormous compared to, say, an elephant (about 1/40 versus 1/560, respectively); but it's about the same ratio as a normal mouse (also 1/40), and even less than the ratio you might find in some small birds (1/12).
To overcome the limitations of the basic brain-to-body ratio, scientists have come up with a more complex scoring system known as the "encephalization factor" (EQ), which measures the brain-to-body size ratio of an animal compared to other animals of roughly similar size. In this case, EQ not only takes into account the fact that brain size tends to increase with body size, but also that brain size does not necessarily change proportionally body enlargement.
When scientists compared encephalization factors in different animals, they found that this factor is higher in humans than in any other living creature on our planet.
Myth 4: A larger brain contains more neurons than a small brain.
But even the encephalization factor has an inherent flaw, for one simple reason: a larger brain does not necessarily contain more neurons than a small one - a fact that brings us back to myth number one and the question of how many neurons the human brain actually consists of.
Scientists have, of course, known for quite some time that animal brain size can vary greatly between species. Until very recently, however, most studies assumed that neuronal density was more or less constant among different classes of animals. However, this belief could not be further from reality.
Click to enlarge This myth was cleverly debunked by Dr. Herculano-Housell and her team when they used the same brain soup method used to measure the number of neurons in the human brain to determine the total number of neurons in the human brain. various types mammals. The results of their research, which have now been published in a series of reports, demonstrate that the brains of different mammals follow different “rules of calculation”:
primate brains, were found to increase in size at the same rate as the number of neurons in them increases; if you compare one gram of neural tissue from a large primate to one gram of tissue from a smaller primate, you will get about the same number of neurons.
Rodent brains on the other hand, as it turned out, they increase in size faster, how new neurons are acquired. As a result, larger rodents tend to have fewer neurons per gram of neural tissue than smaller species.
Insectivore brains behave like a combination of rodent and primate brains, with a cortex that grows in size faster than the number of neurons (like rodents), and a cerebellum that has a linear growth rate ratio (like primates).
The ultimate conclusion from this is that among rodents, insectivores and primates, primate brains are built on the most economical principle, making the most of available space. Dr. Herculano-Housel writes: A tenfold increase in the number of neurons in a rodent brain means a 35-fold increase in the brain itself; by comparison, the same ten-fold increase in the number of neurons in the primate brain means an increase in brain size of only eleven times.
The brain of a hypothetical rodent, with 86 billion neurons (similar to the human brain), would weigh a monstrous thirty-five kilograms - many times greater than anything known in any living creature.
Is the human brain special?
There are several conclusions that can be drawn from debunking myth number four.
Firstly, it demonstrates that relative brain size (even taking into account the influence of the encephalization factor) cannot be used as a reliable measure of the number of neurons in different classes of animals. Moreover, this actually leads us to the conclusion that brain size, body size, and the relationship between them are not sufficient indicators of cognitive ability, and that such assumptions should rather focus on the total number of neurons that a given creature has.
And secondly, this reveals two rather counterintuitive facts about the human brain. The first is that our brains are in some ways not unique at all. It may contain 86 billion neurons, but that's about the number you'd expect to find (based on primate calculation rules) in a brain of this size; if you enlarge a chimpanzee's brain to the size of a human's, you will find exactly the same number of neurons.
And the second is to confirm the fact that something about the human brain is truly unique.
Dr. Herculano-Hausel explains:
First, the human brain grows according to the same rules as the primate brain: a more economical principle compared to rodents allows us to pack many more neurons into the available volume than in the brain of a rodent of the same size, and possibly in the brain of any other living creature. same size. And second, our position among primates as having the largest functioning brains ensures that, at least among primates, we have the largest number of neurons that contribute to consciousness and behavior in general.
How our unprecedented number of neurons in the brain combines with things like our genetics and overall brain structure to result in some of the most advanced cognitive abilities on the planet remains to be discovered.
For example, if a chimpanzee's brain could somehow be enlarged to human size, would we see its cognitive abilities jump to levels matching ours?
Another “unexplored” question is how our neuron numbers and “calculation rules” compare with other mammal species, and especially those with brains. bigger size? To date, there are no studies on the exact number of neurons in either elephants or cetaceans.
Scientists study and determine the ratio of brain volume to the volume of bodies of living beings on Earth. They also found out which animal has the heaviest brain. It is known that among people there are record holders for brain weight.
Who has the biggest brain in relation to their body?
Comparing the ratio of brain mass to body mass, it turned out that among vertebrates the hummingbird occupies first place. For this bird this ratio is 1/12. It would be possible to determine the relationship among invertebrates, but they do not have a brain as such, but they do have nerve nodes or ganglia. If you calculate the ratio by comparing the mass of nerve endings with the body mass of invertebrates, it turns out that the ant is the record holder. Its ratio is 1/4.If a person had a 1/4 ratio, like an ant, the head would weigh at least twenty kilograms, and would be about eight times larger. However, the ant's brain is forty thousand times smaller than the human brain when compared to the number of cells that make it up.
Scientists conducted research and experiments to understand whether the ant has intelligence. It turned out that these miniature insects are able to generalize and synthesize the information they receive.
Ants can learn, they mature gradually, which confirms their complex social appearance. And the more complex the species, the more time the ant spends learning. It is the nervous system that prevents ants from being considered intelligent animals. Due to the fact that the brain of this insect consists of five hundred thousand neurons, it is not capable of thinking. A number of scientists believe that among ants there is a distribution of the brain between members of the colony. This distribution is comparable to connecting computers via the Internet to solve specific problems.
It turns out that each ant is a small particle of a huge superbrain. This is a mystery for scientists that they are trying to solve. There is a version that they act in concert thanks to radio waves or telepathy.
This coincidence is surprising - this ratio in humans is the same as in the Mormyrus fish or the elephant fish. It is equal to 1\38-1\50. Among fish, it is the Mormirus fish that has the largest ratio of brain mass to its body mass.
Having studied the ratio of interest among primates, it was found that it is greatest not in humans at all, but in the Squirrel Monkey or Saimiri. This ratio for this primate is 1/17.
Animals with big brains
Researchers, after observing dozens of different species of animals, concluded that those whose absolute brain volume is larger have better control over their behavior. We are not talking about the mass of the brain, but about its relationship to the volume of the body. Interestingly, monkeys, wolves, and carnivorous dogs showed good self-control, but the elephant showed poor results.You can evaluate the brain not by the ratio of its volume to the volume of the body, but by its size. There are several record holders. It is known that among terrestrial animals the elephant has the largest brain mass. About five kilograms – that’s how much the brain of an Indian elephant weighs.
The record holder among all living creatures on the planet for brain weight is the whale Physeter Macrocephalus. The brain of this animal can reach nine kilograms. However, if you calculate the ratio of brain to body, you get 1/40,000. The weight of a whale's brain depends on its age and species. It is known that the blue whale is much larger than the sperm whale, but its brain is smaller and weighs only six kilograms and eight hundred grams.
Another owner of a big brain is the northern beluga dolphin. Its brain weighs two kilograms, three hundred and fifty grams, while that of the bottlenose dolphin weighs only one kilogram, seven hundred and thirty-five grams.
The living creature of the planet with a big brain is man. On average, his brain weighs from one kilogram twenty grams to one kilogram nine hundred and seventy grams.
The largest brain in humans
The weight of a person's brain depends on many factors. Firstly, the male brain is larger than the female brain by about one hundred to one hundred and fifty grams. There are no significant differences in brain weight between individual races. 
Our ancestors had much smaller brains than we do. Weight changed significantly when the first primitive man appeared. The brain of Pithecanthropus did not exceed nine hundred cubic centimeters, and the brain of Sinanthropus was about one thousand two hundred twenty-five cubic centimeters, thus catching up with the brain modern woman. It is known that Cro-Magnons had a brain with a volume of one thousand eight hundred and eighty cubic centimeters.
Today the European brain is about one thousand four hundred and forty-six cubic centimeters. We can conclude that every two hundred years the brain “shrinked” by one cubic centimeter. I would like to hope that the decrease in volume does not lead to a decrease in intelligence, but is caused by an improvement in design.
It is known that Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev’s brain weight turned out to be two kilograms and twelve grams. One could consider his brain to be the largest, however, a certain individual who lived only three years had a brain weight of two kilograms and nine hundred grams.
Some celebrities just need to occupy their brains a little. According to the site, Christina Aguilera does not know where the Cannes Film Festival is taking place. .
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It also turned out that the brain varies in weight among representatives of different nations. Until recently, the Buryat brain was considered the heaviest brain (it was recently established that the Mongols had the lead here). Russian brains are in fourth position after Belarusian, German and Ukrainian. Next come the Koreans, Czechs and British; at the end of the list are the Japanese and the French. And the owners of the smallest brains are the indigenous Australians: the brain of the average aborigine weighs about a kilogram. Some scientists believe that the human brain began to form depending on the climate and complexity of the environment. The difficulties of surviving in conditions of sudden climate changes throughout the year, the constant search for means of subsistence are training for the brain and contribute to its growth in the same way as monotonous physical labor increases muscles. But this is just a theory.
But since it was found that brain size is not directly related to intelligence, research continued. Of course, they tried to find out the reasons for outstanding mental abilities by studying the brains of deceased geniuses. In the USSR, after Lenin's death, his brain (despite the protests of his loved ones), was supervised by the German neurophysiologist Oscar Vogt. First, in 1925, a laboratory was created to study Lenin’s brain, and 3 years later, on its basis, the Brain Institute arose, in which it was decided to collect the most outstanding Soviet “brains.” In the 20-30s. The museum's exhibits included the brains of Kalinin, Kirov, Kuibyshev, Krupskaya, Lunacharsky, Gorky, Andrei Bely, Mayakovsky, Michurin, Pavlov, Tsiolkovsky... The collection continued to grow after the war, but not at such a high pace. However, despite the fact that many discoveries were made at this institute, it was not possible to find out what human intelligence depends on.
Now there are a number of theories on this matter. For some time it was believed that the relative intelligence of an individual determines the number of brain cells (neurons), but Russian professor Peter Anokhin discovered that it is not the number of neurons that plays a role, but the number of connections between them. The famous Spanish neurophysiologist Santiago Ramon y Cajal also believed that mental abilities depend not so much on the total weight or volume of the brain, but on the number of connections that neurons form with each other. Today scientists say that in the brain of each of us there are cells responsible for certain abilities, and even entire structures that make one person a talented musician, another a sharp shooter, a third a brilliant physicist. Dr. Bruce Miller from the University of California said that he was able to discover a “genius block” in the brain - a special zone located in the right temporal lobe. Its function is to suppress a person’s potential to become a genius. Miller assures that if this zone is completely “turned off”, then Creative skills will jump to unimaginable heights.
And yet, returning to the question of a big brain. Is there really any advantage to people with more gray matter? The head of the laboratory for the development of the nervous system at the Research Institute of Human Morphology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Savelyev, says that among people with large brains there are more lazy people. “The work of such a serious mechanism as the brain,” explains Savelyev, “requires large energy expenditures. Judge for yourself. In a “mindless” state, the brain spends 9% of all energy and 20% of oxygen, but as soon as a person thinks about something serious, his The “gray matter” will immediately absorb up to 25% of the nutrients entering the body. The body does not like this, it quickly gets tired, and therefore the person intuitively strives for an easier life. in various ways he has no equal in loafing. But if the owner of a heavy brain overcomes his laziness, he can move mountains. After all, people with a large brain mass have a greater capacity for variability." By the way, the owners of the largest brains - the Mongols - are considered to be recognized lazy people. And the Mongols themselves confirm that they are quite lazy; it is no coincidence that they have the habit of putting off all their affairs until tomorrow, although they can be completed today. This even corresponds to the saying: “The Mongolian “tomorrow” will not end.”
Experiments with animals have shown that mammals with “heavy” brains are more resistant to stress. It turned out that, for example, mice with large brains are much more phlegmatic than their counterparts deprived of gray matter, and quite easily experience various stressful situations. Moreover, it was discovered that equal doses of alcohol caused completely different reactions in the two experimental groups of rodents: if the “brainy” mice became more active and mobile, then their relatives, deprived of brains, on the contrary, became lazy and sad. Meanwhile, brain mass, as it turned out, does not in any way affect intelligence, even in mice: mice of both groups coped (or failed) with the logical tasks assigned to them by scientists with the same speed and results.
Brain weight normal people ranges from 1020 to 1970 grams. The brain of men weighs 100 - 150 grams more than the brain of women. There are no serious differences between individual races. In any case, it is not the Europeans who occupy the leading position. The average brain weight of African blacks is 1316, Europeans - 1361, including Germans - 1291, Swiss - 1327, Russians - 1377 grams. The brain weight of the Japanese is 1374, and that of the Buryats is even 1508 grams.
How can we find out how much the brain of our distant ancestors weighed? The size of the brain can be determined by the size of the skull. The largest representative of modern great apes the volume of the braincase is small - 440 - 510 cubic centimeters. During the transition from the great ape to primitive man, a significant increase in the brain occurred. In Pithecanthropus it ranged from 750 to 900, in Sinanthropus it increased to 915 - 1225 cubic centimeters, that is, it caught up with the brain of a modern woman. The volume of the African Neanderthal skull reached 1325, and the European one - 1610 cubic centimeters. Finally, the Cro-Magnons were truly brainy guys with a brain volume of up to 1880 cubic centimeters.
Then the size of the brain began to decline. Excavations in ancient Egyptian pyramids provide an opportunity to compare the sizes of the skulls of pharaohs over several millennia. For some 2 - 3 thousand years from the reign of the first dynasty of pharaohs to the 18th dynasty, the capacity of the skull fell from 1414 to 1379 cubic centimeters, approximately by a cubic centimeter every 200 years. And among Europeans, the brain has “shrinked” significantly over the past 10 - 20 thousand years. Its volume for a modern European is on average 1446 cubic centimeters.
Maybe the ancients were smarter than us? It’s unlikely, although they should have been outstanding thinkers: after all, they had to figure everything out with their own minds. I would like to hope that the decrease in brain size is caused by improvements in its design and is not accompanied by a decrease in intelligence.
Among animals, whales have the largest brains. The blue whale weighs 6800 grams, about five times more than a human. The brain weight of the Indian elephant is about 5000, the northern beluga dolphin - 2350, the bottlenose dolphin - 1735 grams. The comparison does not seem to be in favor of the person. But it is necessary to take into account not only the weight of the brain, but also the size of the economy subordinate to it. An ordinary whale is 30 tons of fat, bones and meat. An elephant weighs about 3 thousand, a beluga whale - 300, and a person - only some 75 kilograms. In our country, 1 gram of brain commands 50 grams of body, and in an ordinary whale it commands five kilograms, almost 100 times more. If we take giant whales weighing 100 - 150 tons, which are occasionally found in the ocean, then for 1 gram of brain they will have over 20 kilograms of body - a huge load for nerve cells.
The question of how much a human brain weighs and how an individual’s intellectual abilities depend on its mass has interested scientists since ancient times. For example, Archimedes, who lived in 300 BC, calculated this indicator by immersing his head in a container of water and using the liquid that spilled out, using mathematical calculations, he calculated the estimated weight of this organ. This method, of course, did not give the true result, but the very fact that they were interested in this back in those days is amazing.
At the moment, it is known that the mass of a person’s brain is approximately equal to 2% of the weight of the entire body, however, such a judgment is inaccurate, since the indicator changes throughout life and depends on many factors.
It is impossible to answer the question of exactly how much the adult brain weighs without weighing this organ, which is possible only after the death of the subject. At the same time, existing average statistical data can only give an approximate idea of this value.
So, the brain mass of an ordinary middle-aged person ranges from 1100-2000 g. This variation is due to various factors affecting the development of the body. It is known that a person’s weight depends on the gender, age and race of the individual.
Thus, men may well make fun of the weaker sex about the fact that their brains weigh 100-150 g more, however, this fact does not allow us to judge mental abilities and speaks about the structural features of the central nervous system: in men there is a connection between the perception of reality and coordination movements are better, therefore spatial and motor activity is developed, as evidenced by the development of zones responsible for performing these functions. And women have more developed intuition and associative thinking, which allows them to quickly process incoming information and find easier ways to solve problems.
Brain Development
The human brain is part of the central nervous system, which controls the vital functions of the body. They are working on studying this organ a large number of psychologists, doctors and other specialists who study the structure and connection of its integrity with the functioning of the physiological systems of the body.
The usual dimensions of the brain are 20x20x15 cm, and it has a complex structure, and each section includes several types of neurons.
As already written earlier, the average weight of the human brain ranges from 1100-2200 g, but generally falls within the range of 1100-1500 g, and reaches maximum weight to the age of 27, and then gradually begins to decrease, losing an average of 3g per year.
Prenatal development
The formation of the central nervous system during the intrauterine period of a child’s life begins in the 3rd week after fertilization of the egg. In this case, the neural plate first develops from the outer germ layer, which bends over time to form the neural groove. The edges of this gyrus fuse to create the fetal neural tube, from the front of which the child's brain is formed. In this case, the end of the tube is first divided into 3 sections or 3 primary brain vesicles. From the first, the cerebral hemispheres and the intermediate section are formed, from the second - the middle, and from the last - the cerebellum, pons and medulla oblongata.
The development of the brain in the prenatal period occurs in parallel with the maturation of other structures, and the most ancient parts are formed faster and more actively, therefore, in a healthy newborn child, when born, unconditioned reflexes such as breathing, swallowing, etc. are fully functioning, and the weight of this organ at the time of birth is approximately 300-500g.
Natal state
Further development of the functions of the central nervous system continues after birth, and at the end of the first year of a child’s life, the mass of the brain located in the cranial cavity is approximately 1000 g. In an adult, this figure fluctuates around 1300 g. Based on this, it becomes obvious that the largest the rate of increase occurs in the first year of life.
By this time, the subcortical structures are almost completely formed, and the mass of the organ grows due to the division of glial cells and an increase in the number of dendritic branches, while the number of neurons remains the same, since they stop dividing during intrauterine development.
During this period, the final maturation of the projection areas originating from the receptors of the sensory organs and motor pathways occurs, while the greatest development occurs in the structures responsible for the regulation of the motor system and the activity of brain activity.
Period from 2 to 5 years
During this period, the weight of the brain increases due to the development of areas responsible for spatial orientation and purposeful movement, as well as complex psychological processes such as thinking, memory, and the assimilation of received information from the outside world.
Period from 5 to 7 years
The fields of the human brain responsible for the ability to learn and remember are the last to mature. Moreover, all mental processes occurring in the child’s brain (perception, attention, memory, thinking and imagination) are associated primarily with the development of speech, which in turn is formed under the influence of these functions.
Thus, the development of the brain occurs in several stages, and a failure in the formation of one of the levels entails a disruption in the maturation of the structures of the next stage and, as a result, mental and behavioral deviations.
Comparison of human and animal brains
The brain mass of various fauna representatives depends on a huge number of factors. For example, amphibians and ancient lizards cannot boast of the heaviness of this organ: the weight of a dinosaur's brain, despite its rather large dimensions, was approximately 1000g.
If we compare this indicator in mammals and humans, the data will also vary: For example, the weight of the brain of an elephant ranges from 4000 g to 5000 g, and the largest brain mass is recorded in the blue whale - about 9000 g.
The most sociable animal is the dog, which has a brain weighing no more than 100g, which does not prevent these representatives of the animal world from responding well to training; it is not without reason that Academician Pavlov chose them to study unconditioned reflexes.
As can be seen from the above, the mass of the brain matter of animals does not affect their mental abilities, but in humans it is the opposite: too much weight of an adult’s head indicates the development of pathology. Therefore, we can conclude that the level of intelligence depends only to a lesser extent on the ratio of brain mass to body mass: therefore, animals with a high indicator are better amenable to training and, accordingly, are easier to control.
Relationship between brain weight and intelligence level
To answer the question of how much the average adult brain weighs and how intelligence affects brain weight, scientists had to do a lot of work studying this organ. Thus, for normal functioning, the neurons of the central nervous system need to consume at least 30% of the oxygen supplied through the lungs, and its deficiency leads to the extinction of brain activity and damage to the cells and structures of this organ, respectively, to a decrease in its weight. It is known that following a decrease physical activity The sharpness of a person’s mental abilities decreases, so older people are prone to memory disorders and they lose the ability to think logically.
The theory that the weight of the adult brain does not affect intelligence was confirmed by studies of this organ in people suffering from mental disorders: for example, the largest brain weighing 2800 g belonged to a weak-minded person, while the brain weight of geniuses did not differ from the average statistical data. This is explained by the fact that the development of abilities is influenced by the structural features of the cortical structures, and the denser the network of its neurons, the more talented the individual, while an increase in other structures leads to a deviation in mental abilities.
Studies conducted on people with microcephaly have shown that these individuals are able to carry out simplified social life, however, they always required outside care.
Brain mass of some famous people
The heaviest brain in a physically and mentally healthy person was described in the 19th century by the German naturalist Rudolphi, and amounted to 2.222 kilograms, which makes it possible to judge that the average weight of the brain ranges from 1000-2200 g.
Examination of the medulla famous people, confirms the theory that brain weight does not affect genius, since this indicator does not go beyond the established limits:
- Vladimir Mayakovsky, Soviet poet -1.7 kg;
- Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist -1.23 kg;
- Otto von Bismarck, politician -1.97 kg;
- Vladimir Lenin (Ulyanov), politician -1.34 kg;
- Ludwig van Beethoven, composer -1.75 kg;
- Anatole France, literary critic and writer - 1.02 kg;
- Ivan Turgenev, writer - 2.01 kg;
- Carl Friedrich Gauss, German physicist, mathematician - 1,492 kg.
At the same time, a detailed examination of the structures of this organ revealed the dependence of the development of areas of the cortex responsible for creative thinking or a mathematical mindset on the demonstrated abilities.
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