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Have we got the brain all wrong? A new study shows its shape is more important than its wiring

The human brain is made up of around 86 billion neurons, linked by trillions of connections. For decades, scientists have believed that we need to map this intricate connectivity in detail to understand how the structured patterns of activity defining our thoughts, feelings and behaviour emerge.

Our new study, published in Nature, challenges this view. We have discovered that patterns of activity in our neurons are more influenced by the shape of the brain – its grooves, contours, and folds – than by its complex interconnections.

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Featured

  Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future

The mind-bending bigness of Neuralink’s mission, combined with the labyrinth of impossible complexity that is the human brain, made this the hardest set of concepts yet to fully wrap my head around—but it also made it the most exhilarating when, with enough time spent zoomed on both ends, it all finally clicked. I feel like I took a time machine to the future, and I’m here to tell you that it’s even weirder than we expect.

 Brains Over Brawn

Your eyes jump over the words on the page, and you quickly understand the message. How can you read a sentence, use a computer, or remember how to get home? You do these things with your brain—the large organ that sits inside your head. The brain coordinates all of your senses, makes you move, and lets you store memories.

 Do People Only Use 10 Percent of Their Brains?

What's the matter with only exploiting a portion of our gray matter?

 The empty brain

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer.

 The entire human brain in ‘unprecedented’ detail, thanks to powerful MRI

Scientists are very careful about claiming that no one else has ever done something before — the last thing they need is some overlooked lab saying, um, right here! — but researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital are confident they’re on solid ground. Their high-resolution MRIs of a complete, intact human brain, they say, are “unprecedented.”

 The first reference charts for the human brain have been completed

They could become a useful tool in tracking healthy (and unhealthy) ageing.

 What is so special about the human brain?

The human brain is puzzling -- it is curiously large given the size of our bodies, uses a tremendous amount of energy for its weight and has a bizarrely dense cerebral cortex. But: why? Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel puts on her detective's cap and leads us through this mystery. By making "brain soup," she arrives at a startling conclusion.

 Why Study the Brain?

The brain is the most complex part in the human body. This three-pound organ is responsible for our intelligence, interpreting sensation, initiating body movement, and controlling all of our behaviors.

 Why your brain is not a computer

We are living through one of the greatest of scientific endeavours – the attempt to understand the most complex object in the universe, the brain. Scientists are accumulating vast amounts of data about structure and function in a huge array of brains, from the tiniest to our own. Tens of thousands of researchers are devoting massive amounts of time and energy to thinking about what brains do, and astonishing new technology is enabling us to both describe and manipulate that activity.

Articles of Interest

3D Brain

Different regions in the brain interconnect to coordinate actions, like guiding motor skills using visual information.

Artificial brains are helping scientists study the real thing

No model is perfect. But that doesn’t stop them being useful.

Bigger Brains: Complex Brains for a Complex World

As early humans faced new environmental challenges and evolved bigger bodies, they evolved larger and more complex brains. Large, complex brains can process and store a lot of information. That was a big advantage to early humans in their social interactions and encounters with unfamiliar habitats. Over the course of human evolution, brain size tripled. The modern human brain is the largest and most complex of any living primate.

Brain Basics: Know Your Brain

The brain is the most complex part of the human body. This three-pound organ is the seat of intelligence, interpreter of the senses, initiator of body movement, and controller of behavior. Lying in its bony shell and washed by protective fluid, the brain is the source of all the qualities that define our humanity. The brain is the crown jewel of the human body.

Brain Myth --The Human Brain Is the Biggest Brain (Associated myth: The Bigger the Brain the Smarter You Are)

While scientists can't agree on a single definition of “intelligence,” they generally concur that humans are the most intelligent living creature on Earth. Because of this belief, some people assume that human beings also have the biggest brains – they assume that the bigger the brain, the smarter the animal. But that is not exactly true.

Century-Old Paradigm Overturned – Brain Shape Matters More Than Neural Connectivity

The shape of our brain rather than the interactions between various regions, plays a pivotal role in influencing our thoughts, emotions, and actions.

From Primitive Parts, A Highly Evolved Human Brain

From one perspective, the human brain is a masterpiece. From another, it's 3 pounds of inefficient jelly. Both views are accurate, and that's because our remarkable brain has been assembled from some very primitive parts.

Getting our head around the brain

The human brain is the most complex organ in the human body. The brain constitutes 2 per cent of a person’s body weight but consumes 20 per cent of the body’s energy.

Have we been brain-jacked by Instagram?

Put your phone down and pay attention to what I’m about to say. Because trust me, by the time I’m through, you may not ever want to pick it up again.

How adult brains learn the new without forgetting the old

They keep a stock of unused synapses in reserve, to be activated as needed.

How Poverty Changes the Brain

When a person lives in poverty, a growing body of research suggests the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve problems, set goals, and complete tasks in the most efficient ways.

How Smart Is Grandpa?

How much can you expect from a septuagenarian brain?

How your brain decides what to think

Indeed, much of our cognitive processing happens without conscious awareness. The brain holistically and unconsciously deals with all kinds of sensory information that comes in all at once.

Is exercise really good for the brain? Here’s what the science says

The health benefits of physical activity are undeniable. Yet, a recent study based on data published over the past 30 years challenges the famous adage Mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body) and questions the importance of exercise for both brain health and cognition.

Neuroanatomy

We all know that hesitation when you’re about to open a neuroanatomy textbook. It feels as though you’re about to go to Mordor. That’s usually due to the complexity of the subject, which textbooks often fail to simplify and thus give fuel to the theory that the nervous system is so hard to learn. It doesn’t have to be that way. In this article we will introduce you to the main concepts of neuroanatomy and the major structures of the nervous system.

Neurons are not the only brain cells that think

Astrocytes, for instance, may play a role in depression and anxiety.

Right Brain, Left Brain: A Misnomer

The human brain is basically symmetrical, split down the middle: the right cerebral hemisphere receives sensory input from and directs movement on the left side of the body, while the left hemisphere governs corresponding functions for the right side. Symmetry only goes so far, however—there are differences, too. Yet in recent years, the two sides of the brain have come to symbolize two sides of human nature; the left brain hailed (or disparaged) as “logical,”“analytical, and “intellectual,” and the “intuitive” right brain as the avatar of emotion and creativity. A host of popular books, educational strategies, and even therapeutic interventions have ensued, promising to enhance abilities and relieve mental maladies by optimizing function on one or the other side of the cerebral cortex. The reality is not so simple—and a good deal more interesting. And like so much in neuroscience, far from fully understood.

Science The Human Brain Looks Suspiciously Like the Universe, Which May Freak You Out

There are one too many similarities for this to be a coincidence.

Scientists discover why the human brain is so big

Molecular switch makes human organ three times larger than great apes’, study finds.

Secrets of the Creative Brain

A leading neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity shares her research on where genius comes from, whether it is dependent on high IQ, and why it is so often accompanied by mental illness.

Should Artificial Intelligence Copy the Human Brain?

The biggest breakthrough in AI, deep learning, has hit a wall, and a debate is raging about how to get to the next level.

The Brain, in Exquisite Detail

The Human Connectome Project is one of a growing number of large, collaborative information-gathering efforts that signal a new level of excitement in neuroscience, as rapid technological advances seem to be bringing the dream of figuring out the human brain into the realm of reality.

The Cerebral Cortex: A Very Tangled Web

One of the striking things about the cortex is that a brain region with such a stereotyped structural motif... also appears to be instrumental in such varied functions as seeing, hearing, understanding language, speaking, moving, planning, making moral and economic decisions, and more. It is easy to see why the cortex attracts such scientific attention, aside from its being relatively easy to access experimentally.

The Human Brain Is a Time Traveler

What will happen to our own time-traveling powers as we come to rely more on the prediction machines of A.I.? The outcome may be terrifying, or liberating, or some strange hybrid of the two. Right now it seems inevitable that A.I. will transform our prospective powers in meaningful new ways, for better or for worse

The Human Brain Looks Suspiciously Like the Universe, Which May Freak You Out

There are one too many similarities for this to be a coincidence.

The Human Brain: Fantastic, Fearful and Flawed

The human brains sits inside our skulls and is a wonderfully intricate and magnificent – but still relatively misunderstood - instrument that comes with us everywhere and guides our behaviour, both consciously and unconsciously. And it is flawed. It is flawed in the sense that it is not designed for the modern stresses and strains that we increasingly throw at it. We simply don’t have the brainpower for a world we now find ourselves having to cope with, pandemic or no pandemic.

The Quest to Decode the Brain

New tools that can give a more detailed look at how neurons work are leading the research of brain scientists in new directions.

The Upstairs and Downstairs of the Brain: Part One

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The ‘Mini Brains’ solving medical mysteries and raising concerns

It may seem like science fiction, but over the past decade scientists have been using stem cells to grow so-called “mini brains.” Researchers prefer the term brain organoids, a collection of human cells in a petri dish that mimic the structure and cell types of our own brains. They’ve been used to study diseases like cancer and Parkinson’s, and evaluate potential treatments, but now the research is becoming more sophisticated, and that’s raising big concerns. Could they become conscious?

We probably have big brains because we got lucky

Life makes mistakes. A major genetic study shows how some of those mistakes worked out well for humans.

We probably have big brains because we got lucky

Life makes mistakes. A major genetic study shows how some of those mistakes worked out well for humans.

What Makes Our Brains Special?

Some say not much, but new research sheds light on the uniqueness of the human brain.

What Makes The Human Brain Unique?

So the human brain may be remarkable, yes. But it is not special in its number of neurons. It is just a large primate brain. But let's play along.

What Makes Us; THE HUMAN BRAIN: Its Capacities and Functions. By Isaac Asimov.

ISAAC ASIMOV, the Boston University biochemist who likes to work at science fiction and the popularization of science, is an industry, not an individual. Or so it seems from the number of books he has turned out in the past several years. His latest is “The Human Brain: Its Capacities and Functions,” a companion to an earlier Asimov volume with a similar title, “The Human Body: Its Structure and Operation.”

What Makes Your Brain Different From a Neanderthal’s?

Scientists have discovered a mutation that increases the production of brain cells and seems to have set our ancestors apart from other hominins.

Why do humans have such huge brains? Scientists have a few hypotheses.

Congrats, you have an enormous brain! (For a primate.) Scientists are trying to figure out why.

Why is the brain shaped like it is?

The uniquely folded shape of the cortex is a major innovation in evolution that allowed an increase in the size and complexity of the human brain.

Why is the human brain so difficult to understand? We asked 4 neuroscientists.

Thoughts, memories, sensations — why are we still in the dark about how they work?

You Asked: How Can I Use More of My Brain?

It’s a myth that humans only use 10% of their brains. “That idea is not only inaccurate, it doesn’t make any sense,” says Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Even the simplest behaviors engage much of our brain.”

Your Brain: An Introduction to Its Anatomy

Your brain is one of those things many of us take for granted. As the site of human consciousness, the coordinator of voluntary movement, and the regulator of nonconscious processes, your ? can do it all. The brain is not just a blob of cells in your skull, and the anatomy of the brain is quite complex.

You’ve likely heard of the brain’s gray matter – here’s why the white matter is important too

The human brain is a three-pound organ that remains largely an enigma. But most people have heard of the brain’s gray matter, which is needed for cognitive functions such as learning, remembering and reasoning. More specifically, gray matter refers to regions throughout the brain where nerve cells – known as neurons – are concentrated. The region considered most important for cognition is the cerebral cortex, a thin layer of gray matter on the brain’s surface. But the other half of the brain – the white matter – is often overlooked. White matter lies below the cortex and also deeper in the brain. Wherever it is found, white matter connects neurons within the gray matter to each other.

Resources

6 Secrets About Your Brain

Stress makes you forget. Long-term stress can damage the hippocampus, an area that's essential to storing new memories.

Brain Initiative Alliance

The BRAIN Initiative® seeks to deepen understanding of the inner workings of the human mind and to improve how we treat, prevent, and cure disorders of the brain.

Know Your Brain

The articles are relatively short, and should serve as good introductory material if you are looking to learn more about the brain.

The brain is sooooo cool!

Dr Mason started the Neuroscience major at UChicago and was awarded the Quantrell Award, the nation’s oldest prize for undergraduate teaching, in 2018. More broadly, Dr Mason is a neuroevangelist, interested in teaching neurobiology to anyone that will listen. To that end, Dr Mason publishes a blog at https://thebrainissocool.com/ and has offered a massively open online course,