Neurologists Debunk 11 Brain Myths
We only use 10% of our brains, but this is not true. The bigger the brain, the smarter the creature, right? Wrong. Size doesn't matter, and you can't prevent a stroke. Actually, hi, I'm Dr. Santoshi Bilakota, a clinical assistant professor in neurology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and I'm Dr. Brad Kamitaki, a neurologist and assistant professor at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Today, we'll be debunking myths about the human brain. The bigger the brain, the smarter the creature? Size actually does not matter when it comes to the brain because there are creatures out there with bigger brains than us, but probably not as complex. Your brain is really determined by your body proportion. When you think of a big brown bear that's way bigger than us, their brain is going to be bigger, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are smarter than us. We don't know that for sure because it hasn't been fully studied, but we've seen that in instances such as chimpanzees, they do have smaller brains, but we do know for a fact that chimpanzees are probably as smart as we are. Certainly, it's not the size of the brain that matters, but probably how complex it is and how well-developed certain areas are. Certain areas in humans are, for example, our language centers, which are just much more developed than a cow or even a chimpanzee. That's important in determining intelligence rather than the size itself. Also, how do we measure intelligence? That also becomes tricky because not everyone is intelligent in the same way. Non-cognitive factors.