Login
The Big Brain: Size and Intelligence
Share
- Details
- Text
- Audio
- Downloads
- Extra Reading
For centuries, scientists have tried to identify what is special about the human brain. How do we approach this problem from a mathematical standpoint? The first hypothesis is that bigger is better, in some sense. This introductory lecture uses scaling laws and simple ideas from statistics to study the brains of humans and animals and uncover basic principles that govern their sizes, as well as testing hypotheses that link size to intelligence.
Download Text
We are unable to place the text in-page, as the equations and numbering do not display correctly.
Joseph Robert Burger, Menshian Ashaki George Jr, Claire Leadbetter, and Farhin Shaikh.
The allometry of brain size in mammals. Journal of Mammalogy, 100(2):276–283, 2019.
William A Calder. Size, function, and life history. Courier Corporation, 1996.
Ian Deary. Looking down on human intelligence: From psychometrics to the brain, volume 36. OUP Oxford, 2000.
Anatole S Dekaban and Doris Sadowsky. Changes in brain weights during the span of
human life: relation of brain weights to body heights and body weights. Annals of Neurology: Official Journal of the
American Neurological Association and the Child Neurology
Society, 4(4):345–356, 1978.
A. Goriely. The Mathematics and Mechanics of Biological Growth. Springer Verlag, New
York, 2017.
Stephen J Gould. Allometry in primates, with emphasis on scaling and the evolution of
the brain. Contributions to primatology, 5:244–292, 1975.
Stephen Jay Gould, Steven James Gold, et al. The mismeasure of man. WW Norton &
company, 1996.
PH Harvey and MD Pagel. The allometric approach to species differences in brain size.
Human Evolution, 3(6):461–472, 1988.
Suzana Herculano-Houzel. The human advantage: a new understanding of how our brain
became remarkable. MIT Press, 2016.
Julian Huxley. Problems of relative growth. Methuen, 1932.
Thomas A MacMahon and John Tyler Bonner. On size and life. Scientific American Books,
1983.
Jakob Pietschnig, Lars Penke, Jelte M Wicherts, Michael Zeiler, and Martin Voracek.
Meta-analysis of associations between human brain volume and intelligence differences:
How strong are they and what do they mean? Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews,
57:411–432, 2015.
Line Jee Hartmann Rasmussen, Avshalom Caspi, Antony Ambler, Jonathan M Broadbent,
Harvey J Cohen, Tracy d’Arbeloff, Maxwell Elliott, Robert J Hancox, HonaLee Harrington,
Sean Hogan, et al. Association of neurocognitive and physical function with gait speed in
midlife. JAMA network open, 2(10):e1913123–e1913123, 2019.
Knut Schmidt-Nielsen. Scaling: why is animal size so important? Cambridge University
Press, 1984.
10
D’Arcy W. Thomspon. On Growth and Form: The Complete Revised Edition. Dover, New
York, 1992.
This event was on Tue, 17 Sep 2024
Support Gresham
Gresham College has offered an outstanding education to the public free of charge for over 400 years. Today, Gresham plays an important role in fostering a love of learning and a greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Your donation will help to widen our reach and to broaden our audience, allowing more people to benefit from a high-quality education from some of the brightest minds.
