Big brain or small brain?

Question

Does a bigger brain imply a smarter person? or does the smaller brain works better ?

Answer 1

Old belief correlates size of the brain to intelligence. Definitely, species with larger brains are obviously smarter than those with smaller ones. But that only applies if generally comparing to a relatively different sized brains of various species.

However, there are currently many debates against correlating the brain sizes to intelligence in certain species. Particularly in humans at present time, basing the brain sizes to compare the intelligence has no reliability.The weight or size of the brain are not easily interpretable indices of intelligence per say, though small observed differences may be statistically valid.

Defining and accurately measuring intelligence among humans with different educational and cultural backgrounds itself is already difficult. Then comes next is the functional diversity and connectional complexity of the brain which remains not fully understood.So how can you make a persons' smartness based on the brain size if the things behind as the basis of comparison are not well understood?

For the meantime, many believes that intelligence could be correlated to amount of the gray matter and the number of cortical folds.

There are few researches who found correlations between brain sizes and sizes. If such research are generally applicable, than we can say that the bigger brain the smarter the person. It still needs a larger scale research to accept such theory though.

You may be interested to read two of those researches:

(Women with larger brain better):
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20051223/brainsize_intelligence_20051223/20051223?hub=SciTech

(Brain size predicts intelligence):
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/71503.php

Answer 2

There are scientific studies that reach opposite conclusions about this question (i.e. big brains are correlated with intelligence, or they are not). The true answer is "we don't know" for sure.

Across species, there is some evidence that brain/body weight ratios do demonstrate increasing intelligence with greater ratios. But within Homo sapiens the correlation is still debated.

For individuals, a small-brained person can absolutely be smarter than a bigger-brained person. Take Anatole France, whose brain was 2.24 pounds, about 2/3 normal size.. he was a well-respected French novelist and intellectual.

There are better predictors of intelligence-- one study found that the more folds the brain has, the more intelligent the person is.

Answer 3

I think that the smartness of a person is determined by the number of folds a person has on his brain. Using the example of a whale and human, the whale will have a much bigger brain than a human but it isn't any smarter than a human. Hence, i think the smartness of a person is independent of the size of his/her brain.

Answer 4

undecided why you think of huge brains are dominant. that is been scientifically shown that the dimensions of the suggestions does not dictate intelligence. We basically use a small part of our suggestions and merely because of fact that is huge does no longer propose that is functioning.

Answer 5

ive heard that a smaller brain retains more information much more quickly and easily, but i cant back it up...