Why we don't need a brain

Re:Why we don't need a brain by scythe on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @10:04AM (#2812185)

Incidentally, while the cerebrum -- the big, wrinkled top part -- is the largest part of the brain, and the most well-studied, it actually only contains a minority of neurons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron#Neurons_in_the_brain

The cerebrum has ~16.3 billion neurons, whereas the cerebellum has ~69 billion.

Also, while people missing large parts of their brain can seem to do okay, the traumatic loss of even a small part of the brain can do severe damage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca%27s_area

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Re:Why we don't need a brain by voytek on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @12:47PM (#2812949)

It's exactly this discrepancy that I find so fascinating! It's what I spent my PhD on :)

I believe that the two major players here are plasticity and connectivity. If you lose a critical hub in the network, you're going to be much worse off than if you lose a loosely connected, plastic region.

That's the point of these two papers: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921401 <- free open access http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21040843 <- lame closed

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Re:Why we don't need a brain by tel on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @10:17AM (#2812229)

That's only counterintuitive if you consider density of neurons to be the most important factor for capacity. I'd be well surprised if the cerebrum continues to be outranked in things like dendritic and/or synaptic density.

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