"Kenneth Collins" <k.p.collins at worldnet.att.net> skrev i melding
news:mj9W8.13653$Iu6.737934 at bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> Peter Douglas Zohrab wrote in message
> <4HvV8.4102$7G4.658649 at news.xtra.co.nz>...
> >[...]
>> >Assuming, for the sake of simplicity, that there are n forms of
> intelligence
> >that are each associated with one particular part of the male brain, then
> >surely it is conceivable, and it will often occur, that some of these
parts
> >will be, say, 5% larger than the male population mean, and some will be
5%
> >smaller -- and sometimes parts will be 10% or 15% or even 20% larger or
> >smaller than the mean. It seems to me obvious that, in some individuals,
> >the sum of these differences will result in a brain that is significantly
> >larger or smaller than the mean, and that we should expect this to be
> >correlated, respectively, with a higher or lower IQ, since the IQ is the
> sum
> >of scores in sub-tests of various forms of intelligence.
>>> all 'brains' undergo topologically-distributed hyper-/hypo- trophy as a
> by-product of the neural activation that occurs within them.
>> the maximum possible quantity of such neural activation is probably a
> function of genetic inheritance, and, on average, neural activation is
much
> smaller than this maximum because there are mechanisms built into the
brain
> whose main purpose is to minimize neural activation.
>> because of the actions of these minimization mechanisms tend stongly to be
> structurally 'egalitarian', if one 'area' undergoes hypertrophy, another
> 'area' will tend to undergo hypotrophy.
>> a well known, slightly-different, but still correlated, case ensues
> following loss of an extremity. neural processing spreads to the cortical
> foci of the former projections from the lost limb, yielding a
commensurately
> 'distorted' brain-side topographics map.
>> the same thing happens in cases of extremely-focused experience [as
> Einstein's whole life's experience was], but such has nothing explicitly
to
> do with 'maleness' or 'femaleness', and everything to do with experience
> [probably including prenatal experience pertaining to the Mother's
'stress'
> level, and shared nutrients, etc.] albeit, there're huge gender
stereotypes
> that focus experience.
>> the argument that a larger overall brain size is correlated with
> information-processing capacity is hard to defend because all things else
> being proportional, because of the longer fibers necessary, an
overly-large
> brain suffers a penalty in energy consumption and/or convergence 'time'.
> [which is another viewport into the hyper-/hypo- trophy stuff. to maintain
> overall minimization of energy consumption, and overall 'timely'
> convergence, requires a hypertophy-hypotrophy 'off-setting'. this, of
> course, can be 'stretched' a bit if it's the case that an individual
> experiences greater than 'normal' "leisure" ["leisure", here, is not
> necessarily a state of "ease".]]
>> before reading the page to which your post directed me, i'd only read
rather
> sketchy reports on "Einstein's brain". my understanding was that it was
cut
> up, fixed, and sat in a jar, almost lost, for decades, with only
> long-post-mortem investigation. the thing that i found most-interesting is
> that Einstein's brain was found to have significantly-mor neuralglia
cells.
Which is strange - glial cells are NOT information-processing cells, they're
functionally support cells IE oligodendrocytes, Schwann cells etc.
So how could Einstein be a genious, if his structural neural network wasn't
exceptional, if his brainsize were 'normal' ????
Brian
