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Turgenev's brain weight. Human brain

Scientists study and determine the ratio of the brain volume to the body volume of living beings on Earth. They also found out which animal has the heaviest brain. It is known that among people there are champions in brain weight.

Who has the largest brain in relation to the body?

Comparing the ratio of brain mass to body mass, it turned out that among vertebrates the hummingbird ranks first. For this bird, this ratio is 1 \ 12. It would be possible to determine the ratio among invertebrates, but as such they do not have a brain, but there are nerve nodes or ganglia. If we calculate the ratio by comparing the mass of the nerve endings with the body mass of invertebrates, it turns out that the ant is the record holder. His ratio is equal to 1/4.

If a person had a ratio of 1/4, like that of an ant, the head would weigh at least twenty kilograms, and would be about eight times more. However, the ant's brain is forty thousand times smaller than the human brain when comparing the number of cells that make up it.

Scientists have carried out studies and experiments to understand whether an ant has a mind. It turned out that these miniature insects are able to generalize and synthesize information received by them.

Ants can learn, they mature gradually, which confirms their complex social appearance. And the more complex the species, the more time the ant spends on training. It is the nervous system that prevents ants from being considered intelligent animals. Due to the fact that the brain of this insect consists of five hundred thousand neurons, it is not capable of thinking. A number of scientists believe that among ants there is a distribution of the brain between members of the colony. This distribution is comparable to connecting computers over the Internet to accomplish specific tasks.

It turns out that each ant is a small particle of a huge superbrain. This is a mystery for scientists, which they are trying to guess. There is a version that they act in concert thanks to radio waves or telepathy.

Surprisingly, such a coincidence - a similar ratio in humans is the same as that of the Mormyrus fish or the elephant fish. It is equal to 1 \ 38-1 \ 50. Among fish, it is the Mormirus fish that has the highest ratio of brain mass to its body mass.

After examining the ratio of interest among primates, it was found that it is not at all in humans, but in the Squirrel Monkey or Saimiri. This ratio for this primate is 1/17.

Animals with big brains

Researchers, after observing dozens of different species of animals, concluded that those whose absolute brain volume is larger, have better control over their behavior. We are not talking about the mass of the brain, but about its relationship with the volume of the body. Interestingly, monkeys, wolves, carnivorous dogs showed good composure, but the elephant showed poor results.

It is possible to evaluate the brain not by the ratio of its volume to the volume of the body, but by its size. There are several record holders. It is known that the elephant has the largest brain mass among land animals. About five kilograms - this is how much the brain of an Indian elephant weighs.

The record holder among all living things on the planet in terms of brain weight is the whale Physeter Macrocephalus. The brain of this animal can reach nine kilograms. However, if you calculate the ratio of the brain to the body, you get 1 \ 40,000. The weight of a whale's brain depends on its age and species. It is known that the blue whale is much larger than the sperm whale, but its brain is smaller and weighs only six kilograms eight hundred grams.

Another owner of a large brain is the northern beluga dolphin. His brain weighs two three hundred and fifty grams, while the bottlenose dolphin weighs only one kilogram seven hundred and thirty-five grams.

Man is a living creature of the planet with a large brain. On average, his brain weighs from one kilogram twenty grams to one kilogram nine hundred and seventy grams.

The largest human brain

The weight of a person's brain depends on many factors. First, the male brain is larger than the female by about one hundred to one hundred and fifty grams. There is no significant difference in brain weight between individual races.

Our ancestors had a much smaller brain than ours. Weight changed significantly when the first primitive man appeared. The brain of Pithecanthropus did not exceed nine hundred cubic centimeters, and the brain of Sinanthropus was about one thousand two hundred and twenty-five cubic centimeters, thus catching up with the brain of a modern woman. It is known that Cro-Magnons possessed a brain, the volume of which is one thousand eight hundred and eighty cubic centimeters.

Today, the brain of a European is about one thousand four hundred and forty-six cubic centimeters. It can be concluded that every two hundred years, the brain "dried out" by one cubic centimeter. Hopefully, the decrease in volume does not lead to a drop in intelligence, but is caused by an improvement in design.

It is known that Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev's brain weight turned out to be equal to two kilograms and twelve grams. One could consider his brain the largest, however, in a certain individual who lived for only three years, the weight of the brain was two kilograms nine hundred grams.

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Brain mass

The brain mass of normal people ranges from 1020 to 1970 grams. The brain of men weighs 100-150 grams more than the brain of women. In men, it is 2% of the total body weight, in women - 2.5%. It is widely believed that the mental abilities of a person depend on the mass of the brain: the greater the mass of the brain, the more gifted a person is. However, it is obvious that this is not always the case. For example, the brain of I.S.Turgenev weighed 2012 g, and the brain of Anatole France - 1017 g. The heaviest brain - 2900 g - was found in an individual who lived only 3 years. His brain was functionally defective. So, there is no direct relationship between the mass of the brain and the mental abilities of an individual individual. However, in large samples, numerous studies have found a positive correlation between the mass of the brain and, as well as between the mass of certain parts of the brain and various indicators of cognitive abilities.

The degree of development of the brain can be assessed, in particular, by the ratio of the mass of the spinal cord to the brain. So, in cats it is 1: 1, in dogs - 1: 3, in lower monkeys - 1:16, in humans - 1:50. In people of the Upper Paleolithic, the brain was noticeably (10-12%) larger than the brain of modern humans

The structure of the brain

Brain, structure

The volume of the human brain is 91-95% of the capacity of the skull. In the brain, five sections are distinguished: the medulla oblongata, the posterior, which includes the bridge and cerebellum, the middle, diencephalon and forebrain, represented by the large hemispheres. Along with the above division into divisions, the entire brain is divided into three large parts:

Cerebral hemispheres;
Cerebellum;
Brain stem.

The cerebral cortex covers two hemispheres of the brain: the right and the left.

The meninges of the brain

The brain, like the spinal cord, is covered with three membranes: soft, arachnoid and hard.

The soft, or vascular, shell of the brain (lat. pia mater encephali) directly adjoins the substance of the brain, enters all the grooves, covers all the convolutions. It consists of loose connective tissue, in which the numerous vessels that feed the brain branch out. Thin processes of connective tissue extend from the choroid, which go deeper into the mass of the brain.

The arachnoid membrane of the brain (lat. arachnoidea encephali) - thin, translucent, has no vessels. It fits tightly to the convolutions of the brain, but does not enter the grooves, as a result of which subarachnoid cisterns filled with cerebrospinal fluid are formed between the choroid and arachnoid, due to which the arachnoid is nourished. The largest, cerebellar-oblong cistern, is located behind the fourth ventricle, the median opening of the fourth ventricle opens into it; the cisterna of the lateral fossa lies in the lateral groove of the cerebrum; inter-pedicle - between the legs of the brain; cistern crossroads - at the place of visual chiasm (crossroads).

The dura mater of the brain (lat. dura mater encephali) is the periosteum for the inner medullary surface of the skull bones. In this shell, the highest concentration of pain receptors in the human body is observed, while pain receptors are absent in the brain itself.

The dura mater is built of dense connective tissue, lined with flat moist cells from the inside, tightly fused with the bones of the skull in the area of its inner base. Between the hard and arachnoid membranes there is a subdural space filled with serous fluid.

Structural parts of the brain

Computer tomogram of the brain.

Medulla

The medulla oblongata (lat. medulla oblongata) develops from the fifth cerebral vesicle (additional). The medulla oblongata is an extension of the spinal cord with impaired segmentation. The gray matter of the medulla oblongata consists of individual nuclei of the cranial nerves. The white matter is the pathways of the spinal cord and brain that stretch upward into the brain stem, and from there into the spinal cord.

On the anterior surface of the medulla oblongata, there is the anterior median fissure, on the sides of which there are thickened white fibers called pyramids. The pyramids taper downward due to the fact that some of their fibers pass to the opposite side, forming an intersection of the pyramids that form a lateral pyramidal path. Some of the white fibers that do not intersect form a straight pyramidal path.

Bridge (lat. pons) lies above the medulla oblongata. This is a thickened roller with transversely arranged fibers. In the center of it passes the main groove, in which the main artery of the brain lies. On both sides of the furrow there are significant elevations formed by pyramidal paths. The bridge consists of a large number of transverse fibers that form its white matter - nerve fibers. There are many accumulations of gray matter between the fibers, which form the cores of the bridge. Continuing to the cerebellum, nerve fibers form its middle legs.

Cerebellum

Cerebellum (lat. cerebellum) lies on the posterior surface of the bridge and the medulla oblongata in the posterior cranial fossa. Consists of two hemispheres and a worm that connects the hemispheres to each other. The mass of the cerebellum is 120-150 g.

The cerebellum is separated from the cerebrum by a horizontal slit, in which the dura mater forms the cerebellar tent, stretched over the posterior fossa of the skull. Each hemisphere of the cerebellum is composed of gray and white matter.

The gray matter of the cerebellum is contained on top of the white matter in the form of a cortex. The nerve nuclei lie inside the cerebellar hemispheres, the mass of which is mainly represented by white matter. The bark of the hemispheres forms parallel grooves, between which there are convolutions of the same shape. The grooves divide each hemisphere of the cerebellum into several parts. One of the particles, a patch adjacent to the middle pedicles of the cerebellum, is secreted more than others. It is phylogenetically the oldest. The flap and nodule of the worm appear already in the lower vertebrates and are associated with the functioning of the vestibular apparatus.

The cerebellar cortex consists of two layers of nerve cells: outer molecular and granular. Bark thickness is 1-2.5 mm.

The gray matter of the cerebellum branches into a white one (in the midline section of the cerebellum, one can see like a twig of an evergreen thuja), therefore it is called the tree of life of the cerebellum.

The cerebellum is connected to the brain stem by three pairs of legs. The legs are represented by bundles of fibers. The lower (tail) legs of the cerebellum go to the medulla oblongata and are also called cord bodies. They include the posterior spinal cord-cerebellar tract.

The middle (bridge) legs of the cerebellum are connected to the bridge, transverse fibers pass through them to the neurons of the cerebral cortex. A cortical-bridge path passes through the middle legs, due to which the cerebral cortex affects the cerebellum.

The upper legs of the cerebellum in the form of white fibers go in the direction of the midbrain, where they are located along the legs of the midbrain and closely adjoin them. The superior (cranial) legs of the cerebellum consist mainly of the fibers of its nuclei and serve as the main pathways that conduct impulses to the optic hillocks, the podzoroumbolic region and the red nuclei.

The legs are in the front and the tire is in the back. Between the tire and the legs runs the midbrain aqueduct (Silvius aqueduct). It connects the fourth ventricle to the third.

The main function of the cerebellum is reflex coordination of movements and the distribution of muscle tone.

Midbrain

Cover of the midbrain (lat. mesencephalon) lies above its lid and covers the midbrain aqueduct from above. The cover contains a tire plate (quadruple). The two upper mounds are associated with the function of the visual analyzer, act as centers of orienting reflexes to visual stimuli, and therefore are called visual. The two lower tubercles are auditory, associated with orientation reflexes to sound stimuli. The upper mounds are connected with the lateral geniculate bodies of the diencephalon by means of the upper handles, the lower mounds are connected with the lower handles of the medial geniculate bodies.

From the tire plate, the spinal path begins, which connects the brain to the spinal cord. Efferent impulses pass through it in response to visual and auditory stimuli.

Large hemispheres

Large hemispheres of the brain. These include the lobes of the hemispheres, the cerebral cortex (cloak), the basal ganglia, the olfactory brain, and the lateral ventricles. The cerebral hemispheres are separated by a longitudinal slit, in the depression of which the corpus callosum is contained, which connects them. The following surfaces are distinguished on each hemisphere:

upper-lateral, convex, facing the inner surface of the cranial vault;
the lower surface located on the inner surface of the base of the skull;
the medial surface, with the help of which the hemispheres are connected to each other.

In each hemisphere there are parts that protrude the most: in front - the frontal pole, behind - the occipital pole, on the side - the temporal pole. In addition, each cerebral hemisphere is divided into four large lobes: frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal. In the deepening of the lateral fossa-brain, there is a small lobe - an islet. The hemisphere is divided into lobes by furrows. The deepest of them is lateral, or lateral, it is also called the Sylvian furrow. The lateral groove separates the temporal lobe from the frontal and parietal. From the upper edge of the hemispheres, the central groove, or Roland's groove, goes down. It separates the frontal lobe of the brain from the parietal. The occipital lobe is separated from the parietal only from the side of the medial surface of the hemispheres - by the parieto-occipital furrow.

The cerebral hemispheres are covered from the outside with a gray matter that forms the cerebral cortex, or cloak. There are 15 billion cells in the cortex, and if we take into account that each of them has from 7 to 10 thousand connections with neighboring cells, then we can conclude that the cortex is flexible, stable and reliable. The surface of the cortex is significantly increased by the furrows and convolutions. The phylogenetic cortex is the very structure of the brain, its area is approximately 220 thousand mm 2. soy

Literature

Sagan Karl Dragons of Eden. Reasoning about the evolution of the human mind = Carl Sagan. The Dragons of Eden. Speculations on the evolution of human intelligence. - SPb. : TID Amphora, 2005 .-- S. 265.
Bloom F., Leiserson A., Hofstedter L. Brain, Mind and Behavior. M., 1988

Notes (edit)

Links

Doctor of Biological Sciences Tatyana Stroganova about the human brain in the Science 2.0 program, Continued

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what the "Human Brain" is in other dictionaries:

An organ that coordinates and regulates all vital functions of the body and controls behavior. All our thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires and movements are associated with the work of the brain, and if it does not function, a person goes into a vegetative state ... Collier's Encyclopedia

- (cephalon), the anterior part of the central nervous system of vertebrates, located in the cranial cavity; the main regulator of all vital functions of the body and the material substrate of its higher nervous activity. Phylogenetically G. of m. Front end ... ... Biological encyclopedic dictionary

1. Cerebral hemisphere (telencephalon) 2. Thalamus (... Wikipedia

Central nervous system (CNS) I. Cervical nerves. II. Pectoral nerves. III. Lumbar nerves. IV. Sacral nerves. V. Coccygeal nerves. / 1. Brain. 2. Diencephalon. 3. Midbrain. 4. Bridge. 5. Cerebellum. 6. The medulla oblongata. 7.…… Wikipedia

- (Encephalon). A. Anatomy of the human brain: 1) structure of the G. of the brain, 2) the membranes of the brain, 3) blood circulation in the G. of the brain, 4) brain tissue, 5) the course of fibers in the brain, 6) weight of the brain. B. Embryonic development of G. of the brain in vertebrates. WITH.… … Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Sometimes in relation to a stupid person you can hear the comic comparison "the brain is like a shell." And you never wondered how much does the human brain weigh and what does this indicator depend on? Let's try to figure it out.

Brain weight: what scientists say

There are several factors that affect how much does the human brain weigh... These are, in particular:

his age;
total body weight;
nationality;
health status.

If we talk about how much does the human brain weigh on average, then in men - about two percent of body weight, in women - 2.5 percent. But at the same time, the male brain weighs 100-150 grams more.

There are more accurate figures in scientific works - adult brain weight ranges from 1275 grams (for a woman) to 1375 grams (for a man). Although some scientists argue that this figure can range from one to two kilograms. And this is understandable, because, as mentioned above, a lot also depends on body weight.

Also, brain mass can be affected by certain diseases that enlarge its cortex. Scientists have recorded the fact that one demented person's brain weighed 2850 grams.

The brain reaches its maximum weight at the age of 27. With age, he "loses weight" by thirty grams every ten years. In a newborn baby, the brain mass is about ten percent of the body weight, on average it is about 450-455 grams.

How much does the brain of an adult weigh does not depend on his mental abilities. For example, in two famous writers A. Frans and S. Turgenev, who lived at the same time, the weight of the brain differs almost twice. Byron's brain weighed 2238 grams, Yesenin's - 1920 grams, and Lenin's - 1340 grams, Walt Whitman's - 1256 grams in general.

It has been proven that the level of intelligence and the presence of talent do not depend on the weight of the brain, but on the “gray matter”. And here the main role is played by the density of the arrangement of neurons, the number of connections between them.

But this indicator just depends on the race, nationality. According to anthropologists, the brain weight of a black person is slightly less than that of a white person. The heaviest brain is in Belarusians (1429 grams), Poles (1420 grams), and the lightest is in Australians (1185 grams), French (1280 grams), Asians - Japanese, Koreans (1376 and 1313 grams, respectively), as well as black Americans (1223 grams). The Russian brain weighs 1399 grams.

Another interesting fact: only about 30-35 grams - here how much the human spinal cord weighs.

How are the brain and the human mind, intelligence connected? Is it true that a large brain is the hallmark of a particularly intelligent person? Let's try to figure it out.

The brain is an organ of the central nervous system, one of the most important in the human body. Located in the cranium, its brain region. The skull protects the brain tissue from damage. The human brain itself consists of a huge number of nerve cells and is responsible for thinking and consciousness.

Millennia passed before people realized that the brain is the governing center for the entire body. It depends on the work of the brain how smart a person is, what is the level of his intelligence. And a natural question arose: is the size of the brain associated with mental abilities? It seems that the smarter a person is, the larger the brain should be? However, this is a delusion.

According to many years of statistics, many outstanding people had very small brains. Conversely, the brain weighing 2.8 kilograms was in the head of a mentally disabled person. There are also known specific diseases that affect brain enlargement.

Human bodies differ in their parameters, the same applies to the brain. However, there are statistical studies on how much the human brain weighs on average, how it changes. According to modern data:

The average value of the weight of the human brain is 1200-1400 grams.
The adult brain usually weighs in the range of 1100-2000 grams.
In different races, the average brain weight is different.
Also, on average, the male brain is heavier than the female by about 100 grams.

The weight of the brain throughout life is a variable value: at first it grows with a person, reaches its maximum value by about 27 years, then the weight begins to decrease, by about 3 grams per year.

In an adult, the brain weighs about 2% of the total body weight. In newborns, the brain takes up to one tenth of the total weight of the baby. Usually at birth, a person has a brain weighing 300-500 grams.

It is interesting that with such a ratio of body weight to brain in an adult, this most important organ, even at rest, consumes about 10% of the energy entering the body. And if mental activity begins, then the need for energy increases, reaching 25%. Plus, the brain needs a lot of oxygen - about a third of the useful gas entering the body is taken by the brain. Therefore, oxygen starvation is so scary - it leads to the destruction of brain cells.

Returning to the question of the relationship between brain weight and intelligence, examples of outstanding people can be cited. For example, the poet George Byron's brain weighed more than 2,200 grams, the writer Ivan Turgenev's - over 2,000 grams. Physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who studied in particular the work of the brain, himself had a brain weighing 1650 grams. Revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky - respectively 1340 and 1560. As you can see, the numbers are very different, and completely out of proportion to the mental abilities and giftedness of people.

Dependence of brain weight and intelligence level

Without knowing the results of scientific research, one can draw a simple conclusion about the dependence of the mass of the head and its mental abilities. Like, if a person is stupid, then he has few "brains". Conversely, smart people are often called "brainy", although the size of their heads does not differ from those around them.

However, the research of scientists will amaze you. The largest brain, the mass of which could be measured, belonged to a feeble-minded person. Scientists were surprised to learn how much he weighs after the patient's death: almost 3 kg! In genius or just smart people, the brain weighed no more and no less than the rest. In addition, as mentioned above, a person's brain weight gradually decreases after the age of 27. The brain is weighed after the death of a person, that is, as a rule, in old age.

Knowledge of the structure of this organ will help explain these differences in the weight of the "brains". Mental ability is affected by the gray matter of the brain, which is a dense network of nerve cells. It is not known how many of them are absolutely certain, but the bill goes into the billions. Smart people have more of these cells than others, but they do not greatly affect the brain mass. But dementia is characterized by an increase in the thickness of the cerebral cortex, which gives a significant increase in mass.

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Brain mass of some famous people

How much a person's brain weighs is best studied using specific and well-known examples. Weighing the brains of famous personalities once again confirmed the fact that the mass of a person's brain tissue does not in any way affect his genius. Below is a list of famous people whose brain data were obtained after autopsy. As you can see, the range of values is quite large:

Sergey Yesenin: 1.92 kg;
Leon Trotsky: 1.57 kg;
Otto von Bismarck: 1.97 kg
Vladimir Lenin: 1.34 kg;
Ludwig van Beethoven: 1.75 kg
Anatole France: 1.02 kg;
Ivan Turgenev: 2.01 kg.

It is especially unusual to see the last two lines. The "brains" of two famous writers differ from each other by two times in mass. This means that it does not matter at all how much a person's brain weighs.

Comparison of human and animal brains

It is possible to use the weight of the brain as a confirmation of the high mental abilities of a person only in comparison with animals. In this case, the comparison should be carried out not in absolute values, but in relation to the mass of the rest of the body. After all, if we take only numerical values, then the most "intelligent" mammal on Earth would be the blue whale. How much its brain weighs can be read in the book of records: as much as 9 kg, which is the highest figure among all animals .. However, these 9 kg make up only 1/40000 of the rest of the whale's mass, which speaks volumes about its "mental abilities".

The elephant's brain weighs less - about 4-5 kg, and the ratio between this value and the mass of the rest of the body is about 1: 500. Compared to whales, this is a very good indicator, so it should come as no surprise that elephants are considered intelligent animals. Dolphins are considered even smarter mammals, the brain mass of which in different species lies in the range of 1.7-2.3 kg. In monkeys of the chimpanzee species, the brain weighs about 0.75-0.8% of the total body weight.

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