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Is brain size related to intelligence? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:11
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
0:13
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is stuff you should Know. Yes,
0:18
Speaker 1: I think this might complete our brain. I don't know
0:22
Speaker 1: about that, because we've done Einstein's brain, You've done difference
0:25
Speaker 1: between men and women's brain, and now we're tackling brain size,
0:30
Speaker 1: which is sort of gets on both of us a
0:32
Speaker 1: little bit. It does, but there's always new findings. So yeah,
0:35
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. If there's ever an ongoing sweet,
0:39
Speaker 1: it's got to be the brain. Man. It's growing all
0:42
Speaker 1: the time. It's changing shape, changing size, changing connections. You
0:47
Speaker 1: could almost say that sweet is plastic plasticity. Baby. Yeah,
0:52
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, you sent me something that I think
0:55
Speaker 1: we should talk about first, Chuck. This is kind of like, um,
0:59
Speaker 1: this is just like a ad bag hodgepodge of loosely
1:03
Speaker 1: related studies that all find that we don't really know
1:07
Speaker 1: the answer to the question like does a big brain
1:11
Speaker 1: mean a smarter person? Yeah, because there's a lot of
1:15
Speaker 1: different conflicting findings. Well, a few million years ago, our
1:20
Speaker 1: brains started growing a lot and that kind of timed
1:23
Speaker 1: out with becoming smarter and using tools and things. So
1:26
Speaker 1: I mean there's a little bit of you call it evidence. Well, yeah,
1:30
Speaker 1: there's definitely some plenty of evidence. I think that's what
1:32
Speaker 1: the confounding part is that there's plenty of evidence that, yes,
1:36
Speaker 1: as a brain grows, it is correlated to intelligence. But
1:41
Speaker 1: then that's only holding true up to a point. I
1:44
Speaker 1: sounded like a Soviet immigrant. Just then that's only holding
1:48
Speaker 1: true up to a certain point. Right. He's in Branson, Missouri, though,
1:53
Speaker 1: did you know that. I think he's got like his
1:55
Speaker 1: own restaurant or something. Well, he's own theater, and I
1:58
Speaker 1: think all the theaters are food buttery. We should go
2:02
Speaker 1: to Branson, man that I want to see what that
2:04
Speaker 1: place is all about. Okay, you know yeah, I mean
2:08
Speaker 1: it's a parade of stars. If it's nineteen seventy three,
2:12
Speaker 1: you know. Uh, I bet your boy Ronnie mills Up
2:16
Speaker 1: is there. Yeah. If he doesn't have a place there,
2:20
Speaker 1: I'll bet he plays Branson fairly regularly. He sub lets
2:24
Speaker 1: he would play well there. Um, so Branson, how do
2:29
Speaker 1: we even get them? Yeah? So brain size does correlate
2:34
Speaker 1: to intelligence to a certain extent, But you can point
2:37
Speaker 1: out like, well, sperm whale has a seventeen pound brain.
2:41
Speaker 1: Holy cow, it must be the smartest animal on the planet.
2:44
Speaker 1: Well it's not. I'm sorry to tell you sperm whale
2:47
Speaker 1: fans that it's not the smartest animal on the planet.
2:50
Speaker 1: Humans are the smartest animal on the planet, and don't
2:53
Speaker 1: you forget it. But we don't have the largest brains,
2:57
Speaker 1: so you kind of take that idea of well, if
3:00
Speaker 1: it's not brain size, maybe it has to do with
3:03
Speaker 1: the size of your brain in relation to your body.
3:06
Speaker 1: Then we started to get a little closer to jack pot.
3:09
Speaker 1: But even still, I just want to I want to
3:11
Speaker 1: spoil it for everybody. There's no definitive answer. Yeah, but
3:14
Speaker 1: sometimes those are the best ones because we get to
3:17
Speaker 1: explore all this stuff and we can't really get anything
3:21
Speaker 1: wrong because nobody knows what's right. Oh I like this, then, yeah,
3:25
Speaker 1: I've turned you know these? Yeah, now now I feel
3:28
Speaker 1: good about this because I can't be wrong right exactly. Well,
3:32
Speaker 1: I guess we should start off with um a little
3:35
Speaker 1: bit about what determines what size brain you do have.
3:39
Speaker 1: And again they don't know everything about it, but they
3:41
Speaker 1: think that genetics plays apart. They know this in part
3:45
Speaker 1: by studying twins and identical twins um have, of course
3:52
Speaker 1: the same genes. Fraternal twins have about half the same genes,
3:57
Speaker 1: and there's a greater correlation in brain size if you're
3:59
Speaker 1: identical then fraternal. Yeah, so genetics, you know, looks like
4:02
Speaker 1: it probably plays a role. Yeah, And they've done a
4:04
Speaker 1: lot of exploration into what genes in particular have to
4:11
Speaker 1: do with brain size, and they've isolated a few. Um
4:14
Speaker 1: one is called beta catenin. There's a hyphen in there too.
4:20
Speaker 1: It's pretty flashy gene not beta carotene, no caten in.
4:25
Speaker 1: And who's who's coming up with the naming convention for genes?
4:29
Speaker 1: They are all over the place, like you can't look
4:32
Speaker 1: at the name of a gene and be like, that's
4:33
Speaker 1: obviously a gene unless there's like a couple of weird
4:36
Speaker 1: consonants and a number and then another consonant. Then you're like, well,
4:40
Speaker 1: that's a gene. But you're right, that's a gene. It
4:44
Speaker 1: is a gene, and it's a gene that they know
4:46
Speaker 1: controls brain growth because they've injected poor mice with this
4:49
Speaker 1: stuff until their heads exploded. Exactly their heads they fell
4:53
Speaker 1: short of exploding. But a lot of the mice died
4:55
Speaker 1: as a result of their heads growing too big. But
4:58
Speaker 1: they're they're they're brain means grew big, and as a
5:01
Speaker 1: result of their brains growing big, they exhibited um more intelligence,
5:06
Speaker 1: higher cognitive function. They injected these things with a gene
5:12
Speaker 1: your brain. That yeah, that made them smarter. But that,
5:16
Speaker 1: like Molly points out in this article, you can't. That
5:20
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we should start doing that because these mines
5:22
Speaker 1: are dying, so you can't. Just you can't play god,
5:24
Speaker 1: as they say, no, But it does make you wonder, like, Okay,
5:27
Speaker 1: you don't want to shoot up beta caton in like
5:30
Speaker 1: before the s A T S or anything like that,
5:32
Speaker 1: but like, is there a way to kind of tamper
5:36
Speaker 1: a little less but still tamper with that gene something
5:40
Speaker 1: put under your tongue and let it dissolve. Maybe sure,
5:43
Speaker 1: like you know, just epigenetically, just a tad bit. Yeah
5:47
Speaker 1: not maybe you know, amplify it just a tad and
5:49
Speaker 1: see what happens. But it would cause your brain to
5:52
Speaker 1: grow because that gene is partially responsible for the size
5:56
Speaker 1: that your brain gets to. That's right, as far as
5:59
Speaker 1: large your brains go. Yes, like it makes it larger. Yes,
6:04
Speaker 1: if you want to talk smaller brains, there's another gene.
6:08
Speaker 1: And boy, you're right. The names are all over the place,
6:11
Speaker 1: just convention wise. It's not like they have different names
6:13
Speaker 1: that some are numbers and dashes. And to get it together,
6:18
Speaker 1: people AESPM. It's an abbreviation for abnormal spindle like, uh,
6:24
Speaker 1: micro cephalely associated, that's the name of the gene. Yeah,
6:28
Speaker 1: that's it's just shameful. And they say microcephalely associated because
6:32
Speaker 1: that is a condition that you've probably seen before when
6:35
Speaker 1: you're born with a small head and small brain, which
6:38
Speaker 1: probably means you're going to have some cognitive impairment. So
6:41
Speaker 1: so right there, smaller brain is is correlated to lesser
6:47
Speaker 1: or lower faculty your cognitive function. Yeah, we should look
6:50
Speaker 1: into that more for another podcast. So I think it's
6:53
Speaker 1: uh from the images I saw, it looks like you
6:58
Speaker 1: remember like the movie Freaks. Yes, that that guy. I
7:02
Speaker 1: think that's so cute the deal. I think you have
7:04
Speaker 1: like normal sized nose and ears and eyes, but your
7:07
Speaker 1: actual head and skull and brain or smaller. You don't
7:11
Speaker 1: look like the the um the African Safari guy from
7:16
Speaker 1: Beetle Chuice not proportionately shrunk, right, it's yeah, how you
7:21
Speaker 1: get him down so small? Right? Favorite? What was that
7:24
Speaker 1: guy's name from Freaks? I've read about him before. No,
7:29
Speaker 1: he had his stage name. It was like Topsy or
7:33
Speaker 1: Flopsy or something like that, and he apparently like the
7:37
Speaker 1: greatest personality of all time, just so lovable and was
7:41
Speaker 1: just exploited basically his whole life until that movie like
7:46
Speaker 1: kind of got vengeance for him because he was a
7:49
Speaker 1: real life side show performer. Well that's good. Yeah, Topsy.
7:54
Speaker 1: It wasn't Topsy that was the elephant that Edison electrocuted,
7:58
Speaker 1: but it was something along those lines. Just a fun,
8:02
Speaker 1: fun name. Yeah, so check. There's another gene. This is
8:06
Speaker 1: a little more genetically sounding e m x two. Yeah
8:10
Speaker 1: that sel sounds like a dirt bike or a gene. Yeah,
8:16
Speaker 1: it's um Again, we're not We're not saying like, well,
8:21
Speaker 1: these are the genes that provide you with your intellect.
8:23
Speaker 1: These are just genes that they are saying these things
8:27
Speaker 1: have to do with the size of your brain, and
8:30
Speaker 1: they we also have figured out that if you mess
8:33
Speaker 1: with these genes, you may also be messing with cognitive function.
8:38
Speaker 1: So we're laying the groundwork here, everybody to bear with us.
8:42
Speaker 1: The e m x two gene UM apparently has to
8:46
Speaker 1: do with the growth of your UM, the functional subdivisions
8:50
Speaker 1: of the cortex. You have different cortices, they're responsible for
8:54
Speaker 1: different things. So like if in that New York Times
8:57
Speaker 1: article you seth me, the guy uses the visual cortex
9:00
Speaker 1: as an example, UM, where like you get all your
9:03
Speaker 1: visual sensory input and your brain puts it all together.
9:06
Speaker 1: That cortex, that region of your brain is responsible for
9:09
Speaker 1: a fairly specific but also very um complicated task. Now,
9:15
Speaker 1: this one functional cortex that the e m x two
9:19
Speaker 1: gene is responsible for UM has to do with basically input,
9:24
Speaker 1: sensory input and motor output. So your behavior, Like, um,
9:30
Speaker 1: if I came across this desk at you and like
9:32
Speaker 1: pinched your cheeks, you'd like jump back, I'd say, what
9:35
Speaker 1: is it Wednesday? Right? Yeah, you would make the connection
9:39
Speaker 1: that's Wednesday. Your behavior would occur. So, UM, this e
9:43
Speaker 1: m x two gene has to do with that cortex
9:47
Speaker 1: and its size. What they found is that bigger is
9:50
Speaker 1: not necessarily better. If you have a lower expression of
9:55
Speaker 1: it and you have a smaller subdivision of that cortex,
9:59
Speaker 1: you're not to do very well behaviorally functionally, like you
10:03
Speaker 1: won't be able to hit a baseball very well, all right,
10:07
Speaker 1: but if it's too big, if that gene over expresses,
10:10
Speaker 1: you don't get better at hitting a baseball. With this
10:13
Speaker 1: in particular, it seems to be fine tuned. So if
10:17
Speaker 1: you're not hitting that sweet spot, you're never going to
10:19
Speaker 1: hit a baseball. And there may be myriad other problems,
10:23
Speaker 1: but you're definitely not gonna hit that baseball. So that
10:26
Speaker 1: means you're born with baseball talent pretty much. Yeah, because
10:30
Speaker 1: it's genetic, and there's like there's some people who are
10:33
Speaker 1: so close to perfect that like baseball just comes naturally
10:36
Speaker 1: to right, right, like Robert Redford exactly. Yeah, he really
10:41
Speaker 1: gave those lights a wall. Yeah, he's the natural. So
10:46
Speaker 1: that's the genetic basis of it. Chuck. Yeah, and uh,
10:49
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk some about size if it's important,
10:54
Speaker 1: because this is sort of the debate that keeps going
10:57
Speaker 1: on and on. Is brain size corollary to intelligence levels? Uh?
11:02
Speaker 1: They did find or they have found links between if
11:05
Speaker 1: you have a lot of brain growth, um, if it's
11:08
Speaker 1: disproportionate early on, Um, they've linked that then early I
11:12
Speaker 1: mean the first twelve months too. They've linked that to autism.
11:15
Speaker 1: So super rapid growth may what it may do is
11:19
Speaker 1: just prevent those neural connections from happening like they should, right.
11:25
Speaker 1: Um And actually, well that's kind of links into that
11:29
Speaker 1: tethering thing I sent you too, it does, which we
11:31
Speaker 1: will talk about later. Um. In biology, though, is there's
11:36
Speaker 1: kind of this consensus that it's it's not the only determinant,
11:41
Speaker 1: that it has a lot to do with um environment
11:43
Speaker 1: as well, I think kind of as a whole. People
11:47
Speaker 1: who investigate correlations between brain size and intelligence have totally
11:51
Speaker 1: abandoned the idea that, um, like, your brain is predetermined
11:58
Speaker 1: to grow a certain way and then that's the Yeah. Well,
12:01
Speaker 1: size wise, they've also found that if you have a
12:04
Speaker 1: d h D, if you're an adolescent, your brain might
12:06
Speaker 1: be three to four percent smaller than your classmate who
12:09
Speaker 1: does not have a d h D. UM, and your
12:12
Speaker 1: brain shrinks as you get older, but doesn't necessarily lose
12:16
Speaker 1: functionality because of the shrinkage. It's not to say when
12:20
Speaker 1: you get older, you don't, you know, loose functionality, but
12:23
Speaker 1: it's not due to the size. No. They think that, um,
12:26
Speaker 1: it's probably mostly due to really Okay, that you're you're
12:32
Speaker 1: synapsies are just kind of built up with gunk remnant
12:36
Speaker 1: proteins from years and decades of firings. Then you shake
12:39
Speaker 1: that off by continuing to use it. Yes, that's one thing.
12:43
Speaker 1: But also they've recently found that, um, while you sleep,
12:48
Speaker 1: they think now the function of sleep. They didn't notice
12:51
Speaker 1: it before until I don't know what kind of new
12:54
Speaker 1: imaging technology they used, but they found out that there's
12:57
Speaker 1: this whole channel of like basically a sewage system that
13:02
Speaker 1: just clears out all the gunk from your brain while
13:05
Speaker 1: you're sleeping at night. And it's just that's why you
13:10
Speaker 1: are cognitively refreshed. That makes sense from sleep. And we've
13:13
Speaker 1: done we did one on why sleep is important, right, Yes,
13:16
Speaker 1: I think that was in there. We've done a bunch.
13:18
Speaker 1: There's a whole sleep suite too, alright. So one of
13:21
Speaker 1: the reasons why uh people are still debating whether or
13:25
Speaker 1: not brain size equals more intelligence or less intelligence is
13:29
Speaker 1: because when there are a lot of different ways to
13:31
Speaker 1: measure the brain, um, you know, like do you take
13:36
Speaker 1: a tape measure and go around it or do you
13:38
Speaker 1: go from the middle out or do you do it
13:41
Speaker 1: proportioned to your body size, which is a real measurement
13:45
Speaker 1: called insephalation quotient. And if they're talking about your body size,
13:49
Speaker 1: what if you're super fat? Like, there are all these
13:53
Speaker 1: different ways and no one I don't think has ever
13:55
Speaker 1: come to a consensus on the best way to actually
13:57
Speaker 1: do the measurement in the first place. No. And there's
13:59
Speaker 1: another a really big outstanding question is how do you
14:03
Speaker 1: measure intelligence? Like our i Q tests actually legitimate. Yeah,
14:08
Speaker 1: So when you have two parts of your equation that
14:12
Speaker 1: are both hinky, how can you come up with an answer? Well,
14:17
Speaker 1: it depends, like if you're comparing species to species, that
14:21
Speaker 1: in cephilization quotiation actually has been proven to be pretty effective.
14:25
Speaker 1: So like the proportion of your brain to your body
14:31
Speaker 1: size is a pretty decent predictor of your e Q
14:35
Speaker 1: is what it's called as a mammal. Yes, as as
14:38
Speaker 1: a mammal. When you go outside of mammals, it gets
14:40
Speaker 1: less and less effective. Um. But with humans, for example,
14:45
Speaker 1: we our our brain is like two point seven pounds
14:50
Speaker 1: on average, it's something like around two to three. I've
14:53
Speaker 1: seen as much as five, but I think it's about
14:55
Speaker 1: three percent of our body weight. Um. But it uses
14:59
Speaker 1: up a about of the energy, which is another measure
15:04
Speaker 1: like how much energy is your brain require? The more
15:07
Speaker 1: energy your brain requires. In addition to things like eq,
15:12
Speaker 1: you can get a pretty good idea of like how
15:14
Speaker 1: intelligent that being is. Well, Einstein's brain remembers this was
15:18
Speaker 1: the same size, but different parts were bigger than others. Right,
15:21
Speaker 1: so supposedly let's come under fire lately. Yeah, somebody was like,
15:25
Speaker 1: these studies are terrible, Like, you can't make these huge
15:30
Speaker 1: leaps and bounds and um in conclusions just from a
15:34
Speaker 1: couple of strips of brain tissue. But apparently most studies have.
15:41
Speaker 1: Well I think that's sort of like a juicy thing
15:43
Speaker 1: that people like to talk about Einstein's brain. Yeah, you know,
15:45
Speaker 1: I could see people making that leap, right, and the
15:47
Speaker 1: idea that like, oh, well, Einstein's brain is just like
15:50
Speaker 1: anybody else's, Well, that means that anybody could be a genius.
15:53
Speaker 1: You know. It really argues in favor of the nurture
15:56
Speaker 1: side of things. But if his brain is structurally different, well,
16:00
Speaker 1: the genius is an inborn natural thing. It's just nature
16:04
Speaker 1: versus nurture played out on pout. Einstein sliced up brain. Yeah,
16:08
Speaker 1: that lived in a garage for many years, like everyone's brain.
16:11
Speaker 1: So here's the most controversial thing, Like when you're comparing
16:15
Speaker 1: species to species, like you said, especially among mammals, chuck. Um,
16:20
Speaker 1: it's easier to say like, yes, this EQ thing works,
16:24
Speaker 1: but within a single species that when things starting to
16:27
Speaker 1: fall apart, for instance, specifically among humans. Um, men tend
16:33
Speaker 1: to have about a hundred grahams more mass to their
16:36
Speaker 1: brain than women. But if a bigger brain means that
16:41
Speaker 1: you are more intelligent, then does that mean that men
16:45
Speaker 1: are more intelligent than women? I think we all know
16:47
Speaker 1: that women are more intelligent than men. Okay, so then
16:50
Speaker 1: brain size really has nothing to do with it, at
16:54
Speaker 1: least intra species, That's what I'm saying. But um, there
16:58
Speaker 1: have been plenty of studies that I'm sure got a
17:00
Speaker 1: lot of people's hackles up. Um. One guy named Michael McDaniel,
17:05
Speaker 1: who's a psychologist, basically entered the news cycle bursting onto
17:11
Speaker 1: the scene in two thousand five, which is always a
17:14
Speaker 1: little bit like yeah's this guy right, Yeah, But he
17:17
Speaker 1: came up with a study that was ready made for CNN. Yeah.
17:21
Speaker 1: I mean he said flat out that bigger brains means
17:24
Speaker 1: you're smarter and that I E or e G. Which
17:28
Speaker 1: one is it? Uh? I EVE in this case, men
17:33
Speaker 1: are smarter than women. Yeah, yeah, that's what he was saying. Yeah,
17:37
Speaker 1: because he basically put brain imaging tests and i Q
17:41
Speaker 1: tests together and said, well, there's a direct correlation between
17:46
Speaker 1: the two. And again with these tests they did, uh,
17:50
Speaker 1: they compared, Um, they converted s A T scores of
17:54
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand seventeen and eighteen year old to an
17:57
Speaker 1: ice Q score And I don't see why they and
18:00
Speaker 1: had to do that, and they found that males average
18:02
Speaker 1: three point six three IQ points higher. But um, I
18:06
Speaker 1: don't know. It just seems really hinky because first of all,
18:09
Speaker 1: they used ten thousand more females and males, so that's
18:11
Speaker 1: gonna excuw things. And then it's an s A T R.
18:16
Speaker 1: What does that even mean? Yeah, it has been proven
18:18
Speaker 1: time and time again to be biased. Yeah, and then
18:20
Speaker 1: they converted that to an i Q source with some
18:23
Speaker 1: like I guess machine, seems like some things would be
18:25
Speaker 1: lost in translation. Yeah, I think it's a bunch of bunks.
18:28
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think you're not alone in the idea
18:30
Speaker 1: that it's a bunch of bunks. So a lot of
18:32
Speaker 1: um scientists have said, Okay, all right, this whole brain
18:37
Speaker 1: size correlating to intelligence stinks of phrenology when you're talking
18:43
Speaker 1: about looking at it just in the human species, right,
18:47
Speaker 1: So what is it though? I mean, surely there's got
18:49
Speaker 1: to be some biological part or aspect of the brain
18:55
Speaker 1: that correlates to intelligence. If it's not size in maybe
19:01
Speaker 1: it's the number of neurons that you have, Yeah, neural connections.
19:04
Speaker 1: A lot of people have thought that that was kind
19:07
Speaker 1: of the second to most recent wave in thinking about
19:12
Speaker 1: what brain structure correlates to intelligence. Yeah, this um was
19:17
Speaker 1: this the New York Times one about the tether hypothesis.
19:19
Speaker 1: This is just December of last year, so it's pretty recent.
19:23
Speaker 1: And a couple of neuroscientists from HAVID so you know
19:26
Speaker 1: they're right. Um, they had a pretty simple explanation. Um,
19:32
Speaker 1: when back in the day when tooktok had a little
19:34
Speaker 1: bitty tiny brain. Uh. Their argument is that the neurons
19:38
Speaker 1: were tightly tethered in a pretty simple connection pattern, and
19:43
Speaker 1: that when our brains started getting bigger, those tethers were
19:46
Speaker 1: torn apart and it formed h It enabled us, We
19:50
Speaker 1: formed new neurons and new neural pathways and new circuits.
19:53
Speaker 1: That that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah,
19:55
Speaker 1: it's like the brain size might have been about the same,
19:57
Speaker 1: and it was, but the neuro connections were still following
20:00
Speaker 1: the primal animal connectivity, where it's like they they connect
20:06
Speaker 1: in a predictable way, whereas with this untethered idea, they
20:12
Speaker 1: just blossomed out. And do you know the idea of um,
20:16
Speaker 1: like like what neuro connections look like today, rather than
20:19
Speaker 1: following like straight predictable lines, they were all over the place.
20:22
Speaker 1: And from these new connections, new associations arose, and that
20:26
Speaker 1: gave rise to intellect. According to this, it's pretty simple smart. Yeah,
20:30
Speaker 1: I like, I think sometimes the simplest hypotheses might be
20:33
Speaker 1: on target with acam's razor my friend, or maybe they
20:36
Speaker 1: just speak to me because I'm a dummy other ball um.
20:43
Speaker 1: So that's that is a competing explanation. Another one that
20:48
Speaker 1: I've seen, uh says that it's not not the neurons,
20:53
Speaker 1: not the number of neurons, not even the number of
20:55
Speaker 1: neural connections. It's the chemistry and the complexity of the
20:59
Speaker 1: neuro train sbmitters that are being conducted between these neurons,
21:04
Speaker 1: and from this has kind of come this new idea
21:07
Speaker 1: that it's folly to even say, well, humans are obviously
21:11
Speaker 1: smarter than a bottle knows dolphins, even though they're smart,
21:15
Speaker 1: because the bottle knows dolphins. Um experience understanding of life
21:24
Speaker 1: is so radically different from humans. Yeah, you can't. You
21:27
Speaker 1: can't compare intellect to intellect. Yeah you can't say, well,
21:30
Speaker 1: a dolphin can't, you know, talk and speak, but I
21:32
Speaker 1: can't do things a dolphin can do. Or maybe dolphins
21:35
Speaker 1: are speaking, I mean, to one another, just not to us.
21:38
Speaker 1: That doesn't make them less intelligent. So long, and thanks
21:41
Speaker 1: for all the fish and we're not Yeah, that's a
21:42
Speaker 1: good one, and we're not like anthropomorphizing here. Basically, there's
21:46
Speaker 1: there is very little um point I guess. Yeah, I
21:52
Speaker 1: don't get it to comparing the two. There's tremendous point
21:56
Speaker 1: to getting to cracking this code and understanding dolphin intellect
22:01
Speaker 1: or bird intellect, degreed octopus intellect and human intellect. But
22:06
Speaker 1: to compare them is it's an exercise and futility. There's
22:09
Speaker 1: no point to it. I don't get it. Yeah, I mean,
22:12
Speaker 1: compared dolphin A to dolphin B one, maybe smarter one
22:16
Speaker 1: might have a little patchy mustache and hang out at
22:18
Speaker 1: the gas station a lot. And that's not the smart one. Yeah.
22:22
Speaker 1: I think people do this to either. I think they're
22:24
Speaker 1: trying to claim some either superiority of animals over humans
22:28
Speaker 1: or humans over animals, right, And that's kind of that's
22:30
Speaker 1: a big issue of these days, Like there there are
22:32
Speaker 1: groups um animal rights groups that are trying to further
22:36
Speaker 1: animal rights by getting them inalienable rights like humans have right,
22:42
Speaker 1: which would really screw up the zoos system. Yeah, you
22:46
Speaker 1: can look for a podcast on that too. We did. Yeah,
22:48
Speaker 1: that was a good one. I think we landed pretty
22:51
Speaker 1: heavily against zoos. Yeah, we did. But to each their own.
22:58
Speaker 1: But I haven't been to a zoo since then. What
23:01
Speaker 1: is this Project Enigma? I thought that was pretty interesting.
23:04
Speaker 1: It was another genetic thing, this um it was. It
23:07
Speaker 1: was neat though in that like this Australian researchers said, Hey,
23:11
Speaker 1: we have something called internet and m r I S
23:14
Speaker 1: and willing participants, so everybody starts sending in your brain scans.
23:19
Speaker 1: Is that who proved that the complexity of the neural
23:21
Speaker 1: activity was the most important thing? Was that project? No,
23:25
Speaker 1: that was a different one. That was there was a
23:28
Speaker 1: New Scientist or no Scientific American article that um that
23:34
Speaker 1: explored that idea as the the synaptic proteins that create
23:39
Speaker 1: intellect or intelligence. But the Project Enigma basically found that
23:44
Speaker 1: there is a single mutation on a specific gene where
23:50
Speaker 1: if you have a C instead of T, I think
23:54
Speaker 1: you um have a bigger brain. And they correlated that
23:57
Speaker 1: to more intelligence. Yeah, but again using the i Q test. Well,
24:02
Speaker 1: what I'm tired of are the studies that throw out
24:06
Speaker 1: the results that don't make a fun headline, you know. Right,
24:11
Speaker 1: There was this one um from Smithsonian magazine from December
24:14
Speaker 1: of last year that uh, well they it wasn't from them,
24:17
Speaker 1: was from the Proceedings of the Royal Society b and
24:21
Speaker 1: Smithsonian reported on it. But it was a study of
24:25
Speaker 1: country mice and city mice. Well a bunch of animals.
24:28
Speaker 1: But they found that city mice and vol I don't
24:32
Speaker 1: even know what that is, v l E. Prairie vols?
24:35
Speaker 1: What is that? Like? They're very sweet. They they are
24:39
Speaker 1: monogamous like a bowl eevil, No, that's a bug. A
24:43
Speaker 1: bowl is like a like a prairie dog. You should
24:46
Speaker 1: look up prairie balls. Very cute and the idea that
24:48
Speaker 1: they're very sweetest, even better. You wouldn't like shoot one
24:52
Speaker 1: for being on your property. No, I mean some people would,
24:54
Speaker 1: but not good people. I know someone who does that
24:59
Speaker 1: kind of thing, shoots at voles, not bowls, but woodchucks
25:03
Speaker 1: with with the air rifles. That's not nice. He knows
25:07
Speaker 1: who he is. Boom. But this study basically said that
25:12
Speaker 1: city mice and city bowls had larger brains than country mice.
25:18
Speaker 1: And of course that makes a big headline because people
25:21
Speaker 1: are going to try and make the point that, you know,
25:22
Speaker 1: people that live in urban environments are smarter and the
25:25
Speaker 1: hillbillies out in the country are dumber. They study ten animals,
25:28
Speaker 1: only two of them showed that, and some of them
25:30
Speaker 1: showed the opposite that the I think bats and shrew's
25:35
Speaker 1: actually the country versions had larger brains. So they don't
25:39
Speaker 1: say any of that in the study because they just
25:40
Speaker 1: want a headline that says, you know, if you live
25:43
Speaker 1: in a city, you're smarter. Yeah, and we I mean
25:45
Speaker 1: we've been addressing this lately, like there is like a
25:49
Speaker 1: symbiotic collusion between bad science and bad science reporting, you know,
25:55
Speaker 1: yeah that results and stuff like that, where it's just like,
25:59
Speaker 1: you know, city city people are smarter than country people.
26:03
Speaker 1: Says this one study that where the data was massaged. Well,
26:07
Speaker 1: can you city person, can you go make butter with
26:10
Speaker 1: your hands? I have to say, can you farm land? No?
26:14
Speaker 1: Of course not um, but there it is possible that
26:19
Speaker 1: there's a basis to this. Whereas city people are, their
26:25
Speaker 1: brains are more stimulated than country folk perhaps, and so
26:29
Speaker 1: more neural connections, more plasticity takes place. I don't I
26:33
Speaker 1: don't think that's true. I think there's just as much
26:35
Speaker 1: stimulation in nature as there is in a city full
26:38
Speaker 1: of people. Spends once you're stimulated by I look at
26:42
Speaker 1: Dar when he spent his entire life living in the country. Yeah,
26:44
Speaker 1: for sure, But I mean like we're also we also
26:47
Speaker 1: have hundreds of thousands of years of latent inhibition built
26:51
Speaker 1: up against a lot of the stuff in nature, whereas
26:53
Speaker 1: the stuff in Times Square is relatively new, so our
26:57
Speaker 1: brain isn't doesn't defend against it quite as easily. So
27:01
Speaker 1: hence we're possibly more stimulated. I think it depends on
27:04
Speaker 1: what you're doing with your time. Sure, if you're out
27:06
Speaker 1: the country sitting around watching reality TV. If you're in
27:11
Speaker 1: your apartment watching reality TV. I found this other study
27:15
Speaker 1: today to um from Germany about pornography may reduce your
27:19
Speaker 1: brain size. Another kind of sexy headline, right and um
27:25
Speaker 1: sample size at three And it's always self reported to
27:29
Speaker 1: and when you're dealing with porn and self reporting, do
27:32
Speaker 1: you look at check the box? Do you think your
27:35
Speaker 1: brain is small? Check the boom? Yeah? How smart are you?
27:39
Speaker 1: Somebody called the Uh they cannot say that watching porn
27:42
Speaker 1: caused a decrease in brain matter, but they did say
27:45
Speaker 1: they found that the volume of striatom, a brain region
27:49
Speaker 1: that's been associated with reward processing and motivated behavior, was
27:54
Speaker 1: smaller the more pornography you consumed. And basically where they're
27:59
Speaker 1: at is we don't know whether it's causing this or
28:02
Speaker 1: if people did. Oh yeah, they gets struck dumb and
28:05
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, they're just end up watching porn more
28:10
Speaker 1: like in Idiocracy again that movie. There's probably been no
28:14
Speaker 1: other movie that's made more of a legitimate appearance in
28:18
Speaker 1: our episodes than that MOVIECCY, Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah,
28:23
Speaker 1: my judge, he's onto something. Do you watch Silicon Valley?
28:26
Speaker 1: I haven't I know. Uh, Kamal nan Giani's in it. Yeah,
28:30
Speaker 1: he's funny. Does he do well? Yeah, Martin Starr, it's
28:33
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's a good show. Nice, it's I think
28:36
Speaker 1: it was high time that someone took on the tech
28:38
Speaker 1: industry and like a comedy like that. Yeah, leave it
28:41
Speaker 1: to Mike Judge. I know if there's any crusader crusader
28:45
Speaker 1: people feeling good about, right, Yeah, it's Judge. Uh. If
28:51
Speaker 1: you want to know more about brain size in relation
28:56
Speaker 1: to whatever, just type in brain in the search part house.
29:00
Speaker 1: So first dot com and it's get lost. That's what
29:03
Speaker 1: I say. Type in brain and just go on a trip. Man.
29:07
Speaker 1: All right, that's right. Journey. I think that's the slogan
29:11
Speaker 1: for how stuff works. That's right, um answers, I said,
29:14
Speaker 1: search far as the time for what? Listener mail? Yes, okay,
29:19
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this help for a fan in need.
29:23
Speaker 1: It's hey, guys, I want some help please. My wife
29:25
Speaker 1: and I are expecting our first kid this summer, and
29:27
Speaker 1: thirteen days ago we also found out that my wife
29:29
Speaker 1: has staged four breast cancer. So we are spending our
29:33
Speaker 1: third trimester getting chemo. My goodness, I know, Uh, We're
29:37
Speaker 1: gonna kick cancer in the butt, we have no doubt,
29:38
Speaker 1: but we're scared and overwhelmed. Obviously, we're doing chemo now.
29:42
Speaker 1: Then we'll have the baby get more chemo than bilateral
29:45
Speaker 1: mastectomy than radiation. We have great doctors and great fins
29:49
Speaker 1: and families. So even in the face of this, we
29:51
Speaker 1: feel very lucky. Uh. And by the way, I gotta
29:53
Speaker 1: follow up more recently. That says, uh, there is no
29:59
Speaker 1: gestational ibtes and the cancer is already shrinking. Oh, it's great.
30:02
Speaker 1: So thanks are going great so far. Thanks for keeping
30:04
Speaker 1: us in suspense. I know I was gonna wait till
30:06
Speaker 1: the end. Uh. And he asked for a couple of favors.
30:09
Speaker 1: He said, First of all, if you want to follow
30:10
Speaker 1: and promote my tumbler, uh to keep people updated, it
30:13
Speaker 1: is um h T t P colon slash slash gala
30:18
Speaker 1: freaki diky g A l l i U f r
30:23
Speaker 1: e k y d e e k y dot tumbler
30:25
Speaker 1: dot com. He says, we're huge nerds and doctor who fans.
30:29
Speaker 1: So that was lost on me some doctor who reference,
30:32
Speaker 1: I guess apparently, so does that have to do with
30:34
Speaker 1: the phone booth. Maybe that's the only thing you know
30:36
Speaker 1: about same here. Um. Secondly, I'm biking a hundred and
30:40
Speaker 1: fifty miles to raise money, and could you plug that?
30:44
Speaker 1: And you can go to g O O dot g
30:47
Speaker 1: L slash two w j z x Q. People don't
30:52
Speaker 1: like normal words, well that's one of those shortened U
30:55
Speaker 1: R l oh. I see it's a google. Uh. And
30:58
Speaker 1: then third, how about a shout out. I think that's
31:00
Speaker 1: what we're doing here. My wife is a little shy,
31:02
Speaker 1: so just use her nickname the mayor. That's hilarious. Whereas
31:08
Speaker 1: a sash during chemo and childbirth. I guess, so, I mean,
31:11
Speaker 1: I call Emily the boss, so I guess it's the mayor.
31:15
Speaker 1: But the mayor is like the boss of several bosses,
31:17
Speaker 1: I would guess. Yeah. We used to call my friend
31:19
Speaker 1: Justin who you know, the mayor of Atlanta, because everywhere
31:22
Speaker 1: he went nobody knew him. He's a fellow. But now
31:25
Speaker 1: we just call him the manager of Atlanta because everywhere
31:28
Speaker 1: you go he has some improvement to that place, like
31:30
Speaker 1: the lighting is not quite right, or the door should
31:32
Speaker 1: be over there, the kitchen is not located properly Brits Yeah. Uh.
31:38
Speaker 1: And then forth, my wife works in public policy, specifically
31:40
Speaker 1: helping women and families get themselves out of poverty and
31:43
Speaker 1: advocating for low income workers. So there you have it.
31:47
Speaker 1: An awesome an incredible woman who dedicates her considerable talents
31:50
Speaker 1: helping others. He's pregnant and his breast cancer. Kind of
31:53
Speaker 1: hard to say no, right, I'm not above guilt tripping.
31:56
Speaker 1: So Bob from Swithmore, Pennsylvania. UM, there you go. People
32:01
Speaker 1: should go and check out that stuff and support your
32:02
Speaker 1: bike ride. And I hope things have continued to progress
32:05
Speaker 1: well for your wife and child and keep us updated. Yeah,
32:09
Speaker 1: and you keep me updated at the very least. If
32:12
Speaker 1: not everybody listening, I will. Okay, thanks a lot, Bob
32:16
Speaker 1: and the mayor, good luck to you both. And um,
32:20
Speaker 1: let's see if you want to get in touch with us,
32:23
Speaker 1: whether you're a mayor a provincial governor who knows, you
32:28
Speaker 1: can get in touch with us on Twitter at s
32:30
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
32:33
Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send
32:36
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works
32:39
Speaker 1: dot com and join us at our home on the web,
32:42
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
32:49
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
32:52
Speaker 1: dot com