A series of well-known paradoxes are frequently raised… Why are some people supposedly smarter than others? Can the new scientific knowledge of the brain tell us everything related to brain function? How can this nervous system organ, rich in neurons with specialized functions, be the basis for all our thoughts, feelings, fantasies, memories, hopes, intentions, knowledge?
The brain is characterized by a design of little elegance, a conjoined mass that performs an impressive and fundamental series of functions for our human experience. The particular texture of our feelings, perceptions and actions derives, in large part, because this mass is not an optimizing and problem-solving machine, but an extraordinary agglomeration of ad hoc solutions accumulated over 500 million years in evolutionary history.. The human brain, with a volume of about 1,300 cm3 and weighing around 1.3 kilos (adulthood -20 years), of enigmatic, rather sticky and gelatinous pinkish substance, is considered the best organized apparatus in the universe. A fabulous machine that receives, digests and gives meaning to all human experience, originates and regulates all thoughts,emotions and actions, whether conscious or unconscious.
This organ is the most complex in the human body. It is made up of around 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, accompanied by their supporting cells, the glial ones, which can communicate with electrochemical signals through a billion trillion synapses and 1 million kilometers of interconnected fibers. Surprising true.
In this sense, every neuron has a white, filiform fiber that comes out of each of its ends, and each fiber connects with nerve cells, which creates a communication network that finally reaches all areas of the human body, sending messages or nerve impulses that circulate throughout this network within the brain, from the brain to the body, and then back. This is why, at every moment of existence, even in sleep, nerve cells launch millions of impulses towards the brain, which would be overwhelmed by so much information if there were no system that filters and condenses it. This occurs partly in nerve cells, and partly in synapses, the millions of nerve fiber junction points. For this reason, synapses not only stop unimportant messages,instead, they route the others along the precise route and add the pertinent information that comes from other fibers. Surprisingly, the synapse thus becomes the decision points of the nervous system.
Oh, but like any machine that consumes, transforms and generates energy, the adult brain, awake or asleep, sane or deranged, works with about 20 watts of electricity. The source of that energy is the cell itself, each of which is a tiny dynamo. This energy is the product of a chemical reaction of glucose and oxygen, the cell generates a charge or potential within it and when that charge reaches a certain level the cell is discharged. On the other hand, the greater the stimulus (danger, hunger, sexual desire), the greater the proportion of charge and discharge. This is why each electrical energy discharge is the nerve impulse that travels at high speed through the fiber towards its uncertain destination in a synapse, which implies that if a sufficient number of joint or related cells discharge, the result is a sensation,a pain, a thought or a feeling.
This gelatinous mass is considered more powerful than a supercomputer, which has not been designed once, by a genius, on a drawing board. Rather, it is a peculiar machine that reflects millions of years of historical evolution. On numerous occasions, in the distant past, it has adopted solutions to particular problems that have persisted over time, has been recycled for other uses, or has greatly reduced the possibility of future changes.
As a curious fact, Albert Einstein's brain was smaller than average, although well above average in relation to body mass. It has recently been documented that an area of your brain (lower parietal cortex) was 15 percent larger than the average for a person of similar age. This is of great interest as this region is associated with spatial and mathematical cognition, an area in which Einstein clearly excelled.
Similarly, it is noteworthy that on December 19, 2009, Kim Peek, who was the most famous and prodigious savant, died of a heart attack in the United States (A savant is a person with physical disabilities, mental or motor but has incredible skills for information or complex calculations.). He amazed the entire world with his amazing intellectual abilities, despite his inability to perform the most basic tasks. The character Dustin Hoffman played in the movie Rain Man was inspired by him. He had earned the nickname "Kimputer * as he remembered everything as raw, unfiltered data as a computer does. He knew 2,000 years of calendar dates, all the phone, postal, and highway and highway networks of the United States,all the historical data in the world and every tone I'd ever heard. But he couldn't fry an egg or get dressed. He never got a driving license or girlfriend; it would have been too much for his brain.
For its part, in 2004 NASA examined Peek with a series of studies, while he was recorded using tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging to try to recreate a three-dimensional view of the structure of his brain. It was the first non-invasive attempt, using modern technologies, to try to discover why a person with a disabled brain is capable of doing such things, since that latent capacity is supposed to exist in any brain.
Unlike other savants, Peek showed great sociological progression, relating to unknown people through his demonstrations. He had an exact 10,000 year calendar on his head so it was easy for him to tell anyone after hearing his birth date what day of the week he was born and when he would retire; it also responded to any mathematical calculation. In this sense, it is striking that Peek possessed these rare abilities and a lack of others that were considered normal, but the question that would open the door to an interesting debate would be: Was Peek a person with a disability or just an evolution of something that we can all become in the future?… Evolution will determine it in the future. Now, it is appropriate to analyze the question asked in this article.
From my point of view and to date we cannot consider it as perfect, but we can affirm that it is a super machine capable of carrying out countless activities simultaneously. Things are still being discovered about the brain and as we continue to inquire about its limitations and scope, we will be able to determine if we continue to consider it as a super machine or will qualify it in the future as something perfect. How will the evolution of our intelligence and our capacities be related to the evolution of our brain?
