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THE FOLD HARD TRUTH BEHIND INTELLIGENCE.
EVERYONE KNOWS THE human brain looks like a walnut, but do we really need it to be so wrinkly? In short, yes, we do. The more folds there are in the brain, the better for us. In fact, it’s what makes the human brain so distinctive from other animals and puts man on top of the intelligence charts. These folds begin to form while the foetus develops within the womb, but there isn’t a lot of information about how they change over a person’s lifetime, if they do at all.
WHY THE BRAIN NEEDS TO FOLD
The formation of these folds is known as gyrification (the peak of a fold is called a gyrus while the trough is a sulcus) and is a characteristic of the cerebral cortex — the largest section of the human brain that plays a major role in memory, attention, perception, cognition, awareness, thought, consciousness and language. The more gyri that are formed, the more surface area the brain has, and the more neurons it can support. The more neurons the brain has, the better its cognitive functions. In other words, the more folds, the more intelligent the individual.
Larger primates also develop brain folds, but humans have the most amongst primates, while zebras and elephants have more gyri than humans, but the size of their brain is smaller. Albert Einstein’s brain, which was removed within seven and a half hours of his death for study, is said to have unique folds, as did the brain of the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss, providing an explanation for their genius. However, it is still unclear how these unique convolutions actually form.
BRAIN GROWTH
The creation of gyri in the brain is a complex play of stem cells, DNA and a whole world of complex biological circuitry. It’s beyond the scope of this magazine to go into the explanation of how our brain folds are formed, but a study published in 2012 in the journal Frontiers of Human Neuroscience claimed that meditation increases gyrification. The study found that the longer an individual practised meditation, the greater the gyrification. The higher number of folds could allow the brain to process of information faster, form long-lasting memories and enhance decision making in meditators than those who don’t practise meditation.
WHEN GYRIFICATION GOES AWRY
While gyrification is important, it can lead to neurological disorders. Babies born with a ‘smooth brain’, or lacking any surface convolutions, are born with a thicker cortex with neurons that are too far away from each other to pass on information efficiently, if at all, leading to cognitive malfunctioning of the brain.
On the other hand, excessive folding is also harmful. Autism and schizophrenia are conditions that result from higher levels of gyrification. The Zika virus, which affects the foetal brain development during pregnancy, causes brains to remain small, affecting the normal gyrification process.
YOU DON’T GET NEW FOLDS WHEN YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW
There are plenty of myths about the brain circulating around, and one of them is that the organ develops new wrinkles every time we learn something new. That’s a fallacy. By the time a human foetus is 40 weeks old, the gyri and sulci have formed where they need to be in a healthy brain, albeit in a smaller sized one than an adult’s. There is still no evidence to state that new folds form over an individual’s lifetime. That said, the brain does change structurally when we learn new things — it’s the synapses and cells that alter, not the walnut itself. If we were to unfold the wrinkles and flatten an adult brain out, it would be about the size of a standard pillow case.