I understand it’s because a wrinkly brain has a higher surface area than a smooth one. But why is surface are better than volume? What make a surface neuron more influential then an internal neuron when determining intelligence?
In: Biology
for 99% of history brains were fairly simple balls of nerves. Automatic stuff to keep a simple animal breathing and reacting to stimulus.
At some point something ended up going “hey, what if we put a dense layer or nerves right around the outside” and that worked super well for making complex behaviors but since it was around the outside everything started having to make more outside.
If some guy was in charge of redesigning the brain they wouldn’t do it that way. But brains evolve weird, you basically die if you mess with what was there already so a lot of brain evolution is “don’t touch this thing that works, make a new part” and the new part ended up being a skin around the outside instead of going back to change the inner parts to be more advanced. So all the parts that make you breath and have your heart beat are all more internal and bottom and back to the brain, the complicated thinking parts are on the outside top and front
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