• Question: hey, What would happen if you had more than 15–33 billion neurons in the cerebral cortex? thankyou!

    Asked by jessiej to Tim, Suzi, Simon, Rachael, Damien on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hi @jessiej
      I guess you’d need a bigger head for a start! I don’t know whether it would make your brain better – the connections between neurons seem to be the most important part of the brain’s design to make us able to do all the things that humans can do.

      What do you think would happen – do you think we’d have superpowers? 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: jessiej

    jessiej commented on :

    hey @suzi
    Ohhh very nice. do you think it could make our reactions quicker? i hope so!!!! (but i dont think just having more neurons would be enoguh 😉 Thankyou!

    • Photo: Suzi

      Suzi commented on :

      @jessiej
      Actually humans probably have more than 15-35 billion – some estimates reckon we have 80-90 billion. I think in order to make reactions faster we’d need the impulses to fire faster, rather than more neurons. It’s probably the chemical transfer between neurons that slow our reactions, so maybe if we developed a way to make this happen quicker we could have quicker reactions.

      What would you like to be able to do if you had quicker reactions??