In this interesting video, Suzana Herculano expresses her thoughts on some questions she had regarding the uniqueness of the human brain. This video was particularly interesting to me and drew my attention because me and Suzana happen to share the same interests. She had conducted an experiment by turning a human brain into a brain soup... literally. It sounds pretty disturbing but it helped unleash a more up to date discovery in science. She became interested in the question, "How many neurons are in the human brain?". The answer to that question was not clear until Suzana came along to look into it.
Suzana's strategy to uncover this "mystery" was to create a brain soup so that she could count all the cells that were dissolved in the matter. When she counted up all the neurons she came up with about 86 billion neurons in the human brain. Which is more than any other brain can hold of our size. She went further into the "investigation" and asked herself, "Why US?". Why do we have the most neurons in our brain? Why not dogs or cats? Which lead her back to the title of the video, "What makes the human brain so special?".
Suzana researched and calculated everything she possibly could to come up with such a simple solution. Most primates and animals spend all day feeding and looking for food. While humans discovered fire in an early age. Fire helped us cook our food, which gave us more nutrients in one sitting. Which gave us time to go out and do other things and learn new things. Cooking is the simple solution. While other species have to spend their whole day doing one thing, we can just cook up a quick meal and get 10 times the energy and nutrients. We could go out and explore and discover new things and be skeptical about things and be the curious creatures we were made to be.
Suzana's video was very interesting to me because there was such a complex question answered so simply. It makes so much sense even with the simplicity of it. Humans are the only ones who cook their food before we eat it. Therefore, we have more time to learn new things and develop our brain. This video helped me discover my love for neurology and the way the brain works. I would love to learn more about this topic and discover new interests of mine in this area.
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