What makes the human brain so special?

The human brain is exceptionally unique, has very complex characteristics in relation to the rest of the animal species, including our phylogenetic cousins, the primates.

The capabilities of human beings is highly specific to our species: we can think in very complex terms, be creative and create technological artifacts that facilitate our lives and also, we are the only species with the ability to study other animals and their behavior.

Why are we so special? The human brain ...

For years the scientific literature postulated that cognitive ability was proportional to brain size. This is not entirely correct, since two mammals with similarly sized brains, as could be that of a cow and a chimpanzee, they should have behaviors of equal complexity, which does not happen. And what is even worse: Our brain is not the largest there is. In any case, our brain, despite not being the largest, is the best in terms of its cognitive capacity..

Apparently, the special quality of our great cognitive capacity does not come from the size of the brain in terms of its mass, but in terms of the

number of neurons it contains. And this is where we find a study by Suzana Herculano-Houzel, neuroscientist Brazilian, which was entrusted with the task of determining the number of neurons in the brain human.

Before investigating her, the vast majority of neuroscientists argued that the human brain had 100 billion neurons. The truth is that this figure was never determined in any study and was a norm for years within the scientific literature.

Thus, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, through a method designed by her, manages to determine the final figure for the number of neurons in the human brain: 86,000 million neurons in total, of which 16,000 million are in the cerebral cortex (cortex involved in complex cognitive processes). And by applying the same method to the brain of different mammals and comparing them, he discovered that the human brain, despite not being the largest in As for mass, it is quantitatively in the number of neurons it has, even with primates, with whom we share many of our genetic load (97%). And this would be the specific reason for our cognitive abilities.

Why did the human being evolve to this surprising complexity?

From this, other questions arise: How did we come to evolve this amazing number of neurons? And particularly, if primates are bigger than us, why don't they have a brain bigger with more neurons?

To understand the response to these situations, one must compare the size of the body and the size of the brain of primates. Thus, he discovered that, since neurons are so expensive, the size of the body and the number of neurons offset each other. So a primate that eats 8 hours a day can have a maximum of 53 billion neurons, but its body could not be more than 25 kg, so to weigh much more than that, you must give in as to the amount of neurons.

From determining the number of neurons that the human brain has, it is understood that it needs an enormous amount of energy to maintain it. The human brain consumes 25% of energy even though it only represents 2% of body mass. In order to maintain a brain with such a large number of neurons, weighing 70 kg on average, we should dedicate more than 9 hours a day, which is impossible.

We humans cook food

So if the human brain consumes so much energy and we cannot spend every waking hour dedicating ourselves to our diet, then, the only alternative is to somehow obtain more energy from them food. It is so, that this coincides with the incorporation of the cooking of food by our ancestors a million and a half years ago.

Cooking is using fire to pre-digest food out of the body. Cooked foods are softer, making them easier to chew and turn into mush in the mouth, making it easier for you to which leads to it being better digested in the stomach and allowing greater amounts of energy to be absorbed in much less weather. Thus, we obtain a large amount of energy for the functioning of all our neurons in much less time, which allows us to dedicate ourselves to other things beyond feeding ourselves and thus stimulate our cognitive capacity achieved with a brain of such magnitude.

So what is the advantage we have as human beings? What do we have that no other animal has?

The answer is that we have the brain with the largest number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, which explains our complex and extraordinary cognitive abilities to all of nature.

What do we do and what does no animal do to allow us to reach such a large number of neurons in the cerebral cortex?

In two words: we cook. No other animal cooks its food to digest it, only humans do it. And this is what allows us to become human as we are.

From this conception, we must realize the importance of food, how food influences the maintenance of our cognitive skills and the scope we have in achieving behaviors of enormous complexities.

So now you know: the next time your mother cooks something for you that she doesn't like or you hear that someone is going to study gastronomy, congratulate them, since with their contributions they continue to ensure that our cognitive skills continue to be just as complex.