Big Brain The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence

by Lynch, Gary; Granger, Richard

• ISBN13: 9781403979780
• ISBN10: 1403979782
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-03-04
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

Our big brains, our language ability, and our intelligence make us uniquely human. But barely 10,000 years ago--a mere blip in evolutionary time--human-like creatures called "Boskops" flourished in South Africa. They possessed extraordinary features: forebrains roughly 50% larger than ours, and estimated IQs to match--far surpassing our own. Many of these huge fossil skulls have been discovered over the last century, but most of us have never heard of this scientific marvel.Prominent neuroscientists Gary Lynch and Richard Granger compare the contents of the Boskop brain and our own brains today, and arrive at startling conclusions about our intelligence and creativity. Connecting cutting-edge theories of genetics, evolution, language, memory, learning, and intelligence, Lynch and Granger show the implications of large brains on a broad array of fields, from the current state of the art in Alzheimer's and other brain disorders, to new advances in brain-based robots that see and converse with us, and the means by which neural prosthetics-- replacement parts for the brain--are being designed and tested. The authors demystify the complexities of our brains in this fascinating and accessible book, and give us tantalizing insights into our humanity--its past, and its future.

Author Biography

Gary Lynch is a professor at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of more than 550 scientific publications that are among the most cited in the field of neuroscience. He is the co-inventor of a novel family of cognition-enhancing drugs called “ampakines”, is co-founder of three technology companies (Cortex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: COR), Synaptics (NASDAQ: SYNA), and Thuris Corporation), has served as advisor to multiple professional entities including the Society for Neuroscience and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and has been featured in major television networks, newspapers, and magazines ranging from the Los Angeles Times to Popular Science. 
 
Richard Granger is W.H. Neukom Distinguished Professor of Computational Science and of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth. He has been the principal architect of a series of advanced computational systems for military, commercial and medical applications, and co-inventor of FDA-approved devices and drugs. He is a consultant, co-founder, and board member of numerous technology corporations such as Thuris Corporation and Cortex Pharmaceuticals, and government research agencies including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. His work has been highlighted in numerous popular press and television features, including recent stories in Forbes, Wired, and on CNN.

Table of Contents

Big Brains, Bigger Brains	p. 1
Introduction	p. 1
Biggest Brain	p. 3
Are Bigger Brains Better?	p. 5
Brain and Language	p. 7
Were Boskops Smarter?	p. 8
Why Haven't We All Heard of Boskops?	p. 10
Outline of the Book	p. 11
The Mind in the Machine	p. 17
Learning Network Codes	p. 18
Brain Circuits vs. Computer Circuits	p. 23
The Brain of John Von Neumann	p. 25
Genes Build Brains	p. 33
How Much Variation Can Occur?	p. 36
Blueprint Systems	p. 38
Bundling Genes	p. 40
Variation Is Random, but It Is Constrained	p. 44
Brains Arrive	p. 51
First Brains	p. 52
Brain Expansion	p. 58
The Brains of Mammals	p. 63
Neurons and Networks	p. 65
Learning	p. 70
From Olfaction to Cognition	p. 73
From Cortex to Behavior	p. 80
Neocortex	p. 84
The Thinking Brain	p. 89
Extending Thinking over Time	p. 93
The Cortex Takes Charge	p. 96
The Tools of Thought	p. 99
Feedback and Hierarchies of Cortical Circuits	p. 99
Sequences	p. 106
What One Brain Area Tells Another Brain Area	p. 107
What's in an Image?	p. 108
Putting It Together: From Generalists to Specialists	p. 109
Memory Construction	p. 110
Building High-level Cognition	p. 113
Libraries and Labyrinths	p. 114
Grammars of the Brain	p. 116
From Brain Differences to Individual Differences	p. 119
Brain Paths	p. 122
Brain Tracts and Differential Abilities	p. 125
Nature and Nurture	p. 127
What's in a Species?	p. 129
Definitions	p. 131
Fallacies of the Notion of Race	p. 132
Races Versus Gene Pools	p. 135
The Origins of Big Brains	p. 139
Brain Size in the Primates	p. 141
Brain Size in the Family of Man	p. 145
Big Babies	p. 154
On Intelligence	p. 157
Giant Brains	p. 161
The Man of the Future	p. 162
How Giant Brains Were Forgotten	p. 165
Inside the Giant Brain	p. 171
Giant Brains and Intelligence	p. 175
All but Human	p. 179
On Science	p. 179
Differences	p. 182
From Quantity to Quality	p. 189
From Brain Advances to Cognitive Advances	p. 191
From Cognition to Language	p. 193
Learning Curve	p. 195
From Speaking to Writing	p. 197
More than Human	p. 201
Brain and Superbrain	p. 201
New Paths, New Humans	p. 204
The Final Path to Humans	p. 205
Inconstant Brain	p. 209
Next Steps	p. 211
Coda	p. 214
Appendix	p. 217
Acknowledgments	p. 233
Bibliography	p. 235
Index	p. 255
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