Can the neurons in your brain start to fire more quickly or be used more efficiently with use? If you think a lot, can your brain start to work faster or more efficiently? Is it possible for the neurons in your brain to gain a mylean sheath or get thicker?
Nice post, if only this place had even more inquisitive people. First off its important to note that I recenlt had similar questions and have been hitting the books so hopefully I know a bit more now. The timing of how fast our brain works is both dependent on how quickly neurotransmitters can cross the synaptic cleft, and also on how fast a signal can get sent down an axon. Myelination is primarily in neurons that send information over long distances, hence the part of the nervous system that isn't the brain. For some reason which I have not learned of yet,(maybe space constraints) myelination does not occure often inside the brain. Myelinated vertibrates can send signals along an axon at about 1.2m per second, which is actually DAMN slow compared to say the speed of electricity. The largest axon is that of the neurons on the blue whale. Thinking alot can be thought of as more of your neurons firing, basically a larger section of your brain is active while doing math then say watching a soap opera. MRI works by actually tracking where the blood is being sent to in your brain, areas that are working hard need more blood, and we have a way of measuring brain activity(though other methods also exist). Learning is often a combination of creating new neural connections and the elimination of existing ones. Individuals that have high learning potential also make associations that do not exist, hence if while riding on the sunday you fall and skid your knee you may learn not to ride on sundays or some incorrect association. Also if we remember lessons too effectively, we will be less likely to try the same thing over again if it failed the first time. While there may only be one right answer for the same question, in the wild its important for animals to retry something later on. Also painful events need to be forgotten, since the lesson of the event will still be retained anyhow. This loss of connections can be lessened if the connection is used more frequently, hence something that is recalled often is less likely to be forgotten. Finally theres the basic structure of the brain, as with everything else its evolved through evolutionary pressures, meaning it still has room for improvement. The latest major changes to the brain has been the increase in wrinkling along the cerebrum, allowing for greater surface area and hence more neurons. Right now our brains cannot get much larger because of the restricted size of the birth canal, unless we all get cesareans from now on our brain size is pretty limited. So what are the major factors of "intelligence"? 1.Ability to learn/make association 2.Ability to remember/retain association 3.Faster signal transmission by axon 4.Faster signal transmission at synaptic cleft 5.Better form of brain Better forms of hormones that address 1 and 2 already have been identified, all thats necessary is adapt the gene to make sure it works in humans and apply gene therapy to the neurons. However then you'd be making incorrect associations and remembering them forever, so actually triggering enhanced learning/memmory by a pill would basically be all the pros and none of the cons. Said pill may contain the hormones or contain a signal messenger protein which activates memory genes within transgenic neurons. Myelination is not the only way to increase transmission speed, in squid and other invertibrates large axons have evolved, which basically just have fatter axons and as a result the magnetic field of the signal is sent down the axon faster. In theory(I've discussed this with my professors) an axon that had both adaptations should fire even faster. Taking a random potshot, I'd estimate at MAX of 1.6m/s. Also you now have fatter neurons, which take up more room and more blood. Interestingly enough, raising the temperature of the brain may also help. I'm still following up on a textbook that reported because birds have higher bps their neurons transmit faster. Something like 200% speed every 10 degrees celsius. Another method, which would require much more work but operate both faster and maybe work in the brain would be to have copper center filled cytoskeleton filaments traveling down the axon. Basically large amounts of copper surrounded by hydrocarbons would exist as "wires" down the axon, with the copper atoms exposed at both extremeties of the axon. When the signal began at the cell body, the signal would almost simultaniously exist near the end of the axon. It would be damn hard, BUT organisms that use copper en mass for other cellular functions already exist...Still we're talking about SIGNIFICANT increase in axon speed, 1000% fold and up. Synaptic clefts, are the weak spot in the body. While as few as possible exist in the nervous system, in the brain they are, litterally, everywhere. And for each signal transmitted vesicles have to fuse with the axon membrane, thus releasing their cargo of neurotransmitters outside of the cell. Then the transmitters have to travel to the other side of the cleft and bind to the receptors. Basically, we're talking slow. Pretty damn slow. Increasing body temp might help, also squid have special clefts where only calcium is used as a transmitter, and the signal moves across the cleft faster...Don't get me wrong though, our myelin is a kickass evolution and is better then anything they have. FINALLY, theres also the cybernetic route. DARPA(U.S. military research organization) is looking into the mind-machine interface, so the ability to learn superfast, run huge calculations on the fly, and also drive your car by thought is not only a possiblity but probably a near one.
increasing neural firing rate won't make you smarter. maybe a little quicker though. the brain isn't that efficient in terms or neuron use. it's fairly redundant if anything. that's what silly "we only use 20% of our brains" thing comes from.
No that’s a myth. In actuality we only use 10% of are brain on average at any one time. It like a computer on idle at 10% usually though people can use more depending... In times of extreme danger and stress we can be using up to 50%, Only during a classic seizure do we use 100% of are brain. When I meant efficiency I meant the neurons are constantly reconnecting and trimming connections to learn and improve on during a task. The more refined the connections the better we think (on that task) People are rarely born good at math but after years of refining synaptic pathways you can be. People can actually increase there intelligence by learning… the more information you learn the more pathways you have at your disposal.
You would probably be able to multi-task a lot better if your neurons would fire more quickly. I would think you could read a book and maybe listen to the radio at the same time a lot better.
Possibly but ion based communication (neurons use ion waves not electricity) is at its limits act communication speed... electricity is over a million times faster. So if we replace circuits in the brain with artificial electric ones it would greatly increase pathway speed. If all the all the neurons in the brain were magically much faster the side effect would be that time would seem really REALLY SLOW. A second would literally be enough thinking time for a minute so you would sit there and everything would be in slow motion… including your self.
yeah i know it's a myth, that's why i called it silly. while this would lead to faster learning, i doesn't mean that now all of a sudden you have an IQ of 300 and everything seams easy. granted learning and memorizing things might go by faster, but it would not give you the ability to learn difficult things that you couldn't have before. perhaps somewhat, but i would not say alot. for example, increasing the efficiency of the connections would lead a faster working memory perhaps, but would not increase the size that much.
Enhancement problems.... Does it occur to you that it doesn't matter if our brains can fire faster if two things don't happen? First, we have to make the right connections. No matter how fast our brain can make connections, or how many connections it can make, it makes no difference if these connections aren't the right ones. The earlier statement (in a sense relating to superstition) about a rider falling from his horse and learning not to ride on Sundays, is symbolic in a sense of what can come from speed without common sense. What if a person was able to make a thousand possible connections, relating to time of day, overall ambient light, or color of horse, to the reason they fell? That wouldn't make them any smarter. I suppose you could say, in short, that speed cannot surpass common sense. Second, connections in the brain atrophy if not used. They have to, or else your mind (not your physical brain, but your conscious Observer) would find it impossible to analyze all the information the brain is feeding it. So what would it matter if you enhanced the brain? If you didn't somehow find an intensely mental activity to engage a super-powered brain it, the parts not used would atrophy, leading to an overally negligible increase (this is all theoretical of course, since such enhancements don't exist yet).
that atrophy is part of the process of learning and setting up connections... think of it as a kind of evolution: only the best connections are selected.
True... But does that fact surpass the problem? Would enhancements work as effectively as predicted if one forgets to factor in the atrophying of unused portions of the brain?
It not really like that, those connections NEED to be remove to breed ones that fit a task(s). A brain implant can be made that simulates a section of brain or simulates a new section of brain with preinstalled pathways for doing a task (say the ability to calculate higher mathematics)
maybe the real key to make your brain smarter is to change how it works. Since at the moment the brain structure is adapted to make the processes that we need to survive more efficient and not so much to make them more reliable and smarter. that's why it is so east to trick our brain, because many processes are automated and reduced in information to make them more efficient. but if we would like to change that we would need a different brain, and possibly a bigger brain. An obvious disadvantage would be that you would have a huge head. I don't know about you, but would you like one?
