A scientist has confirmed something was suspected for a while: human brains are shrinking. J.M. Stibel, a brain scientist at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum is the author of the new study that has been published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Evolution.
The study suggests the size of human brains has decreased drastically in the last 50,000 years. Moreover, the study discovered that brain size has decreased by more than five percent in modern homosapiens. Stibel also discovered evidence that brain size relative to our bodies called encephalization has decreased too, mostly because of obesity.
Human brains have decreased significantly
Despite that, though, the study did note that measures of “general intelligence and educational attainment have all risen during much of the past century.” In fact, environmental factors such as health, education, and technology might have compensated for our decreasing brain size – or the brain volume isn’t correlated with intelligence.
It’s imperative to note that Stibel used IQ as a measure of intelligence. The benchmark has a history of a tool that has been criticized for boiling down different types of intelligence into one simple metric. However, it’s still widely used as a standard benchmark to assess cognitive function.
Stibel points out that a “significant decrease in IQ has been noted over the past 30 years in many parts of the globe, with the largest declines occurring across industrialized nations.” It means environmental factors might not help increase or maintain our level of intelligence in the long run.
Pairing AI with the human brain
Recently, a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital said to have improved the “specific functions” of the human brain using AI paired with electrical brain stimulation.
The study involved 12 patients who were undergoing brain surgery for epilepsy; the team managed to improve the patients’ mental function when stimulating areas of the brain using electrical energy in small amounts. We might see more such inventions in the coming days, as AI is seeing new heights, and coupling it with healthcare could do wonders for society and the patients.
