We use about 40% of our brain

reply to post by neoholographic


Hmmm....I wonder who counted all those synapses?.....Sixty seven thousand four hundred twenty five, sixty seven thousand four.....Oh thanks for the coffee Shelly, any donuts left?....Oh oh....one, two, three

reply to post by unityemissions


You're basically supporting what I have been saying.

I said when it comes to people who are psychic or mediums, maybe their synaptic connections didn't fully degrade and they have an excess of neurons in the prefontal cortex. This could be genetic and some think this could be the cause of Savants. Simply put, they have a genetic defect that slows the synaptic pruning process.This could be the same thing that occurs with psychics and mediums but not to the extent of Savants.

I also said that psychics and mediums may prune synaptic connections that most people keep. Say you have 2 five year olds that see ghost of those that have passed on. One 5 year old may continue using this synaptic connection while the other one stops using this synaptic connection over time.

So you will have one 5 year old that continues using this synaptic connection and is a Medium because this connection didn't die out during synaptic pruning. While the other 5 year old grows up to be a skeptic and he doesn't use the synaptic connection that the Medium uses therefore this connection dies out.

So yes, we don't use 40% of the synaptic connections in the brain but that doesn't mean those synaptic connections that many people don't have can't be found in Savants, Mediums and Psychics.

reply to post by neoholographic


How do you define a "savant".

I'm likely a savant.

Most, if not all savants get their abilities as a result of brain damage. The brain loses it's regular capacity to function on some tasks, so recruits area's of the subconscious, low-level processes to compensate. This is just neuroplasticity doing it's thing. The brain regulates the pruning and new growth of neurons, axons, etc..based on need. Use it or lose it! Need it or get rid of it...

When I was 6 I was running back from the soda machine in pitch darkness. I tripped over a curb and my hands were holding my shirt that was filled with sodas I had stolen from the machine. My hands didn't catch my fall, it was my top front part of my skull, instead! So I bruised up real good, and after it was all said and done, I was much more intellectually inclined than my older brother. I scored 99th percentile in mathematics and sciences through school, and could calculate lightning fast.

I showed no aptitude like this beforehand. I was bright, as was my brother, but afterwords I could see images, which mixed in with colors, numbers, sounds, and all had a certain feeling to them. I could solve problems without knowing how, almost instantly. Some of this was lost around puberty, but some of it still carries on today.

Savants usually have one area they specialize in. How does this work out in your model of globally having more synapses? It doesn't. Someone who would retain all the connections as a child (or at their peak) through their life wouldn't simply be remarkable, they would likely be insane.

Here's a wiki on Savantism

It states the reason behind it lies with someone being on the autistic spectrum coupled by, or solely a result of, brain damage.

Interestingly, both the "gifted" and autistic have denser neuronal growth in youth, yet also heavily prune outside the norm in adolescence.

Some speculate that the early heavy growth in autistics is to compensate for the inevitable decline/heavy prune later on.

I hold the belief that something...viral, or what have you, is always present and causing damage in the autistic, and there's windows of opportunity for the brain to attempt to compensate. In youth, through heavy overgrowth. In adolescence, through "burning" the nutrients required by the virus/pathogen (glia, neuron, etc..).

reply to post by unityemissions


There are studies that tie autistic savants to synaptic pruning.

In a study published November 2011 in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Courchesne reported that children with autism have 67 percent more neurons in their prefrontal cortex (PFC) than typical children. Located in the area of the brain just behind the eyes, the PFC is responsible for what psychologists call "executive functions"—high-level thinking, such as planning ahead, inhibiting impulses and directing attention.

By combining his new findings with his earlier discoveries, Courchesne has started to construct a kind of timeline of autism in the brain. Perhaps, as the brain of a future autistic child develops in the womb, something—an inherited mutation or an environmental factor like a virus, toxin or hormone—muffles the expression of genes coding for proteins that usually fix mistakes in sequences of DNA. Errors accumulate. The genetic systems controlling the growth of new neurons go haywire, and brain cells divide much more frequently than usual, accounting for the excess neurons found in the PFC of autistic children. Between birth and age five, the extra neurons in the autistic brain grow physically larger and form more connections than in a typical child's brain. Unused connections are not pruned away as they should be.

Scientific American

reply to post by neoholographic


Maybe you're correct.

I'll do some more research later in the day when I get the chance.

Thanks for the link.

reply to post by unityemissions


No problem. Like I said, this might tie into psychics and mediums as well. Of course more research has to be done.

Not sure how you all feel about David Wilcock, but in his book The Source Field Investigations he cites a study where the subjects were people with some sort of brain issue that left them essentially without a working brain at all, their cranium was filled basically with mush. Yet, many of the people studied were of average or above intelligence.

Sorry not more specific, read it a while ago.

Anyway, the conclusion here is that the physical brain may not be as big a factor of intelligence as many believe. There are a lot of people around nowadays that feel consciousness is tied into the environment and exists outside of the "physical human body".

Of course, this study could be a pseudoscience scam chosen to promote Wilcock's own conclusion.

Still, it is worth mentioning. Neuroscience and cognitive science are still full of unanswered questions.

I've often found myself wondering if young children are smarter in some ways than adults. If so, I think their superior lies in large scale perception. Our educations have us processing information on a local level, reading a chalkboard or book right in front of us and committing the words to memory.

It is certainly true that the brain rewires itself based on experience. Children go through a transition where language and definitions are prioritized over the pure thought.