THE HUMAN BRAIN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 30 November 1933, Page 8

THE HUMAN BRAIN

NOT GROWING LARGER “Take the human brain,” says Sir Arthur Keith, in an “Aberdeen Press” interview; “it contains 18,000 million nerve cells, grouped in myriads of battalions in a pattern which is different for each individual. These battalions of nerve cells are linked by an inconceivably complex system of conuminieation, and the traffic over this'' system continues from birth to death. All our experience is gathered from this marvellously intricate traffic, and out of this experience we form our characters and our beliefs. The brain in so complex that I believe it will take up five thousand years to understand it fully, and when we have done this, We shall probably he able to understand —perhaps to cure—every form of mental disorder. We can trace the evolution of species from the dim ages up to quite recent times, and yet it seems now, as far as mankind is concerned, that the progress has been checked, or even reversed; Man’s brains •are certainly not growing larger. The people who occupied Western Europe at the close of the ice age had bigger brains than most of us have now. If seems ns if nature gave primitive man bigger brains to solve the great initial’ problems which they had to face.”