We all know someone who is not as smart as we are—and someone who is smarter. At the same time, we all know people who are better or worse than we are in a particular area or task, say, remembering facts or performing rapid mental math calculations.
These variations in abilities and talents presumably arise from differences among our brains, and many studies have linked certain very specific tasks with cerebral activity in localized areas.
Answers about how the brain as a whole integrates activity among areas, however, have proved elusive. Just what does a “smart” brain look like?
Derren is waayyy smarter than me
lol. The brain is a complicated thing, more so in some people than others 
Smart comes in many definitions though, right? The academic point of view is normally linked between two similar subjects such as Science and Maths or English and History or Foreign Language and Drama because the similar aspects shared between them. Then there’s the smart referring to common sense. Due to scientific research, people who are cleverer academically tend to have less common sense than someone who is average or below average academically. (I pride myself in telling my very acadmically clever friend how much she lacks in common sense due to the amount of high grades she’s supposed to get and I don’t so I have more common sense
i always thought we didn’t use all our brain – more intelligent people use more but there are still bits that are closed.
Oooh A SMART brain looks CLEVER to the NAKED eye! X
I’m a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That’s what kind of man I am. You’re just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It’s science
This is another thing based on the idea of IQ tests measuring intelligence. You have to define what intelligence is – which it seems to me psychologists never do adequately. I think IQ tests just measuer your ability to do IQ tests (or that kind of puzzle) on that day. And you can practice and improve your skills at that kind of puzzle.
See Gardner on Multiple Intelligences – you touch on the idea above. But some psychologists then say that if you measure all the different kinds of intelligence then if someone is higher in one type (eg: spatial thinking) they are statistically more likely to b higher in another (like verbal thinking) etc
leading to talk of a general ‘g’ factor in intelligence – as mentioned in the article. I should say I know psychologists who think that the research using scanning of brains doing different tasks, is complete nonsense – they say the statistics used is wonky.
Also I remember seeing different studies doing fMRI on Go ( the board game) players showing opposite results on which part of the brain is being used. And I’ve heard every possible permutation of the argument about gender differences in brain function – some say women are left brain dominant, some right-brain dominant, some that they use both sides equally. Very very dubious
A smart brain I imagine would be pink and pulsating, but not grey like the term “grey matter” would suggest. I would also think that the effectiveness of a brain would be diminished slightly if you kept looking at it instead of keeping it safely in a cranium, under a hat even. In the dark.
Smart is as smart does……
LC x
@fosca are you looking for a battle hun?
What about bodies … they will influence the brain in a massive way. If you observe people with different body sizes and structures you will also notice when interacting with them that they do work theirself, via their brain, different than yourself (if they have other body structures). A large body will need a way different brain system than small bodies .. etc etc.
That we all don’t work it the same way up there, in here, that was quite clear to most people I guess. it’s not even about how smart or intelligent and how they use it for different tasks .. daily life shows it all already. It’good .. otherwise we’d bore ourself stiff.
I HATE THE CONCEPT OF INTELLIGENCE
I DESPISE IT
All brains are basically equal – they either work or they don’t. The brain is a tool that can be TRAINED to perform ANY general task. One of my biggest frustrations dealing with other people is when they hold the nonsensical believe that they are not intelligent. They become stuck in the ‘STUPID TRAP’ – a belief system which tells them they are not ‘intelligent’ because ‘intelligence’ is hard-wired, not from TRAINING. If someone can be convinced that they haven’t been blessed with the ‘intelligence’ gene, then that imposes all sort of VERY harmful self-imposed limitations upon that poor person
@helen – bring it!