full transcript
"From the Ted Talk by Suzana Herculano-Houzel: What is so special about the human brain?"

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So the human brain is larger than it should be, it uses much more energy than it should, so it's saipecl. And this is where the story srettad to bother me. In biology, we look for rules that apply to all animals and to life in genearl, so why should the rules of evolution apply to everybody else but not to us? Maybe the problem was with the basic assiuotmpn that all brains are made in the same way. Maybe two brains of a similar size can actually be made of very different numbers of neurons. Maybe a very lgrae brain does not necessarily have more neurons than a more modest-sized brain. Maybe the human brain actually has the most neurons of any brain, regardless of its size, especially in the crbareel cortex. So this to me became the ipatonrmt question to answer: how many neurons does the human brain have, and how does that compare to other animals?

Open Cloze

So the human brain is larger than it should be, it uses much more energy than it should, so it's _______. And this is where the story _______ to bother me. In biology, we look for rules that apply to all animals and to life in _______, so why should the rules of evolution apply to everybody else but not to us? Maybe the problem was with the basic __________ that all brains are made in the same way. Maybe two brains of a similar size can actually be made of very different numbers of neurons. Maybe a very _____ brain does not necessarily have more neurons than a more modest-sized brain. Maybe the human brain actually has the most neurons of any brain, regardless of its size, especially in the ________ cortex. So this to me became the _________ question to answer: how many neurons does the human brain have, and how does that compare to other animals?

Solution

  1. started
  2. large
  3. general
  4. special
  5. assumption
  6. cerebral
  7. important

Original Text

So the human brain is larger than it should be, it uses much more energy than it should, so it's special. And this is where the story started to bother me. In biology, we look for rules that apply to all animals and to life in general, so why should the rules of evolution apply to everybody else but not to us? Maybe the problem was with the basic assumption that all brains are made in the same way. Maybe two brains of a similar size can actually be made of very different numbers of neurons. Maybe a very large brain does not necessarily have more neurons than a more modest-sized brain. Maybe the human brain actually has the most neurons of any brain, regardless of its size, especially in the cerebral cortex. So this to me became the important question to answer: how many neurons does the human brain have, and how does that compare to other animals?

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
human brain 16
billion neurons 9
cerebral cortex 5
cognitive abilities 4
primate brain 3
rodent brain 3
brain costs 3
body size 3

Important Words

  1. animals
  2. apply
  3. assumption
  4. basic
  5. biology
  6. bother
  7. brain
  8. brains
  9. cerebral
  10. compare
  11. cortex
  12. energy
  13. evolution
  14. general
  15. human
  16. important
  17. large
  18. larger
  19. life
  20. necessarily
  21. neurons
  22. numbers
  23. problem
  24. question
  25. rules
  26. similar
  27. size
  28. special
  29. started
  30. story