Brain Growth Controversy

The amount of exercise humans encounter typically reflects on the physical attributes of the human body, but how about its measurements on the brain? Published in December of 2012, The New York Times article, Exercise and the Ever-smarter Human Brain, by Gretchen Reynolds, overviews exercise as a necessity to optimal brain function. Is exercise depicting our strength of the brain? Or does it increase its strengths for intelligence?

The article makes the claim, “Our Brains we’re shaped and sharpened by movement, the idea goes, and we continue to require regular physical activity in order for brains to function optimally.” And, “ evolutionary scientist have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and perhaps most determine natively are early ancestors need for social interaction.. ultimately driving brain growth”. Claims like these brought up controversy in the readers comments made on the New York Times webpage. Scrolling through 317 comments, the responses from the majority were negative responses about the article. Comments relating to comparing animals to humans, The importance of eating meat, and the claims about not exercising equaling smaller brains were the main point of many arguments.

Reynolds pointed out that scientists looked at data about animals brain size and compared it to human brain size. This brought up many arguments because humans have many different capabilities that animals would not and vice versa. One of the comments by a reader named Joe brings up a point in his comment about, “ every animal is grown and evolutionized to do specific things this is why our bodies are so different in structure and brain power, so comparing the brain power or structure of human to another animal would not correlate”. Joe’s point rebuttals the article that shuts down the comparisons made by Reynolds subpoint evidence of scientific observations.

On the other hand, another commenter Eric gives another example, “ there are other animals with good endurance, but where is the animal that can outrun a human in the 100+ degree heat of the Savanna where humans evolved from much of our evolutionary history any animal with her will eventually suffer from heat exhaustion before humans.” This shows that the article compares how animals survive compared to humans not their brain power, giving a different meaning.This confuses the reader into thinking we are comparing the brain of animals to humans but in reality are comparing what they use their brain for and how the have evolutionized to perform specific actions.

Another topic of the article that brought controversy to comments was the part of the article that stated, “ To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientist have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps the most determinedly, our early ancestors need for social interaction. Early humans had to plan and execute hands as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been taught, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success.”

Multiple parts of this were argued, one comment by Jason rebutted, “Humans and animals don’t need meat for optimal performance, But need protein specifically. We can find protein in many other things then meat. It is true that our ancestors found protein in other species but the way our system of meat eating is today is doing more harm than good for our bodies.” Jason’s argument comes from the perspective of how the meat industry decides to serve us with the meat that ultimately is more fat than meat and isn’t giving us the right protein which makes us and our ancestors meat eating different. Another argument stated by Acadamia Nut states, “The body mainly eating protein in humans case also isn’t respectably well either, or body needs different vitamins and nutrients from plants and carbohydrates not only for energy, but for growth in the body including the brain.” I believe what the author was trying to portray was that the body needs meat, but didn’t specifically refer to an only meat diet.

With such controversy over topics the author brings up in her article, I’m questioning the prove behind the statements made, again, the author puts forth, if I were to have commented I would have asked, “we continue to require regular physical activity in order for brains to function optimally”. Does this mean that if we don’t exercise or brain will become smaller or or brain power will reduce? The article includes hyperlinked articles about studies done on other animals and compared them to humans, but I want to see studies of how the brain changes, power and size, to prove her point on whether exercise really makes a difference in our brains.