8 Responses

1. » Brain Teasers and Games for adults, with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50    « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:

   October 16, 2007 at 10:43

   […] 6. Are there more brain con­nec­tions or leaves in the Amazon?. […]
2. Keetsa Mattress Store - Keetsa! Blog - Eco-Friendly and Green News » Blog Archive » 50 Fun Brain Games says:

   October 17, 2007 at 5:50

   […] 6. Are there more brain con­nec­tions or leaves in the Amazon? […]
3. Predman says:

   October 17, 2007 at 8:10

   Each nerve cell is directly con­nected to 10,000 other nerve cells? Because all the pic­tures of nerve cells only show 5–10 con­nec­tions com­ing in and out… Maybe they mean “con­nec­tion” like the con­nec­tion between NY and LA — thru Cleve­land, Indi­anapo­lis, St. Louis, Den­ver and other nerve cells along the way.

   So the answer to the ques­tion would then be a ques­tion of inter­pre­ta­tion. If you go with “direct con­nec­tions” then there are more leaves in the Amazon…

   The link is a 404, btw.
4. Alvaro says:

   December 10, 2007 at 1:11

   Hello Pred­man, very good point. Yes, it depends on the def­i­n­i­tion of “connections”
5. TIPS » Blog Archive » 120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power says:

   August 29, 2008 at 8:44

   […] “Guessti­mate”. Are there more leaves in the Ama­zon rain­for­est or neu­ron con­nec­tions in your brain? (answer). […]
6. 120 Ways to Boost Your Brain Power says:

   November 6, 2008 at 6:10

   […] “Guessti­mate”. Are there more leaves in the Ama­zon rain­for­est or neu­ron con­nec­tions in your brain? (answer). […]
7. gil says:

   January 7, 2009 at 12:20

   Hi Pred­man and Alvaro–
   Actu­ally you shouldn’t be fooled by the sim­plis­tic dia­gram­matic appear­ance used to por­tray brain neu­rons. These images are often cre­ated by inject­ing cells with floures­cent mark­ers that allow us to see a sin­gle cell. What we don’t see are the count­less divi­sions occur­ring as the den­drites spread out from the cell (like infi­nitely divid­ing branches on a tree) and other nerve den­drites attached at var­i­ous points to that cell, like count­less leaves from other trees inter­twined with and attached at thou­sands of points to our ‘tree’. I think that wike­pe­dia does a good job of describ­ing neu­ro­logic synapses and clearly states the total num­ber of synapses in our brains is between 100 and 500 tril­lion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse). This would trans­late to 1 to 5 thou­sand synapses per neu­ron and is more in keep­ing with the num­ber of leaves on an Ama­zon tree.
8. Alvaro Fernandez says:

   January 7, 2009 at 12:58

   Gil, thank you for the addi­tional context.

   Indeed, Mar­ian Dia­mond did a great job when she titled her clas­sic book Magic Trees of the Mind.