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General Science => Question of the Week => Topic started by: jamest on 30/05/2025 12:30:51

Title: QotW - 25.06.06 - What sense takes up the most brain capacity?
Post by: jamest on 30/05/2025 12:30:51

David writes, 'How much do the senses take up in brain capacity and what sense occupies the largest part of the brain (I would guess it would be sight?)'

Title: Re: QotW - 25.06.06 - What sense takes up the most brain capacity?
Post by: paul cotter on 30/05/2025 17:31:03

I think you have the answer already, the visual cortex occupies quite a lot of the brain.

Title: Re: QotW - 25.06.06 - What sense takes up the most brain capacity?
Post by: alancalverd on 30/05/2025 22:19:55

I was under the impression that bipedal motion actually requires most processing power. Getting a bipedal robot to stand still is remarkably difficult, and possibly more complicated than getting it to run!

Title: Re: QotW - 25.06.06 - What sense takes up the most brain capacity?
Post by: Petrochemicals on 31/05/2025 17:32:19

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Brain body size gives a rough correlation, as you can see humans are outliers

Title: Re: QotW - 25.06.06 - What sense takes up the most brain capacity?
Post by: evan_au on 09/06/2025 09:43:26

A very visual way of representing brainpower consumption is with the "cortical homunculus", which maps parts of the body onto the part of the brain which senses and/or controls that part of the body.

However, this seems to be taken as a slice through the brain, roughly from ear to ear; in this slice, the hands represent a large fraction of the brain. This mapping does not include the large visual cortex, which lies at the rear of the brain.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus