Re: What is the purpose of the brain being in a squiggly pattern?

The brain is squiggly when you look at it because it is folded. It is folded so that more brain fits in a smaller space. Animals with very small brains have brains with very few squiggles. Animals with big brains (like people, elephants, and whales) have brains with many squiggles, and many folds.

The squiggly part of the brain, called the grey matter or neocortex, is not the same all the way through like a rubber ball would be. It is a thin layer of brain around water (cerebrospinal fluid) and nerve cells. So the brain of small-brained animals is more like the surface of a tennis ball. How could that brain get bigger? One way is by growing bigger, like from a tennis ball to a kickball. But animals heads cannot keep getting bigger and bigger. If our brains were not folded, our heads would be so big we couldn't hold them up! Your head would be as big as a giant balloon!

How else could a brain the size of a kickball get bigger, then? It could start to FOLD!

Try this to see how it works: take two pieces of paper. Very carefully cut one out so you can wrap it around a ball, with enough paper so that the ball is just covered. Take the other paper and smash it up ito a ball the same size; if it is too big, cut it. Then flatten out both peices of paper. Which is bigger?

Here is a place where people look at flat brains, there is even a flat brain move: http:// www.math.fsu.edu/~mhurdal/research/visualizemaps.html