Question: Can we adapt the human brain to be able to use it to its full potential?

Damian Bailey answered on 17 Jun 2013:

Great question! My rather provocative take is that our brains are already as well-adapted as they can be. We’ve hit the ceiling, we can’t push beyond its current limits. Why, well, the brain is a “gas guzzler” in that it depends so much on oxygen (my brain is using about 1/4 of my body’s oxygen as I type right now) which is way high, perhaps too high. It’s too vulnerable for failure, I mean look at what happens during a stroke for example. So if anything, our brains will start to get smaller (as appears to be the case, about 150g over the past few thousand years) and less oxygen dependant as we “lean” more on technology and become more and more confortable. We’ll probably even have robots doing our daily work for us soon, even our thinking. This is already happening and we’ve become way morerelaxed thanks to iPads and technology! I guess we’ve already as intelligent as we need to be…and so we’ll have to put up with our brains they way there already are! No huge foreheads for us! Though I woulkd like to have chameleon eyes (one for the TV and one for my computer!)…that would be cool!