ABSTRACT

The human brain is a mass of interconnecting neurons, the number of which is enormous. The first insight into brain function was undoubtedly the realization that indeed the brain is the biological organ which allows cognition. Secondly, the brain thinks with its massive network of neurons – not its glial cells, blood vessels or cerebrospinal fluid – and the thinking activity of the neurons is fundamentally electrical. The neuron code is the proper subject matter of neurophysiology and that code constitutes the fine-grained substrate of, but is not synonymous with, the brain code – which is the proper subject matter of neuropsychology in its broadest sense. Absolute brain size suggests a strong correlation between greater intelligence and absolute body weight, whereas this is apparently not the case either within a species or across species. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.