Daily Brain Snack: You Have Micro Grooves on Your Brain That Boost Cognition — and Grow with Experience

A recent paper outlines how micro grooves impact brain function but are also more flexible than the brain’s big grooves.

What do you, or the researchers, mean by “microgrooves”?

Well, we all know the picture of a brain (as above) and it has these big grooves, and bumps. The brain is basically folded and this expands the surface area, allowing us to pack in more neurons.

Of note is that more advanced animals have more folds in their brains. There is also a condition known as smooth brain (lissencephaly). This causes multiple severe dysfunctions although people do survive.

But that is, so to speak, at the macro level. These folds themselves also have much smaller folds that are not so obvious. Hence the term micro groove — actually that isn’t the official terminology tertiary sulci is the official term.

I’ve never heard these mentioned before.

Me neither, and I imagine most neuroscientists also haven’t. Kevin Weiner noticed as an undergraduate student some sulci on a brain he was working on that had grooves that weren’t mapped on standard brain maps. He asked about…