>>11653758It used to be believed it's the huge cerebral cortex is what makes us smart, but it is in fact the reason why we need to rely so much on culture and having knowledge handed down from previous generations, as cerebral cortex seems to be mainly for sensory processing and memory. The prefrontal cortex is only associated with self control and abstract thinking because it's typiccaly more strongly connected to the cerebellum (but there is considerable variation)
It is also why you can guess at people's intelligence by the way they move, as smart people will nove more smoothly, while dumb people are more rigid. (Mark Zuckerberg is an extreme example, he moves so smoothly he falls into the uncanny valley for many)
So it seems that what we call higher thinking may not actually be anything special, and the thinking of the elephant may be in fact far more abstract than of any human, while animals with similarly unbalanced brains, such as sperm whales, also seem to rely heavily on culture, like we do.
