Snapshot · The School of Greatness
Einstein's brain was actually smaller than average, suggesting that intelligence is driven by the density and number of neural connections rather than raw brain size.
Where this was said
At 39:58 · chapter starts 36:05
Lewis asks how much the brain influences the mind and vice versa. McLaughlin's answer: the brain has machinery to do whatever the mind asks. That machinery includes habit formation, emotional experience, and unconscious threat detection — including olfactory channels for picking up the pheromones of a threatening individual before conscious awareness kicks in. The limbic system (amygdala, hippocampus) triggers the neuroadrenergic fight-flight-freeze cascade. He then offers the Einstein curveball: the physicist's brain was smaller than average, suggesting that the 100 trillion synaptic connections (against 90 billion neurons) are the real intelligence substrate — and can be grown through deliberate learning. The mind, in short, can generate brain growth. Lewis wonders aloud whether any brain surgeon has ever scanned their own brain every five years to track development. McLaughlin has not. [1] — Dr. Mark McLaughlin "90 billion neurons, 100 trillion connections: The human brain contains approximately 90 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections betwee…" 40:30 [2] — Dr. Mark McLaughlin "Einstein's brain was smaller than average: Einstein's brain was actually smaller than average, suggesting that intelligence is driven by th…" 39:58
The human brain has 90 billion neurons but 100 trillion synaptic connections — and you can increase those connections through learning. Even Einstein's brain was smaller than average; it was the connections that made him exceptional. Brain size is irrelevant; connectivity is everything.
The human brain contains approximately 90 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections between them — and those connections can be increased through learning and new skills.
McLaughlin opened a patient's skull only to find the cyst he was looking for had vanished. Four years into his career, alone, no senior partner available. He methodically started over from the scalp — and found the cyst hiding in the upper left field of his microscope. The surgeon who left the OR that day was permanently changed.
Animals first sensed light 540 million years ago, triggering an evolutionary acceleration known as the Cambrian explosion within 10 million years.
It is estimated that half of all cortical activity in the human brain is involved in visual function, underscoring vision's central role in intelligence.
Cognitive neuroscience literature shows that by age 6, humans can recognize tens of thousands of different object categories — far more data than early AI systems were trained on.
Only about 3% of FDA-approved drugs have genuinely unclear mechanisms of action, making an unknown mechanism a meaningful early red flag for any compound.
Even compounds that clear preclinical testing often fail in humans: 30 to 50% of drugs entering phase 1 trials do not advance to phase 2, frequently because human behavior differs from animal models.
More than 80% of published BPC-157 research comes from a single academic group whose researchers have IP and commercial interests connected to the molecule, limiting independent replication.
Roughly 100 peptide drugs are already FDA-approved, about 150 more are in clinical trials, and 600–700 are in preclinical development, underscoring the legitimacy of peptide science broadly.
The scientist who discovered BPC-157 refused to disclose the screening method used to identify the compound and has never fully published the parent protein sequence — what Peter Attia calls 'scientific trust me, bro.'
The brain's visual, auditory, and motor cortices light up nearly identically whether an experience is real or imagined, making visualization a form of actual neural training.
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