• Question: Why is the mind so complex?

    Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 20 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Fiona McLean

      Fiona McLean answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Ahhh the mind! An organ with so many mysteries! This is a great question. The mind is so complex because it has an awful lot to do! It controls organs in the body and takes information in from all your senses and tells your body to move it’s limbs when you want it to. On top of all that, it stores memories, helps you make decisions and even controls how you feel.

      In order to cope with all that it has different parts in it that deal with different things. But they do all help each other. For example there is a part of the brain called the hippocampus that looks after memories and there is another part called the prefrontal cortex which has quite a few responsibilities such as controlling decision making and how you act with other people. So it is organised very well and being organised lets it do lots of things. So the mind is very complex but it is also very sensible!

    • Photo: Kevin O'Dell

      Kevin O'Dell answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Good question. I suppose the short answer is that the mind has evolved to be so complex so that it has the ability to answer questions like ‘why is the mind so complex?’.

      Everything about us, including our mind and the brain its housed in, has evolved over many billions of years. Humans (depending on how you measure it) have been incredibly successful as a species with our population rising from an estimated 20000 around 75,000 years ago to 7.5 billion today. Most of this success is down to our minds, as we have evolved the ability to problem solve on a truly awesome scale. This isn’t just about us as a species out-competing other species (though we’ve done a lot of that) it’s also about groups of humans in history competing with each other so that those with the fittest brains/minds/strategy survive.

      To put it simply, the evolution of our complex minds has allowed us to be the dominant species we are today. Or to put it another way, if we didn’t have complex minds our species would still be living in small isolated population group or possibly extinct.

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