The brain of “The Brain”

The Brain”, from the popular  animated TV show “Pinky and the Brain”, is my chosen character for this assignment. His abrupt nature and determination to achieve world domination makes him an interesting character to explore (not to mention his abnormally large brain for a mouse, which would make his encephalization quotient value exceptionally high!)

His highly intelligent, strategic plans involving complex ideas suggests that Brain is likely to have a very large Cerebral cortex, since as well as regulating personality (of which Brain certainly does not lack), is also responsible for planning and organisation. Like humans, the cerebral cortex is likely to be the origin of Brain’s wild thought process! With this in mind, it seems obvious that his cerebral cortex is more likely to resemble that of a human rather than that of a mouse, since his language ability is second to none. Damage to his prefrontal cortex would be detrimental to his problem solving ability.

The most obvious difference between Brain and your average mouse is the fact that he stands upright, therefore explaining that he is  likely to have a highly developed brain stem which is concerned with the maintenance of balance and posture. His heightened sense of smell with being a mouse would also make his olfactory region rather large in comparison to humans. Lastly, his limbic system is likely to be underdeveloped, or perhaps smaller than what is considered normal, since Brain appears to have a lack of emotion.


One response to “The brain of “The Brain””

  1. Brianna Margaret Cathey says:

    Hi Grace! Your character choice was very clever, I love it! I like your thought process as you describe the relative size of the brain regions. I think if we were able to take out Brain’s brain, your predictions would be very accurate.

Leave a Reply
