Mankind’s brain power has reached its peak and it is physically impossible for us to become any smarter

Some scientists claim that in order to become any more intelligent the human brain would need vast amounts of extra energy and oxygen – and we simply cannot provide it. Cambridge University researchers have analyzed the structure of the brain and worked out how much energy its cells use up. Brains must consume energy to function and these requirements are sufficiently demanding to limit human performance and determine design. Far-reaching powers of deduction demand a lot of energy because for the brain to search out new relationships it must constantly correlate information from different sources. Such energy demands mean that there is a limit to the information humans can process. Other scientists claim that the brain’s wiring or network of fibers linking different areas to one another cannot get any better. They have found that the cleverest people have the best wiring, with messages carried very quickly between different parts of the brain. But scientists claim that the wiring would need vast amounts of extra energy to become more efficient. As before, they say that it is impossible for humans to provide this, therefore humans cannot get cleverer. Ed Bullmore, professor of psychiatry at Cambridge, where he specialises in brain imaging, measured the efficiency with which different parts of the brain communicated with each other. He found that impulses traveled fastest in smarter people and slower in those who were less intelligent. High integration of brain networks seems to be associated with high IQ. Humans pay a price for intelligence. Becoming smarter means improving connections between different brain areas but this runs into tight limits on energy, along with space for the wiring. Martijn van den Heuvel, assistant professor of psychiatry at Utrecht medical center in Holland, who also studies how differences in the wiring of human brains affects IQ, said: "Increasing the power of the brain would take a disproportionate increase in energy consumption. It is risky to predict the distant future but it is clear there are tight constraints on intelligence."