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Is the human race getting dumber? geneticist Gerald Crabtree thinks that human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on, has been on a slow decline.

His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99% of human evolutionary history, we lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, which led to the big brains we have today. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has stopped and mutations have accumulated in our critical "intelligence" genes. A comparison of the genomes of parents and children reveals that there are between 25 and 65 new mutations in the DNA of each new generation.
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Social factors can have a powerful effect on our intelligence. Most of us feel intelligent and amusing when talking to a particular person and feel dumb and inarticulate when talking to someone else.

In the October 7th edition of the New York Times, Annie Murphy Paul quotes psychologist Joshua Aronson as saying that we shouldn’t think of our intelligence as just a "lump of something that’s in our heads," but as "a transaction among people."
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The idea of a simple, cheap and widely available device that could boost brain function (no more late nights studying for exams?) sounds too good to be true, but it may be a reality. Neurologists are coming up with brain stimulation techniques that may make us all smarter in the future.

Recent research shows that one type of brain stimulation in particular, called transcranial direct current stimulation or TDCS, can be used to improve language and math skills, memory, problem solving, attention, and even movement.
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New research shows that The higher up in latitude you live, the bigger your brain AND eyeballs will be. But does this mean that people who live in these regions are better thinkers? Relatively few innovations have come from people living in these parts of the world, but this may be because the populations of polar  countries have always been relatively sparse.

Their brains may be bigger simply to help them cope with the cold. And what about the eyeballs? There’s less oxygen available at higher altitudes. Many high altitude areas are cold and thus snowy. It turns out that people need to see better in places that receive less light than areas that closer to the equator.
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