Mondo Knows Facts
Wrinkles in the brain dramatically increase its surface area
Folds called gyri and grooves called sulci fit a large cortex inside the skull
The cerebral cortex features deep grooves called sulci and raised ridges called gyri. If smoothed out completely, the human cerebral cortex would cover roughly 2,500 square centimetres, but folding allows this expansive sheet of neural tissue to fit neatly inside the cranium.
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Tags: brain, anatomy, cortex
Wrinkles in the brain dramatically increase its surface area: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Folds called gyri and grooves called sulci fit a large cortex inside the skull. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a human body fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Human Body shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.