We normally associate wrinkles with aging, such as wrinkled skin. But there’s one organ that is wrinkled right from the time we are born. It’s our brain. And new research shows those wrinkles are not a sign of age but are, in fact, a sign of just how large and complex our brains are.

The wrinkles, according to U.C. Santa Barbara (UCSB) postdoctoral scholar Eyal Karzbrun, are vital to our development because they create a greater surface area giving our neurons, or brain nerve cells, more space to create connections and deliver information.

In an article in UCSB’s Daily Nexus, Karzbrun says while our knowledge of the brain is increasing there are still many things we don’t understand:

“The brain is a complex organ whose organization is essential to its function. Yet it is ‘assembled by itself’. How this assembly takes place and what physics come into play is fundamental to our understanding of the brain.”

Eyal Karzbrun: Photo courtesy UCSB

Karzbrun used stem cells to create 3D clusters of brain cells, to better understand how they organize themselves. He said brains are like computers in the way they rely on surface area to process information.

“In order to be computationally strong and quick, what your brain does is take a lot of surface area and put it in a small volume. The cerebral cortex, which occupies most of the volume in your brain, has a unique architecture in which neurons are layered on the outer surface of the brain, and the bulk of the brain is composed of axons, [or] biological wire which interconnect the neurons.”

Karzbrun says gaining a deeper understanding of how the brain is formed, and why it takes the shape it does, may help us develop new approaches to treating problems in the brain.