# Brain Programming Matters More Than Brain Hardware for Cognition by Nicholas Humphrey > “What really matters to cognitive performance is not so much the brain's hardware as its onboard software.” > **— Nicholas Humphrey**, *2014 Edge Annual Question, response passage* ## Sources and Context - **Direct publication and locator:** [The Bigger An Animal's Brain, The Greater Its Intelligence — Nicholas Humphrey](https://www.edge.org/response-detail/25284) — paragraph beginning 'The key, of course, is programming'. - **Exact original excerpt:** “What really matters to cognitive performance is not so much the brain's hardware as its onboard software.” - **Context and editing:** The archive's representative extract opens with the bigger-brain claim that Humphrey argues against. The poster instead takes his continuous sentence from the paragraph beginning 'The key, of course, is programming.' His essay presents this as an argued view and later proposes cognitive reserve as another possible reason for large human brains. Exact later sentence: “What really matters to cognitive performance is not so much the brain's hardware as its onboard software.” - **Local Edge archive:** [[research/Edge 2014 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2014 Full Quotation Curation]], response EDGE2014-180. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Greatest Transformation in Human History|The Greatest Transformation in Human History]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Nicholas Humphrey|Nicholas Humphrey]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Nicholas Humphrey|Nicholas Humphrey]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “What really matters to cognitive performance is not so much the brain's hardware as its onboard software.” — Nicholas Humphrey, 2014 Edge Annual Question, response passage https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-nicholas-humphrey-brain-programming-matters-more-than-brain ```