How can I increase brain processing capabilities without overloading it?

Question

The human brain is a jackass. Your senses are capable of processing large amounts of information to the senses. However, the brain blocks most of this out of the consciousness in order to allow this pitiful homo sapiens species to focus on few key things at a time. This robs humans of a rich amount of detail about their surroundings, preventing them from truly experiencing a more knowledgeable understanding about the world they live in.

We elves are a subspecies of humanity, but are from supieror breeding stock. We have the same amount of physical senses that you do, but are gifted with a form of passive telepathy which allows us to form a more complex picture of our environment. All things living give off an "aura" which is based on the life energy they carry, with humans giving off the most. We can sense the minds of living creatures within the vicinity of 10 to 15 feet, alerting us to their presence. Those who master this telepathy can extend this sending to objects, allowing them to locate specific things or items as long as they are in that vicinity. It is like a form of radar which gives them a 360 view of their surroundings, yet still allows us to hone in on the most important information.

I need to explain the structure of the supieror elven mind and how it can operate like this in a way that your primitive species can understand. How can I make this possible?

Answer 1

All elves have normal functioning autism.

Autism has a broad spectrum but at its core is a different way the brain grows compared to "normal" humans. This includes less filtering of sensory input, which can potentially cause the brain to get so much input it cant process it all which in turn causes a lowered responsive state until the brain has had time to process all the information. The classical (and often not applicable) screaming austist is basically trying a (not very successful) coping mechanism where he/she screams until everyone else goes away to get the time and space to sort through it all.

These elves need the normal function type of autism to be able to filter less sensory input. Combined with a larger brain area designated to processing this input, if necessary through extra brain matter or a larger amount of intelligent pre-processing in the spinal area, these elves would be able to do almost exactly what you want. I wouldnt remove the filters entirely, many are simply extremely intelligent methods to cut away useless information. You dont need to know the thousands of sensory signals of a muscle at rest, or the lack of changes in skin sensors. No/little change means the input can be ignored, which is a way of processing in itself.

Answer 2

Well, this problem is solved the eons before mere humans solved computer processor limitations: Multiple cores.

Elves' brains are much more intricate, and actually have multiple consciences. This functionally splits the work between these multiple consciences allowing them to focus on many things at once, or get multiple perspectives on the same problem. These 'multiple consciences' needn't necessarily be multiple personalities, but this does create an extra layer of dissonance between superior elven brains and that of mere humans in communication.

Every elf can simultaneously understand what four or more humans could at their best, making conversation difficult as a human would really be the fifth or sixth participant in the conversation, and a lesser one at that. An Elf must focus all of its consciences simultaneously on the human they're conversing with to even be understood by the slow, single-minded humans, and great patience is needed.

Multi-threaded brains are truly the pinnacle of existence.

Answer 3

What are they teaching in Elven University these days?

Compared to us, the whomons have an atrophied pineal gland that is pathetically diminutive. With their simpleton barely folded brains, they have no hope of actually using the pineal gland as a true third eye. They will never be able to see an aura or see the individual beads of water fall off a field of grass and comprehend the beauty of it all. Their philosophers Aristotle and Galen were able to hint at the nature of the organ, although like all whomons, can never fully grasp the sensation of mind sight.

The brain--the seat of the psychic faculties--is protected by membranes and bony walls on all sides, has a cold and moist temperament, and is divided into several parts, which reside in it as if they were not attached to each other. Among them one may observe a gland, called the pineal gland, which is situated like a centre in the middle of the ventricles, and which is the meeting point of threads coming from the external senses as if from the circumference; and because it is unique, supported by the choroid plexus and permanently inflated by the spirits which have been elaborated, it is only in this gland that the double appearances received by both the eyes and the ears can and must be united: "for there is one sense-faculty, and one paramount sense organ."

If those dirtdwelling savages still doubt your natural superiority just show them the EMA (Elven Medical Association's) chart.

Answer 4

All things living give off an "aura" which is based on the life energy they carry, with humans giving off the most. We can sense the minds of living creatures within the vicinity of 10 to 15 feet, alerting us to their presence. Those who master this telepathy can extend this sending to objects, allowing them to locate specific things or items as long as they are in that vicinity. It is like a form of radar which gives them a 360 view of their surroundings, yet still allows us to hone in on the most important information.

You guys are just some sort of intelligent cats. Hence the pointy ears AND the wrong beliefs that you are a) the superior ones and b) human at all.

Your ability to sense and locate things, ad well as feel their "vibe" stems from your heightened senses, specially smell. While cats don't have a sense of smell as good as dogs do, it is still orders of magnitude more sensitive and accurate than that of humans:

A domestic cat's sense of smell is about twenty times as strong as humans'. Cats have twice as many receptors in the olfactory epithelium (i.e. smell-sensitive cells in their noses) as people do, meaning that cats have a more acute sense of smell than humans. In fact cats have 200 million odor-sensitive cells in their noses where as humans only have 5 million odor-sensitive cells. Cats also have a scent organ in the roof of their mouths called the vomeronasal (or Jacobson's) organ.

You are also much more aware of your environment while asleep, and you are able to do most of your philosophing in this state. In a way your brains are more efficient because you can sleep for sixteen hours a day and still perform your tasks relatively well.

But you still get fooled every time you complain about your food, and we simply shake the bowl and you think you've got a fresh meal.