The human brain is one of the most important organs in a human body. It helps us think, reason, remember, and learn new things.
The brain is part of your body’s central nervous system. It’s the most complicated part of your body. It has the ability to send and receive an enormous amount of information. Because it is so complex, there are some things doctors and scientists don’t completely understand yet about it. This also means that there are some amazing things you may not know about your brain.
The largest part of the human brain is the cerebrum, which is divided into two hemispheres, according to the Mayfield Clinic. Underneath lies the brainstem, and behind that sits the cerebellum. The outermost layer of the cerebrum is the cerebral cortex, which consists of four lobes: the frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital.
Here are interesting facts about the Human brain:
* The human brain weighs 3 pounds.
* It comprises 60% of fat and is one of the fattest organs in the human body.
* When you're awake, your brain produces enough electricity to power a small light bulb. Human brain has the capacity to generate approximately 23 watts of power when awake.
* Of the total blood and oxygen that is produced in our body, the brain gets 20% of it.
* When the blood supply to the brain stops, it is almost after 8-10 seconds that the brain starts losing the consciousness.
* The brain is capable of surviving for 5 to 6 minutes only if it doesn’t get oxygen after which it dies.
* When you find yourself sleeping in a new environment for the first time, the brain processes danger and remains half-awake in order to be more aware.
* The blood vessels that are present in the brain are almost 100,000 miles in length.
* There are 100 billion neurons present in the brain.
* In early pregnancy, the neurons develop at an alarming rate of 250,000 per minute.
* As we grow older, we are unable to remember new things. According to the researchers in the US it is because the brain is unable to filter and remove old memories which prevent it from absorbing new ideas.
* We cry when we are very happy because our hypothalamus in our brain can't distinguish the difference between strong happiness and strong sadness.
* We get chills when we listen to music as a result of our brain releasing dopamine. When a song "moves" you, the anticipation from a peak moment in the song triggers this release.
* Signs of successful brain surgeries go as far back as the Stone Age.
* The largest brain of any animal is that of the sperm whale. It weighs about 20 pounds.
* The human brain will grow three times its size in the first year of life. It continues to grow until you’re about 18 years old.
* Sleep deprivation can affect the brain in many ways.
There's a reason that a solid seven to nine hours of sleep per night is recommended: Your body and your brain require rest in order to function properly, retain memory, and react in a timely manner. Judgment is even impaired when a human has not had a proper night's rest. Sleep deprivation kills brain cells, can create psychosis if long enough, and will reduce the ability of the body and the brain to heal.
* Headaches are caused by a chemical reaction in your brain combined with the muscles and nerves of your neck and head.
* The brain of a human contains approximately one hundred billion neurons
* It is a myth that humans only use 10 percent of our brain. We actually use all of it. We’re even using more than 10 percent when we sleep.
* Like all vertebrate brains, the human brain develops from three sections known as the forebrain, midbrain and hindbrain. Each of these contains fluid-filled cavities called ventricles. The forebrain develops into the cerebrum and underlying structures; the midbrain becomes part of the brainstem; and the hindbrain gives rise to regions of the brainstem and the cerebellum.
* Cholesterol is key to learning and memory. However, high cholesterol has different effects depending on your age and other factors.
* Information runs between neurons in your brain for everything we see, think, or do. These neurons move information at different speeds. The fastest speed for information to pass between neurons is about 250 mph.
* Dreams are believed to be a combination of imagination, psycological factors, and neurological factors. They prove that your brain is working even when you are sleeping.
* Phantom limb pain syndrome is when the central nervous system, which includes your brain, continues to feel the pain of a limb that has been amputated.
* The brain can’t feel pain. It interprets pain signals sent to it, but it does not feel pain.
* A brain freeze is really a sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. It happens when you eat or drink something that’s cold. It chills the blood vessels and arteries in the very back of the throat, including the ones that take blood to your brain. These constrict when they’re cold and open back up with they’re warm again, causing the pain in your forehead.
* The human brain begins to lose some memory abilities as well as some cognitive skills by your late 20s.
* The human brain gets smaller as we get older. This usually happens sometime after middle age.
* During the mummification process, Egyptians would usually remove the brains through the nose.
* Alcohol effects your brain in ways that include blurred vision, slurred speaking, an unsteady walk, and more. These usually disappear once you become sober again. However, if you drink often for long periods of time, there is evidence that alcohol can affect your brain permanently and not reverse once you become sober again.
* Eyewitness accounts of criminal suspects is usually only about 50 percent accurate because it is difficult for your brain to remember the details of someone you’re not familiar with. Traumatic events can also affect the brains ability to remember details.
* Computer or video games may help improve cognitive abilities. However, more studies must be conducted to learn how much they help or what types of games help.
* It's Also Made up of Billions of Glial Cells:
Recent research has shown that the belief that there are 10 glial cells for every one neuron is false. The ratio is closer to 1:1. Glial cells make up approximately half of the brain and spinal cord, though this ratio can vary from one spot to the next.
Glial cells perform a range of functions, including acting as a glue to hold neurons together. They also perform housekeeping functions by cleaning up excess neurotransmitters and supporting synaptic growth.
* It Requires a Lot of Energy to Function:
While it represents only about 2 percent of the body's total weight, the brain requires about 20 percent of the body's oxygen and 25 percent of the body's glucose.
* Your brain isn't fully formed until age 25. Brain development begins from the back of the brain and works its way to the front.
Therefore, your frontal lobes, which control planning and reasoning, are the last to strengthen and structure connections.
* Your brain’s storage capacity is considered virtually unlimited. Research suggests the human brain consists of about 86 billion neurons. Each neuron forms connections to other neurons, which could add up to 1 quadrillion (1,000 trillion) connections. Over time, these neurons can combine, increasing storage capacity.
However, in Alzheimer’s disease, for example, many neurons can become damaged and stop working, particularly affecting memory.
* While we sleep, our spinal fluid flows through the brain on the outside of the brain's blood vessels. This removes brain cell waste, specific buildups of amyloid-beta protein. This only occurs during sleep and a buildup of the proteins that get cleaned has been linked to greater risks of Alzheimer's.
* Brain information travels up to an impressive 268 miles per hour. When a neuron is stimulated, it generates an electrical impulse that travels from cell to cell. A disruption in this regular processing can cause an epileptic seizure.
* On average, your spinal cord stops growing at 4 years old. Your spinal cord, which consists of a bundle of nervous tissue and support cells, is responsible for sending messages from your brain throughout your body.
* The spinal cord is the main source of communication between the body and the brain. ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, causes the neurons in the brain and spinal cord to die, impacting controlled muscle movement.
* Another disease that affects both the brain and the spinal cord is multiple sclerosis (MS). In MS, the immune system attacks the protective layer that covers nerve fibers, causing communication problems between the brain and the body.
* A piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and 1 billion synapses. However, damage to neurons can have great impact.
* During a stroke, for example, blood is not able to get oxygen to the brain. As a result, brain cells can die, and abilities in that particular area of the brain can be lost. Similarly, Parkinson’s disease occurs when the cells of a part of your brain called the substantia nigra start to die
* Alcohol doesn't make you forget anything. When you get blackout drunk, the brain temporarily loses the ability to create memories."
* In raw data, our brains can compute 10 to the 13th and 10 to the 16th operations per second. In essence and in theory, the human brain is capable of solving and computing problems much quicker than a computer.
* Brain surgery can be performed while the patient is awake with no pain or discomfort. The brain has no pain receptors and feels no pain.
* Multitasking is actually impossible. When we think we're multitasking, we're actually context-switching. That is, we're quickly switching back-and-forth between different tasks, rather than doing them at the same time. The book Brain Rules explains how detrimental "multitasking" can be: Research shows your error rate goes up 50 percent and it takes you twice as long to do things.
* Most scientists argue that there is no evidence that playing classical music to babies increases the power of their mind. However, children who learn to play a musical instrument can develop their mental skills further than those who don't learn a musical instrument.
* When the mind recalls a memory, it's not the original memory. In fact, the act of remembering is an act of creative re-imagination. The put-together memory doesn't just have a few holes; it also has some entirely new bits pasted in.
* There is 2,500,000 gigabytes of storage space in your brain. iPhone 7 has 256.
* Reading aloud promotes brain development. It's indeed one of the strange facts about the brain because we usually teach our children to read and talk politely. But to promote brain development in your child, you should read and talk aloud in front of them.
* The attention spans of human brains are getting shorter. We have lost almost four seconds of our attention span in the past 15 years. This means we cannot concentrate on one thing for more than eight seconds on an average.
* Our brain prefers images over text. Participants in studies only remember about 10% of information presented orally when they are tested 72 hours after instruction. However, that number jumps by about 65% when an image is added to the learning process.
* The human brain is divided into two hemispheres, the left and right, connected by a bundle of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. The left brain controls all the muscles on the right-hand side of the body; and the right brain controls the left side.
* Studies have shown that our brain usually chooses the first option on lists.
* There are about 100 billion neurons in a human brain, which is about the same as the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
* Feeling tired? Go ahead and yawn. Yawning cools down the brain, research suggests. Sleep deprivation raises brain temperature.
* Exercise slows our brains' cognitive decline and increased physical activity over the norm can slow our brain's aging by 10 years.
* Yawning is actually a reaction that sends more oxygen to your brain. Reptiles, birds, and mammals all yawn and it's controlled by neurotransmitters in the brain.
* The cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for posture, walking, and movement coordination. It is located in the back of the brain and weighs 150 grams.
* You can actually improve your memory if you choose to eat seafood regularly. The fatty acids in these foods improve the memory storing parts of your brain.
* The human brain continues to develop until your late 40s. It is the only organ in the body that develops for this long of a time.
* Every second, there are 100,000 chemical reactions happening in the human brain.
* Babies lose about half of their neurons before they are born. Referred to as pruning, this eliminates any brain neurons that don't receive sufficient input from other areas of the brain.
* Studies have found that when mothers speak to their babies, the children learned, on average, 300 more words by the age of 2.
* Every time that you remember something, you, in turn, strengthen that memory in your brain. Whenever the neural pathways of a memory are exercised, your brain makes new connections. The older and more times a memory has been remembered, the stronger that memory is.
* During sleep, your body produces a hormone that prevents you from getting up and acting out your dreams. Five minutes after a dream, your body has already forgotten half of it and ten minutes later it is 90% gone from your memory.
* Good nutrition is incredibly important to brain health. Dieting can force the brain to start eating itself and malnourished fetuses or infants can suffer from cognitive and behavioral deficits. Babies need proper nourishment because their brains use up to 50% of their total glucose supply, another reason why they may need so much sleep.
* Humans experience 70,000 thoughts each day.
* Our sense of smell is the only sense that is directly linked to our limbic system. This part of the brain specializes in physical, emotional, and psychological responses. This all means that good smells can change our moods drastically in a snap.
* The more you are forced to memorize, the larger this part of your brain grows.
* The brain is the only object in the world that can contemplate itself.
* Chronic exposer to stress actually overloads your brain with hormones that are only intended for short-term emergency functions. In turn, that means that long-term exposure can kill brain cells.
* Of people ages 1 to 44, traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of disability and death. Most commonly involved are falls, motor vehicle crashes, and assaults.
47. The average size of the human brain has decreased by 9 cubic inches over a period of the last 5000 years. Scientists aren't exactly sure why.
* Déjà vu hasn't been fully explained. Scientists think that it's actually a neurological glitch caused by something being registered in memory before conscious thought.
* What seems like random light when you hit your head, is actually just jolts to brain cells responsible for vision. These visual "hallucinations" are just simple responses.
* You can "see" through your ears.
Neuroplasticity, or the brain's ability to reorganize and change itself throughout a person's lifetime, is a truly remarkable thing. In one 2011 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Montreal researchers compared the brain activity of individuals who were born blind and those who had normal vision. They found that the part of the brain that's normally wired to work with our eyes can instead rewire itself to process sound information instead of visual perception.
* The harder your brain is working, the smaller your brain waves
As it's working, your brain is creating electric fields. The fields are measured on your scalp, called the electroencephalogram (EEG), and are often larger when your brain is doing less.
* Your brain's storage capacity is virtually unlimited.
There's no such thing as knowing too much—or learning so much that you can't retain any more information. Your brain doesn't get 'used up' like the data storage in your computer or smartphone. There is endless brain power! Although lack of sleep can affect your brain's ability to create more memories."
* Surgical removal of almost half our brain is possible with little or no effect on personality or memory
These brain facts might sound crazy, but a hemispherectomy, or the surgical removal of half of the brain, can and does happen. It's a very rare neurosurgical procedure that is used to treat a variety of seizure disorders. However, this type of procedure, as one would imagine, is not done without impact. "Some traits are very specific to one hemisphere, thus it can give us very subtle differences," says Brock. "Usually memory, humor, and personality will recover, but cognition might change a little."
Read more information about your brain here: https://www.livescience.com/amp/29365-human-brain.html
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