Our brain is amazing. All scientific and technological achievements of human civilization come from the brain.
To better appreciate the magic of the brain, here are top 10 interesting facts about the human brain:
1. Your brain is the most energy-consuming part of your body. The brain represents only 2% of the body weight, but it uses up to 20 percent of the body’s energy production. The energy is used for cell-health maintenance and to fuel electrical impulses that neurons employ to communicate with one another.
2. Your brain contains about 100 billion neurons which is about 16 times the number of people on Earth. Each of them links to as many as 10,000 other neurons. This huge number of connections opens the way to massive parallel processing within the brain.
3. The neocortex (a section of the brain involved with language and consciousness) accounts for about 76% of the mass of the human brain. Human neocortex is much larger than any animals. It gives humans unique mental capacities although its brain architecture is similar to that of more primitive species.
4. Humans do not use only 10% or less of their brain. This is a common misconception. Even though many mysteries of brain function persist, every part of the brain has a known function.
5. Neurons multiply at a rate 250,000 neurons per minute during early pregnancy.
6. 750ml of blood pumps through your brain every minute which is 15-20% of blood flow from the heart.
7. The human brain is about 75% water.
8. Your brain consumes 25 watts of power while you’re awake. This amount of energy is enough to illuminate a lightbulb.
9. It is estimated that the human brain has a raw computational power between 1013 and 1016 operations per second. It is far more that 1 million times the number of people on Earth.
10. Our brain often fools us. It often perceives things differently from the reality. For instance, check the following picture. Square A and B are actually the same shade of gray.
- Brain – Wikipedia
- Human brain – Wikipedia
- Why Does the Brain Need So Much Power?
- Brain Facts
- Brain Facts and Figures
- Brain Limits
This article is part of May 2008 theme: Mind.