The Brain: 5 Things Men Should Know
Page 1 of 2The brain is the focal point of our entire being. It is the mainframe, the hub and the central processing unit of all thoughts, emotions and actions. Even as such a vital component of human biology, the brain is still the least understood, housing mysteries that in this day and age still remain unsolved: How are memories stored and retrieved? Why do brains sleep and dream? What is consciousness? All these are questions without firm answers. But there are some interesting facts about the brain that have been uncovered and are not generally well known. Here are five things men should know about the brain.
1- Your brain is the most energy-consuming part of your bodyDespite amassing to only 2% of our body weight, our brains demand 15% of our total heart output and 20% of our total oxygen to function. Talk about high maintenance! Perhaps more intriguing is that much of this oxygen is still needed when our brains are awake but resting, and this is for reasons that are not entirely known. So, our brains are demanding, but they demand without restraint or explanation (there's an ex-wife joke in there somewhere). In order to achieve this insatiable demand, three major cerebral arteries are constantly pumping in oxygen. So vital is this demand that a blockage in any of these arteries is a one-way ticket to a stroke. Aside from energy, our brains also demand prime skull real estate. The expansion of the human brain over evolutionary time has left most of us with overcrowded mouths and, accordingly, little room for wisdom teeth. Oral surgeons may now rejoice.
2- Your brain was almost fully grown by age 7Taking complex development out of the equation, it is true: Our brains are 95% of their adult size by the age of seven. This rapid growth probably explains why the brain of a 2-year-old consumes twice as much energy as the brain of an adult. Moving from diapers to briefcases — once the human brain reaches its full adult size — interesting contrasts become clear. Men, for example, have larger brains than women, a finding also observed in developing children. However, such differences should not, unfortunately, be interpreted as pointing toward any functional advantage (sorry, guys). In fact, this difference in size is due more to variances in specific regions of the brain than to an overall proportional difference. Women, for example, tend to have a larger hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for smell and memory. Men, on the other hand, tend to have a larger amygdala and hypothalamus, but again, the effect of these differences is unclear.
There are 3 more facts in our 5 things men should know about the brain...