Thursday, February 16, 2012

Our amazing Brain

Our brain is so amazing. I first got interested in neurology when I discovered a book written by David Eagleman, called “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”.  In it, he refined a complex subject into a compelling read -- and made me realize that I knew very little about the mission control center of my body.  Just to introduce the subject of neurology, I like to sum up some of the basic facts about the brain.  I have always appreciated facts and statistics that relegate the importance of a subject. So here is my version to introduce the human brain.
This pink-ish three pound organ encapsulated in your skull accounts for only 2 percent of your mass but consumes 20 percent of your resting cardiac output. It is an intricate system of 100 billion neurons “connected to one another in a network of such complexity that it bankrupts human language and necessitates new strains of mathematics” (Eagleman).  One-hundred billion is the same number as stars found in our galaxy. Each one of these neurons can make a thousand individual connections with other neurons, which communicate with each other at speeds faster than a race car can drive.  At its slowest, impulses travel between neurons at 260 mph.  And finally, try to put this into perspective: more electrical impulses are generated in one day by a single human brain than by all the telephones in the world. 

"Now, how about that..."

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