Facts about the human brain. Amazing facts about the brain
Human brain- is part of the central nervous system, which regulates all functions occurring in a living organism. Humanity explores space, plows the depths of the sea, invents Hi-tech. However this body, remains a mystery. This is due to the fact that it is one of the most complex objects existing in our world. The article provides Interesting Facts about the human brain.
Educational facts about the human brain
The human brain contains a hundred billion nerve cells, which are called neurons (or neurocytes). To understand how large this figure is, let’s convert one hundred billion into seconds, which will be about three thousand years. Each neurocyte contacts a huge amount others. Moreover, at the same time, a neurocyte interacts with several others located even in the most distant parts of the head.
The instrument responsible for mental activity consumes a quarter of the energy resources of the entire organism. When active, enough energy is generated to run a small light bulb. It works 15% of the heart and consumes 25% of the air that enters the body. Three main cerebral arteries constantly deliver oxygen to the brain tissue. His an insufficient amount may lead to irreversible consequences.
The center with gray matter cannot feel pain, this is due to the fact that there are no pain receptors in it, therefore pain is not felt. And the so-called migraine occurs as a result of a violation of the membrane that protects it.
In addition, the tissues of the head tend to regenerate, but not as intensively as the cells of any other organs. It was found that in some parts, new neurocytes are formed from dead cells. Every day, tens of thousands of new neurons are formed in the cortex; no more than ten thousand are able to take root. Today, two zones for the formation of new brain cells are known: the memory zone and the zone responsible for movement.
Useful to know: How much does the brain weigh ordinary person or genius
Intelligence can be purposefully developed. The best way to increase IQ, exercise new activity. It is also useful to memorize various texts, solve logical and math problems, to cognize foreign languages. Communication with those who have more developed intelligence has a beneficial effect on development. Moreover, than more educated person, the less likely he is to develop mental illness. Intellectual development promotes the revival of new tissue that replaces the diseased one.
During sleep, the same processes occur in the brain as during wakefulness. It was found that during sleep all departments function, only the muscles rest. When we sleep, we review the events of not only the past day, but also our entire life. The information is put together into a picture and subjected to in-depth analysis. This is what we call dreams.
Misinformation about the brain
There is a myth that the human core only works at 10%. However American biologist Barry Gordon has given several arguments to refute this. Firstly, as was said earlier, mental work spends a large number of energy. If only 10% were used, the remaining 90% would disappear over time, meaning the brain would shrink significantly. Secondly, if unused parts are damaged, then this will not affect the activity of the kernel, but any damage will disrupt the operation. Thirdly, the brain is not a single mass, but is divided into sections. It took researchers decades to determine the functionality of each department. Departments that are not functioning were not found. Fourthly, thanks to positron emission and functional magnetic resonance tomography, which allow us to observe the work of the thinking organ, it was possible to reveal that inactive areas of tissue appear only when damaged.
There is an opinion that what smarter person, the larger his brain. It's a delusion. The largest mental organ that scientists studied weighed 2850 grams, and belonged to a person in a psychiatric clinic, the patient suffered from idiocy. As a rule, men's scalp tissue is heavier than women's (men 1375 grams, women 1275 grams).
Reasoning and conclusions
Having considered interesting facts and myths about the human brain, we can come to the following conclusion. Knowing this unique organ is an amazing, most exciting task facing scientists. If we approach this issue with philosophical thinking, the question arises whether this is even possible. After all, the main thing in studying is not the instruments and different methods. The main means of cognition, however, remains unstudied human brain
There is, perhaps, no more complex thing in the universe than the human brain. It regulates the functioning of all organs, is responsible for balance, allows you to think about various thoughts that come into it, and sometimes is capable of creating beauty, and it turns into material objects. True, he is capable of terrible things, but still thanks to the Creator for having him! It may not work equally well for everyone. To appreciate this most important device, which every person is equipped with from birth, it is enough to think a little about the simplest parameters that can be quantified. Their for a long time collected by scientists: doctors, physicists, chemists and specialists in other exact sciences. It is interesting that they themselves used the subject of their research. Some facts are simply amazing.
Weight and power consumption
The brain consumes less energy than a refrigerator light bulb - only 12 watts, which is 17% of the total consumed human body energy.
The average brain weight is about 1.36 kg.
The brain is made up of approximately three-quarters water.
The brain grows until a person reaches the age of eighteen.
The brain consumes a fifth of everything necessary for the body oxygen.
Research shows that mental activity higher during sleep than during wakefulness.
The brain can live 4-6 minutes without oxygen, then begins to die. If a person is saved within 5-10 minutes, irreversible mental damage occurs.
Psychology
The brain has a humor center. Sometimes patients with damage frontal lobes lose the ability to understand jokes.
Man can't hear telephone conversations V noisy rooms- the brain is unable to distinguish background noise from the caller’s voice.
Yawning really invigorates, during it more air enters the lungs, and the oxygen content in the blood increases, and it, in turn, feeds the brain with it.
The ability to remember the melodies of annoying songs is due to the need for our ancient ancestors to navigate the time of day. Morning sounds were always different from daytime and night sounds. Obviously, since then, annoying hits have been “stuck” in the brain.
Frequent jet lag can damage your memory. Stress hormones released during disruptions to daily routines can damage tissue temporal lobe brain.
When at high altitudes, people sometimes see strange things. Oxygen starvation, most likely conflicts with the brain's visual and emotional processing.
Computer shooting games develop the ability to solve several problems at the same time (at least some benefit!). The player is forced to divide his attention between several “enemies”.
It is impossible to tickle yourself. In this case, the brain automatically dulls the expected sensations.
Sunlight makes us sneeze. Crossed channels in brain stem send signals from vision to nose.
Excessive stress changes brain cells, structure and functionality.
Reading aloud and talking frequently with your child helps develop his or her brain.
In the year following birth, a child's brain triples in size.
The human brain is the fattest organ of the human body.
1. The brain does not experience pain
There are no pain receptors in the brain. Therefore, surgeons can perform brain operations without giving patients anesthesia. This helps avoid damaging any visual or motor functions. But it looks quite scary. Why then do we feel pain? Because the pain receptor, also known as the sensory receptor, sends a signal to spinal cord, notifying the brain of danger.
2. Our brain has 100,000 miles of blood vessels
The brain also consists of one hundred billion neurons, as many as in the entire galaxy. Using only 17% of the body's energy and 20% of oxygen, its mass is only 2% of the body; When waking up, the brain creates an electric field of 10-23 watts, which is enough to light a light bulb. Composed of 75% water, the brain contains more than 100 trillion synapses connecting neurons and is also large enough to hold five volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica, or 1,000 terabytes of information. Myth about underutilization brain is not true. You always use your brain fully.
3. Einstein's brain is still preserved
When Albert Einstein died in 1955, his skull was opened to remove his brain. Dr. Dr. Thomas Harvey carried out this operation seven and a half hours after his death. Presumably this was done for scientific purposes. Then he disappeared. In 1978, desperate journalist Steven Levy tracked down Dr. Harvey in Wichita, Kansas, where good doctor said that his brain is still stored in a formaldehyde solution.
4. There is a difference between the right and left hemispheres
The brain is divided into two hemispheres. They work simultaneously, but left hemisphere is responsible for rational, analytical thinking, and the right is responsible for visual and mental thinking. They also work in counterbalance - you raise your left toe and the sensations are perceived right side. But there is one VERY strange thing, if half the brain is switched off, the person will still survive.
5. Sorry ladies, but a man's brain is 10% larger.
So, definitive proof that men are smarter than women. But despite the fact that the male brain is larger than the female brain, the female brain contains more nerve cells and connectors, and it works faster and more efficiently than the male brain. Women process information more emotionally, using right hemisphere, and men - the left “logical” part of the brain.
6. The brain is more active during sleep
Night time is the time when our brain processes all the information received during the day. Scientists believe that this is the reason for sleep, although no one knows for sure. Some believe that we sleep so that our brain can process all the information, others believe that during sleep the information is reset. Latest Research have shown that sleep can help cope with trauma. People with high IQs allow themselves to nap during lunch. A short nap during the day can energize you and help you concentrate on your work.
7. “Inception” is real
There is such a thing as " conscious dream", when a person can control his sleep. This phenomenon has its roots in Tibetan Buddhism, where “Yoga-Sleep” was practiced - performing various feats during sleep, which indicates the illusory nature of existence. The term was first used by Frederick (Willem) van Eeden in the 1880s, but was not used until the 1960s.
8. Nobody knows why we laugh
Real laughter is involuntary. Only humans have this ability, and children begin to laugh as early as 4 months. Real laughter is contagious and also difficult to fake. But we laugh not because of jokes. One scientist studied laughter for 10 years, looking at about 2,000 situations that prompted laughter. He came to the conclusion that laughter is not the result of any action. Perhaps one day we will also understand why we laugh when tickled.
9. Does size matter?
Research has been conducted regarding the relationship between brain size and intelligence. Albert Einstein's brain size is 1230 grams, while the average man's brain size is 1400 grams. Other studies have shown that bigger head person, the smarter he is. However, these results are quite doubtful.
10. Ung Yang has the highest IQ - 210
Born on March 8, 1972, Ung Young mastered algebra at the age of 8 months. By the age of 2, he spoke 4 languages fluently. He entered the university at 4 and graduated at 15. But he is strong not only in the exact sciences. He also excels at drawing and writing poetry. Now he lives in South Korea and enjoys what he was previously deprived of, such as childhood.
It reacts in the same way as the brain of believers to religious images.
3. A neurologist from California throughout his life did not experience a feeling of fear of heights; after watching a 3D movie with special glasses, as he claims, something clicked in his brain and that’s it.
4. Archaeologists from Titusville, Florida, discovered a 7,000-year-old cemetery at the bottom of a pond. Some of the skulls still contain some brain tissue.
5. In 1983, a man with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) shot himself in the head in a suicide attempt. Instead of killing him, the bullet destroyed the OCD-producing area of his brain. He recovered and moved on with his life; even more so, he became a university student five years later.
6. Research has shown that our brain perceives the movement of people who annoy us as slower than they actually move.
7. In 1950, a scientist from Tulane University in Louisiana discovered the “pleasure centers” of the brain and tested the effects of electricity on these areas of the brain. He once simulated a woman's orgasm for 30 minutes using this method.
8. In our stomach there is a so-called “second brain”, and is active and responsible for feelings such as “butterflies in the stomach”, and also has partial control over mood and appetite.
9. When you give up something, the same areas of the brain that are responsible for physical pain are involved.
10. Swear words are processed in a separate part of the brain from normal speech, and they actually reduce pain.
11. You can extract images directly from visual cortex brain.
12. Scientific term for “brain freeze” – “sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia”. Pain receptors located in the mouth send signals to the brain, however, it incorrectly interprets them as a signal coming from the forehead, because the same nerves are located there, which indicates the location of the source of pain.
13. The human brain can actually project imaginary monsters when a person looks in the mirror.
14. The human brain burns 20% of calories from daily norm, despite the fact that its mass is no more than 2% of body weight.
15. Approximately one third of all people are susceptible frequent sneezing, if looking at or a bright light source. This is due to genetic trait, known as the "photic sneeze reflex".
16. If you fill cold water into a person's ear, it will move in the direction opposite to the ear if poured warm water into the ear, his eyes will move in the direction of the ear into which the water was poured. This method used to test brain function and detect damage and is called “caloric stimulation.”
17. Research has shown that sarcasm improves problem-solving ability. Failure to understand it may even be symptoms of the early brain.
18. We sometimes forget why we entered the room, because when passing through the door, our brain creates an “event boundary”, after which we cannot remember why we came here.
19. When you tell someone goals or things you want to achieve, it also satisfies (chemically) your brain in a way that makes it feel like you've actually achieved the goal.
20. Our brains have a “negativity bias,” which makes us constantly want to look for bad news.
21. The amygdala is the part of the brain that controls fear. If it gets deleted surgically, a person may lose the feeling of fear.
22. Our brains turn off information processing during rapid eye movement to prevent blurriness. This is why movies like Monstro can make people feel uncomfortable.
23. In 1848, an iron rod pierced the skull of railroad foreman Phineas Gage. The rod, weighing about 13 kg, passed completely through his skull and landed 80 meters later. He was talking and walking within minutes of the injury. The doctors didn't believe him until part of the brain tissue fell to the floor. 12 years later he died in convulsions due to this accident.
24. Scientists have actually learned how to perform brain transplant operations on primates. When the monkey woke up after the organ transplant operation, he tried to bite off the doctor's finger, and everyone present did not note any noticeable deviations from the norm.
25. Cockroach brain, contains special antibiotics which can kill other insects.
26. Telephone numbers contain no more than seven digits because this is the longest sequence that normal person can remember on the fly due to the brain's working memory limits.
27. To simulate a computer with the same parameters as the human brain, it would need to perform about 38,000 trillion operations per second, and store about 3584 terabytes of information.
28. The large squid's brain is about the size of a donut, with a hole just 0.5 inches in diameter. Their esophagus (food pipe) passes through this opening, and if they swallow anything larger than this internal hole, they can damage the brain.
29. One was conducted in the 1980s in which a man wore glasses that changed his vision. Over the course of several days, his brain adjusted to see the upside-down image as normal.
30. There are "mirror neurons" in our brains that make us sometimes imitate the actions of people around you.
31. Lack of sleep is caused by the brain's inability to properly put an emotional event into perspective and makes us unable to make controlled and appropriate responses to surrounding events.
32. “Phantom vibration” is a term used to describe the event when the brain sends signals that the body hears the vibration of its phone.
33. Obulomania is a disorder that consists of the onset of complete indecision from time to time. People suffering from this disorder are unable to make a choice (to go for a walk or not, paper or), even though they make every effort.
34. The folds (convolutions) of the brain are the result of fitting more volume of the brain into the skull, and if you unfold the human brain, it will be the size of a pillowcase.
35. In Asian countries such as , dyslexia is much less common, and English dyslexia differs from Chinese dyslexia in that it includes various mechanisms brain
36. Human fasting is unique among all other animals in that our brains do not require food (glucose) to function, thereby giving us long-term high cognitive function and mobility under fasting conditions for weeks without brain tissue destruction.
The 1.3 kg supercomputer inside your skull simultaneously processes facts and faces, stores memories, regulates movement and speech, and makes decisions.
Over the past few years, thanks in large part to advances in neuroimaging techniques, scientists are learning even more about how amazing our brains really are.
So what do we know today? Here are 26 interesting facts about the wonderful, strange and incredibly powerful human brain:
1. The brain contains about 80-100 billion neurons (nerve cells). They look something like this: 
2. The left hemisphere has almost 200 million more neurons than the right.
3. Neurons vary in size from 4 to 100 microns in width. To get an idea of how small this is, look at the dot at the end of this sentence; it's about 500 microns in circumference, which means more than 100 of the smallest neurons could fit inside it.
4. Despite its small size, scientists can measure the activity of a single neuron. A process called "unit recording" is often used to clarify the diagnosis of epilepsy.
5. Sex differences in the brain are controversial, but according to a 2014 study published in the journal Neuroscience, gray matter more in the brains of women.
6. A larger percentage of gray matter can be found in people with a humanitarian mindset.
7. Research shows that regular physical exercise may lead to an increase in gray matter within the hippocampus.
8. Gray cells, which make up 40% of our brain, become gray only after they die.
9. The brain of a living person has a pinker tint.
10. In men, with less gray matter, there is more white matter and cerebrospinal fluid.
11. White matter, which makes up the remaining 60% of the brain, gets its color from myelin, which insulates axons and increases the speed at which electrical impulses travel.
12. Fat may be bad for your heart, but it's good for your brain. More than half of the brain, including myelin, is made up of fat.
13. Weighing about 1.3 kg, the brain makes up only 2% to 3% of the body's weight, but consumes 20% of the body's oxygen and 15% to 20% of its glucose.
14. The brain produces an incredible amount of energy. The energy from a sleeping brain could light a 25-watt light bulb.
15. Brain size does not affect mental capacity person. For example, Albert Einstein's brain weighed 1.2 kg, which is slightly less than the average size of the human brain.
16. Axons (neurites along which nerve impulses go from the cell body to the innervated organs) in the brain of each person can be about 161,000 km, and can envelop the Earth 4 times.
17. There are no pain receptors in the brain. This is why neurosurgeons can cut into a conscious person's brain.
18. Don't believe the stupid myth about 10%. We use almost 100% of our brain.
19. Brain texture matters. Big. The wrinkles in our brains, called gyri, increase the brain's surface area, allowing it to contain large quantity neurons responsible for memory and thoughts.
20. Want more twists? Try meditation. The process of knowing your inner world is closely associated with an increase in the number of convolutions in the area of the brain responsible for concentration, introspection and emotional control.
22. But even a tired brain can be productive. Some experts say that a person has 70,000 thoughts per day.
23. Information in the brain passes through Various types neurons per different speeds, ranging from 1.5 km per hour to 440 km per hour (comparable to the speed of the fastest car in the world).
24. Our brains can scan and process complex images (such as a subway platform during rush hour) in only 13 milliseconds. This is quite fast, considering that blinking an eye takes several hundred milliseconds.
25. Even 15 years ago, wxtyyst believed that the brain is formed during the first years of a person’s life. But recent research has shown that adolescents undergo critical changes in the brain, especially in the prefrontal cortex and limbic system, which are responsible for making decisions. social solutions, impulse control and emotional processing.
26. When it comes to your brain, delayed brain development is absolutely normal occurrence. Of course, legally you become an adult at the age of 18, but, according to neuroscientists, brain development continues until the age of 25.
