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41 Facts About The Brain You Didn’t Know!

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The brain is a complex organ to understand. There is so much about this organ that even the scientists do not know about. However, there have been some new discoveries about this mysterious organ which have been made just in the last 15 years. There have been myths about the brain which have been busted and here are … facts about the brain that are mind-boggling!

Brain Weight

A normal brain is 2% of the entire body’s weight, somewhere around 3 pounds. But this organ which is 2% of the total weight consumes 20% of the total oxygen and energy of the body. Around 60% of the dry brain weight is fat which makes it the fattiest organ of the body.

What’s It Made Of? Ans- Neurons And Brain Cells

Our brain is made of 73% water. It is because of this reason that if the brain is dehydrated even by 2% it affects our memory, attention span, and cognitive skills. Also, 90 minutes of physical workout which causes sweating can shrink the brain temporarily as much as a year of aging can do. It has not been determined with certainty but it is estimated that our brain roughly has 86 billion brain cells. A small brain tissue, the size of a grain of sand has 100,000 neurons and each neuron is capable of transmitting 1,000 nerve impulses in a second! And brain cells are not similar. There are as many as 10,000 different types of neurons in the brain.

Oxygen Needs & Brain Size And Maturity

We all know that oxygen is the most important gas required by the human body and the brain required a constant supply of it. It might sound crazy but the truth is if the brain is deprived of oxygen even for five minutes it can lead to the death of some brain cells and cause serious brain damage. Heads of babies are big so as to hold the fast-growing brains. The brain of a 2-year-old is already 80% the size of an adult brain. And even know this organ grows rapidly it is not fully formed even by the teen- age. It is only around the age of 25 that human brain attains complete maturity.

Brain Speed & Electric Power!

Have you ever wondered how your brain is able to process so much information, emotion etc at once? This is because the transfer of information in the brain happens at a whopping speed of 268 miles per hour! To give you an idea of how fast that is- Formula 1 race cars have the top speed of 240 miles per hour, so your brain is faster than that. Our body communicates with the brain via electrical impulses. Our brain can produce about  12-25 watts of electricity which is sufficient power to light up the LED in our refrigerators which is about 25 watts.

Thought Generator & Size Doesn’t Matter

You are thinking of something one second and an entirely different thing the other. There could also be multiple thought processes going on at the same time. An average brain generates around 50,000 thoughts per day and that is why it is called “random thought generator.” There are some things with which size matters but not with the brain. Bigger the better doesn’t necessarily apply here. To give you an idea, get this- After taking into consideration the larger body size of men, it’s found that their brains are bigger than women’s by 10% BUT the hippocampus the brain part that is associated with memory is usually larger in women.

Einstein’s Brain & Other Comparisons

Did you know that Albert Einstein’s brain weighed 2.71 pounds (1,230 grams) which is around 10% smaller than 3 pounds, which is the average human brain weight? The density of neuron in his brain, however, was greater than average. Another example of the fact that with a brain, size and weight do not matter. Brains of Homo Sapiens are smaller by 10% than what Neanderthal had. Even though the human brain is the largest in proportion to the body weight of all other animals it is not the biggest. It is the sperm whales with 17-pound brains who are a winner of that category.