The Brain: Here's What You Don't Know About It
Research on the brain has developed a lot, and this has affected many of the beliefs that people have adopted. Here is a bouquet of recent information and conclusions about it.
The brain, your operating room, and your body, despite its small size, are the basis for managing tasks in your body. Throughout history, huge amounts of discoveries have been made about the brain and we are still studying it until now, so here's what you don't know about your brain.
brain size
The brain varies greatly from birth to the advanced stages of a person's life, and a person's body mass affects it. However, on average, an adult male's brain weighs 1.34 kilograms, while an adult female has 1.2 kilograms.
In terms of size, the human brain is not the largest compared to other mammals, but it has the largest number of neurons that store and transmit information through electrical and chemical signals, which makes the skills that humans master more complex.
Scientists previously believed that the human brain contains approximately 100 billion neurons, but recent research doubts this, as the latest studies assume that the number is closer to 86 a billion neurons.
What is the brain made of?
The human brain system consists mainly of the spinal cord, the central nervous system, and the brain itself. The brain is divided into 3 sections:
Brainstem: The connection between the brain and the spinal cord.Cerebellum: Found in the back of the brain, it is responsible for regulating human movement, motor learning, and maintaining body balance.
The cerebrum: It is the part that occupies the largest area of the brain. It fills most of the skull and includes the outer cerebral cortex, which in turn is divided into the right and left halves. Various processes take place in the brain departments, most notably: the process of conscious thought and decision-making, memory, language, communication, and cognition.
The brain consists of soft tissues, including two types of white and gray matter, which are represented by nerve cells, non-neuronal cells, and blood vessels.
Is the brain-hungry? How much energy does it need?
Despite the small size of the brain, it is actually really hungry and requires a lot of energy to work.
Although the size of the human brain does not exceed 2% of the mass of the body, it consumes 25% of the total energy consumed by the body daily.However, research has not yet confirmed conclusively whether this energy is used for the continuous renewal of brain cells, or whether the brain uses it for other purposes.
The relationship of brain activity to personality tests
You must have come across personality tests scattered on the Internet and social networks, for example: "Are you an emotional or a practical person?"
These tests claim to be able to find out your personal characteristics based on solving some questions, justifying this by examining which two halves of your brain are the most effective, but in fact, this is not accurate at all, as research confirms that the brain uses both halves of the brain equally and effectively.The difference that has been scientifically confirmed is only that the left hemisphere of the brain is particularly interested in the use of language while the right hemisphere manages the processes of more complex nonverbal communication.
Do we use only 10% of our brain?
One of the long-standing superstitions is that humans only use 10% of their brain's abilities as if if we managed to harness and control the remaining 90%, we would be able to do amazing things.
However, studies and tests today show something completely contrary, as we use all parts of our brain throughout our lives, and even during sleep hours, our entire brain with all its cells does not stop working.Perhaps the idea of us using a small part of our brain is tempting and exciting, but unfortunately, the scientific evidence does not lead to the same result.
How does age affect the brain?
As we age, parts of the brain begin to shrink naturally, causing us to lose neurons as well.
It happens with the beginning of the frontal lobe and the hippocampus cells and two regions are essential for the organization of cognitive processes including memory and long-term memory work, where you may reach even 60-70% contraction, this explains the difficulty of learning new things with advancing age.This may have been disappointing, as scientists previously believed that brain cells that die cannot be replaced by new ones, but recent research indicates that the hippocampus, in addition to learning and memory, works to generate and produce new cells., where the process is called morphogenesis Nervous tissue.