In this article we will share six curiosities about the brain, do you already know some of them?But I’m sure others will surprise you!
We have long known that the brain is the central unit of control of our body, as well as the place of origin of our memories and emotions. There was even a time when some philosophers argued that the brain could be the home of the soul. Throughout history, however, have very interesting things gradually been discovered?Curious things!
- It is well known that the brain is the main organ of the human nervous system because it controls most of the activities of our body and is able to process a lot of information.
- Besides it is the physical place where our emotions and cognitive abilities.
- Our long and short-term thinking.
- Our memory and our decision making are located.
Since the first mention of the brain, recorded in an ancient Egyptian medical treatise known as Edwin Smith’s papyrus, a document discovered in the 19th century to date, our understanding of the brain has expanded considerably. However, we still have a lot of mysteries and curiosities about the brain, and there is a lot of information to discover.
Brain size varies widely and depends primarily on a person’s age, gender and body mass; however, studies suggest that an adult man’s brain weighs on average about 1336 grams, while that of an adult woman weighs around 1198 grams.
In terms of dimensions, the human brain is not the largest of all animals, of all mammals, it is known that the sperm whale has the largest brain, knowing that this marine mammal weighs between 35 and 45 tons, the comparison is not very accurate.
Of all the animals that live on earth, humans have the brain with the most neurons: specialized cells that store and transmit information through electrical and chemical signals.
The human brain, along with the spinal cord, forms the central nervous system. What we call brain can actually be divided into three main parts:
Although the human brain is not a very large organ, it has a great demand for energy, it is quite curious that, although the human brain represents only 2% of our total weight, it requires 25% of all the energy that the body needs to function.
Why does the human brain need so much fuel to function?Some scientists have hypothesized, including that while most of this energy is spent to maintain body thought and processes, part of it is likely to be invested in maintaining brain cell health.
According to other scientists, the brain apparently consumes a lot of energy during what is called a “resting state,” when in fact it is not involved in any specific activity. We don’t have an explanation for that yet.
James Kozloski, for his part, explains that these networks that appear to be inactive moments work even under anesthesia, and that these areas have very high metabolic rates, increasing the brain’s energy expenditure even if it apparently does nothing.
Kozloski’s hypothesis, however, is that a lot of energy is not spent for no reason, so this energy should aim to form a map on which information and experience accumulate. A card we use, for example, when we have to make a decision.
A myth has long circulated that humans use only 10% of our brain capacity, this same myth suggests that if we could use the remaining 90%, we could unlock amazing abilities.
In fact, we use most of our brains most of the time. Brain imaging tests have already shown that we use a large part of our brain even when we sleep, although activity patterns and activity intensity may differ depending on what we do or the sleep phase we’re in now.
Neurologist Krish Sathian explains that even when we are busy with a task and some neurons are busy in this task, the rest of the brain is busy doing other things, so the solution to a problem can come after we have stopped thinking about or after a night’s sleep, and this is because our brain does not stop working on the problem even if we are not focused and aware of it.
There is much talk about the dominance of one hemisphere over the other and its implications for personality, in fact, it is one of the best known curiosities about the brain, it is assumed that people with a dominant left hemisphere are more inclined to mathematics and they are more analytical, whereas people with a dominant right hemisphere would be more creative.
But this is just a myth. It is true that each of our hemispheres has slightly different functions; however, people don’t have a dominant brain hemisphere that governs their personality and abilities.
Research has already shown that people use both brain hemispheres to the same extent. The main differences between them lie in the fact that the left brain hemisphere is, in the vast majority of people, related to the use of language, while the right hemisphere is related to the complexities of nonverbal communication.
Did we say, in the vast majority of people? Because these functions may be reversed in some people, especially left-handed people, however, this reversal has no consequence.
As we age, parts of our brain begin to shrink naturally, losing neurons. The frontal lobe and hippocampus, for example, two regions of the brain that are at the heart of regulating cognitive processes such as memory and recovery, begin to decrease. Decrease when we reach 60 or 70 years old.
However, new research suggests that the adult brain may also generate new cells, which would increase the potential of our brain’s plasticity capacity, in addition to our ability to adapt.
The process by which new nerve cells are created in the adult brain is called neurogenesis. Estimates suggest that the average adult human produces about 700 new neural cells per day in the hippocampus alone.
Despite the many advances in research and technology applied to the clinic, we still have many unanswered questions, many curiosities about the brain to be discovered, for example, we still do not fully understand how information is processed in the brain.
Therefore, we still can’t explain much about how our consciousness works, what part of our personality is determined by our brain, why we sleep, why we dream, how we store and access our memories, and many other problems.
In this way, new discoveries teach us more and more, but they also leave new questions and curiosities about the brain to be discovered!