Everyone knows that the human brain does all the thinking. But, do you ever stop and think (pun intended) about this personal think tank fitted right in your head?
It is the machine that does plenty of tasks without any intervention on your part. Right from helping you remember the route to your office and your birthday to maintaining your body temperature and coordinating with other body parts, it carries out multiple jobs so that you can live a normal life. But the story does not end here. There is so much that you do not know about your brain (honest confession: neither did we until we started to write this topic).
For starters, a healthy human brain weighs just about three pounds (around 1.3 kg). It is pinkish in colour and feels squishy to touch (yuck, right?).
But leaving alone the yuck part and the image you have in your brain right now about the brain, the brain (we promise no more using the word ‘brain’ in this sentence but we could be lying) is one complex organ that has bemused scientists for years. And, here are some incredible facts about the brain that you probably didn’t know:
Brain is forever 18
The brain stops growing at the age of 18. And even though it is only 2% of the body weight, it receives about 30% of the blood being pumped by your heart. Isn’t it unfair with other seemingly important areas of the body? This shows the brain is such a greedy organ!
Right or left isn’t quite there
This one is really weird but interesting – conventional science says the right side of the brain controls the left side of your body and the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body. Everybody seems to know this (but our writers) but this seems like an oversimplification. New research shows the brain neural network is much more complex and it cannot be specifically bifurcated as we have believed all these years.
Brain does not feel pain
You will be amazed to know that the brain cannot actually feel any pain because there it has no pain receptors. So technically, surgery can be done on the brain while the patient is awake. Yikes! Just in case you were wondering, coverings around the brain (meninges), coverings on the bones (periosteum) and the scalp have pain receptors that make you feel the pain.
A yawn means you got to stay awake
A study revealed that a yawn is actually a process of sending oxygen to your brain which is trying to play ‘knock knock’ with you to wake it up or at least keep itself from dozing off on a lazy afternoon.
Brain will not let you fool it
Have you ever tickled yourself? Did you feel ticklish? No, right? This is because your brain knows your touch and can distinguish it from somebody else’s touch. Or maybe you are not ticklish. Either way, we cannot tell from here.
Supercomputer? Library? Not even close
The human brain can store five times more information than any encyclopedia in the world. The capacity has been deduced to be close to three and one thousand terabytes (3-1000 TB). Guess how much information that is? We simply say a lot.
It helps you see through your ears
If someone were to tell you that you can ‘see’ through your ears, you would definitely NOT believe them. But a study compared the brain activity of individuals who were born blind versus those who had normal vision and found that the part of the brain that is usually wired to work with the eyes can rewire itself to process sound information instead of visual perception. Remarkable, isn’t it? And you thought your ears are just to collect wax?
These are just a handful of fascinating things about the human brain. Many say it is more powerful than any supercomputer in the world. We agree wholeheartedly.
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Wishing you a brainy day!