Your brain. It's responsible for who you are as an individual and is without a doubt the most important part of your body. Without you would be nothing. And this wonderful bundle of nerves has some really cool things going for it. Here are ten of them:

 

1 The brain feels no pain.

There are no pain receptors in the brain. Which means that when they perform brain surgery on you, the doctors get to keep you awake. Why would they do this? They need to make sure that while they're tinkering around up there they don't accidently mess up your vision or some other important functions.

2 There are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain

That's enough to wrap around the circumference of the Earth. 4 times.

 

3 Men's brains are 10% bigger

But don't worry ladies, your brains have more nerve cells and connections in them. And plus, size doesn't matter.

 

4 Size really doesn't matter. I'm super serious!

There is no evidence that a bigger brain is a smarter one. Albert Einstein's brain was actually smaller than the average person's and look what he did with it.

  

5 Your brain is the biggest hard drive in the world.

It's estimated your brain can store about 1,000 terrabytes of information. That's 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data. So that does make your brain the best device for storing information. For now...

 

6 Your brain could power a light bulb

While awake, the 100 trillion synapses in your brain generate about 10-23 watts of electricty. Which in theory that could power a light bulb. I've never tried this personally. But if want to hook some electrodes up to your brain then go ahead. Wait! Please don't do that...

 

7 Your brain is more active while you're sleeping

While you sleep, your brain processes all the information that it collected over the day. It's theorized that this is what causes us to dream.

 

8 Lucid dreaming

And on that note, it is possible to control your dreams. People have been doing it for years and there are ways to train yourself to do this. Do a google search on "Lucid Dreaming" and check it out!

 

9 Some people live with only half of their brain

There are some people who are born with only half a brain or due to circumstances, need to have one hemisphere removed. This can be due to cases of severe epilepsy where the source of the problem is located in a broad area of a single hemisphere. However, this procedure is normally only performed on children. Why? Because their brains are still developing, the remaining half can actually pick up the slack and learn how to perform all the functions of the missing brain matter. Adults can recover as well but it takes them longer. Isn't this freaking amazing! How cool is the human brain!

 

10 Your brain is greedy

Your brain only accounts for 2% of your body mass but it uses up about 17% of your energy and consumes 20% of the oxygen you breathe in. This is a big deal, especially back in ancient times when you had to hunt and forage every day for food. Every bit of energy was vital. But our brains are the reason why we are the most successful life form on our planet. Now if only we could learn how to put it to good use...

Posted by Jonathan Cocco