“This human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.”        

   – Vincentvan Gogh

Brain is more powerful, more complex and more clever than any computer ever built. The organ of body that is responsible for thought, memory, sensation, interpretation etc. Human brain uses 20% of body’s energy. Human brain generates 25 watts of power while awake, enough to illuminate a light bulb. A newborn baby’s brain grows almost 3 times in course of first year. Humans have the most complex brain of any animal on earth. Lavender can help you to sleep. A cooked potato can jump-start brain when feeling foggy. The essential oil of Jasmine can quickly restore mental alertness.

It has been said that on an average we remember- 20% of what we read, 30% of what we hear, 40% of what we see, 50% of what we say, 60% of what we do, 90% of what we see, hear, say and do.

The majority of the brain is water. Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die. During night hours brain is more active than day hours. We use only 15% of our brain capacity. If we join our nerves and to end, they would reach 70 kms. That is about 42,000 times the average person’s height. Our brains can store one billion bits of information. Brain is the heaviest organs in your body. Parts of our brain grow at different rates. 100 different messages can be sent by the brain every second. All the nerve cells in our body joined together would reach the moon. 30,000 to 50,000 of our brain cells die every day. By the time we are 70, the number of brain cells has been reduced by 10%.

Brain uses 20% of the blood flowing from the heart  pumped to the brain. The brain needs constant blood flow in order to keep up with heavy metabolic demands of the neurons. Brain imaging techniques such as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) rely on this relationship between neural activity and blood flow to produce images of deduced brain activity.

Children as young as four days old can distinguish the vowel sounds of the language in their natural environment from those of a foreign language. The left side of your brain is usually better at problem solving, maths and writing. The right side of the brain is creative and helps you to be good at art or music.

One of the biggest destroyers of memory is stress. When you are stressed you release high levels of cortisol into your bloodstream. One of the ways that cortisol affects you is that it destroys glucose – the brain’s only source of food. So if your brain is not getting the nutrients it needs, then it will not function as well. There are more nerve cells in the human brain than there are stars in the Milky way.

How Men and women are different in terms of Brain:

Woman:

(i) Score better than men on some language tasks. (ii) Show a faster rate of language development. (iii) Score better than men on some tests of social judgement, empathy and co-operation.

Men:

(i) Perform better than woman on mathematical reasoning tasks. (ii) Score higher at tests that involve distinguish between figure and background. (iii) Find it easier to rotate objects in their mind’s eye.

Did you know?

(i) The human brain is approximately 75% of water.

(ii) Unconsciousness will occur within 8-10 seconds after loss of supply to the brain.

(iii) You would be amazed to know that usually children watch nightmares. The usual age group is 3 and it continues up to 8.

iv) Blind people also view dreams. Their images are in accordance of the time when they got blind.

v) The longest dream recorded was 3 hrs. 8 min. long.

vi) If you are giving up smoking then get ready for some long and intense dreams.

vii) Kids up to the age of 3 and 4 never dream about themselves.

viii) By age 5, the brain has gained almost its full weight.

ix) Childhood years are the best time to develop strong math, logic and musical skills.

x) During childhood years the brain can rewire itself to make up for many objects and injury.

xi) Surgeon can operate on the brain when the patient is fully awake.

xii) Any new thought or memory makes the brain to search for new connection.

xiii) One can improve memory by exercising the brain in the way of recall, registration, remembering etc.

xiv) Einstein did not have a large brain rather smaller because of his small body surface but he was genius because he had more number of neuronal synapses.

xv) Babies start dreaming even before they’re born.

xvi) When we go to sleep and enter REM (Rapid Eye Movement), our bodies become completely paralyzed as areas of the brain that control movement are de-activated. It is this that stops us falling out of bed.

xvii) Human brain stops growing at the age of 18.

xviii) The human brain is very soft like that or butter.

xix) The brain continues to send out electric wave signal until approximately 37 hours after death.

xx) The right side of the human brain is responsible for self recognition.

xxi) Men listen with the left side of the brain.

The upper part of our brain is divided into two halves. In most people, the left half deals with logic, words, lists, numbers, linearity, and analysis etc.

The right half deals with rhythm, imagination, colour, daydreaming, spatial awareness, gestalt and dimension. Studies have shown that the more we use both sides of our brain, then the more effective our overall brain performance is. Many of the great minds or our times used both sides of their brains.