- The human brain weighs three pounds and has the consistency of gelatin.
- Recent discoveries in neuroscience have revealed that the brain is capable of generating new nerve cells (neurons) throughout our lives, not just in childhood as once thought. This plasticity enables the brain to adapt, to learn from the environment and from experience, and even to compensate for damage or injury in some circumstances.
- When we learn through repetition, we are forming and strengthening connections between neurons in the brain. These networks get stronger or weaker with use.
- The brain is packed with an estimated 100 billion nerve cells (neurons). Each neuron can connect with up to 10,000 others.
- Neurons don't actually touch one another. They send messages across tiny gaps called synapses.
- There are more synapses in the brain than there are estimated stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
- Messages travel through a neuron as electrical signals, but messages pass between neurons as chemical signals (neurotransmitters).
- Most chemical medication works by changing the neurotransmitters to achieve a desired effect (moderate pain, reduce stress, ease movement, alleviate depression).
- Emerging knowledge of the brain through medical imaging suggests that even though different parts of the brain specialize in different tasks, they work together to create experience.
- To be able to see requires at least 20 different areas of the brain.
- The brain is the headquarters of the nervous system. Electric signals are passed back and forth from brain to body through the spinal cord at speeds up to 200 miles (300 kilometers) an hour.
- The human brain is unique in that it has a highly convoluted (folded) neo-cortex, the bumpy-gray, 1/8-inch thick outer layer of tissue surrounding the cerebrum. It is in the neo-cortex that consciousness seems to arise.
- Pain only exists in the brain. Specialized nerves send warning signals up the spinal cord to an area on the cortex called the somatosensory strip. Each part of the body is represented along the strip and sized according to its relative sensitivity. When a signal gets here, we know where the pain is.
- When pain signals reach another part of the cortex (the anterior cingulate), the pain takes on the emotional quality of unpleasantness.
- The release of endorphins in the brainstem works to reduce pain and stress throughout the nervous system by blocking incoming pain signals in the spinal cord and reducing the unpleasantness sensation in the cortex.
- Endorphins never completely eliminate the warning signals. Doing so could risk even greater damage to the body.
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