15 Thoughts About the Brain

Today I have Jack Meyer as guest blogger. Please be sure to check out his unique guest post. Guest posts are always welcome, please contact me.

The other day I ran across this cool infographic:
http://www.onlineschools.org/visual-academy/15-brain/.

It tells you great facts that you probably had never known about the human brain. Here are the fifteen points it covers:

1.       The brain consists of three parts – The forebrain controls all thoughts, senses, motor functions, emotion and hunger. The midbrain controls auditory and visual reflexes as well as awareness. The hindbrain controls coordination and analysis of senses.

2.       The brain has two hemispheres – Left for analytical thoughts and right for creative thoughts.

3.       The belief that we use only 10% of our brains is a myth- Every portion has a function and is hard at work.

4.       Your brain has 100,000 miles worth of blood vessels – Enough to circle the Earth four times.

5.       Your brain has 100 billion neurons – These cells are known as the grey matter which process information.

6.       Learning a second language before age 5 changes how the brain will develop later in life – These children’s brains are able to produce denser gray matter by adulthood.

7.       If the brain were a hard drive it would hold 4 terabytes of information – 80 Blu-ray discs, 850 DVD-R discs, or enough to hold 4% of the entire Library of Congress’ data.

8.       The world champion of memorization is Ben Pridmore – He is able to memorize the order of a deck of cards in 26.38 seconds.

9.       What you eat affects your brain – One study of one million students in New York showed people who ate a lunch without preservatives or artificial dyes scored 14% higher on IQ tests. Another study showed people that ate seafood at least once a week had a 30% lower occurrence of dementia.

10.    20% of the oxygen you inhale is used by the brain.

11.    Size doesn’t always matter – Einstein’s brain weighed 1,230 grams. Average male’s brains weighs 1,360 grams.

12.    Speaking of Einstein’s brain, scientists preserved it for study – It is split into 240 separate slides for viewing.

13.    Men process information primarily from the left side of the brain – Women tend to use both sides at the same time.

14.    There is truth behind the saying men are rational and women are emotional – Women are more emotional because that have a larger limbic system which regulates emotion. Yet men have a larger inferior-parietal lobule that controls mathematical ability.

15.    In rare cases the brain goes haywire and these occur – Exploding Head Syndrome: Individual hears a loud bang coming from the middle of their head. Phantom Extra Limb Syndrome: You think you have more limbs than you actually have. Sleep Paralysis: The inability to move your limbs upon waking up from sleep because the brain is still in REM mode.

Aren’t those facts interesting? How many of those did you know about before and how many were new to you? I love to learn new things about the working of the brain and body!

Jack Meyer is a regular contributor for http://www.nannybackgroundcheck.com/.
As a detective he wants to spread the knowledge of terrible things that can happen when people don’t fully verify the credentials of a caregiver or any employee. He also writes for various law enforcement blogs and sites.

Many thanks to Jack.
Enjoy your reading!