Amazing facts about the brain

Amazing facts about the brain 

The typical brain makes up about 2% of the body’s total weight, but uses 20% of its total energy and oxygen intake. 

Babies have big heads to hold rapidly growing brains. A 2-year-old’s brain is 80% of adult size.  

Your brain is 73% water. It takes only 2% dehydration to affect your attention, memory and other cognitive skills.  

The myth that we use only 10% of our brains is wrong. Brain scans show that we use most of our brain most of the time, even when we’re sleeping. 

We have between 20,000-60,000 thoughts every day, it’s estimated that 70% of this mental chatter is negative — self-critical, pessimistic, and fearful. 

London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus, the part of the brain considered the “memory center,” This is due to the mental workout they get while navigating the 25,000 streets of London.  

Stress and depression can cause measurable brain shrinkage. 

Relying on your GPS to get around destroys your innate sense of direction, a skill that took our ancestors thousands of years to develop. When areas of the brain involved in navigation are no longer used, those neural connections fade away via a process known as synaptic pruning.  

Alcohol does not kill brain cells. Excessive alcohol consumption can damage the connective tissue at the end of neurons.  

Have you ever got so drunk you forgot what you did? While you are drunk, your brain is incapable of forming memories. 

Although pain is processed in your brain, your brain has no pain receptors and feels no pain. This explains how brain surgery can be performed while the patient is awake with no pain or discomfort. Headache pain feels like it starts in your brain, but is caused by sensations from nearby skin, joints, sinuses, blood vessels or muscles. 

Ninety-five percent of your decisions take place in your subconscious mind. 

Our brains crave mental stimulation and regularly drift off, sometimes to a fault. Some people would rather give themselves electric shocks than sit quietly in a room and think!  

The brain in your head isn’t your only brain. There’s a “second brain” in your intestines that contains 100 million neurons. Gut bacteria are responsible for making over 30 neurotransmitters including the “happy hormone” serotonin. 

Attention spans are getting shorter. In 2000, the average attention span was 12 seconds. Now, it’s 8 seconds. That’s shorter than the 9-second attention span of the average goldfish.