28 Fun Facts About Our Brain

1. There are no pain receptors in the brain, thus the brain can feel no pain.
2. The human brain is the fattest organ in the body and may consists of at least 60% fat.
3. At birth, your brain was almost the same size as an adult brain and contained most of the brain cells for your whole life.
4. The capacity for such emotions as joy, happiness, fear, and shyness are already developed at birth. The specific type of nurturing a child receives shapes how these emotions are developed.
5. There are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain.
6. Your brain stops growing at age 18.
7. The first sense to develop while in utero is the sense of touch. The lips and cheeks can experience touch at about 8 weeks and the rest of the body around 12 weeks.
8. Your brain uses 20% of the total oxygen in your body.
9. Information can be processed as slowly as 0.5 meters/sec or as fast as 120 meters/sec (about 268 miles/hr).
10. It is thought that a yawn works to send more oxygen to the brain, therefore working to cool it down and wake it up.
11. While awake, your brain generates between 10 and 23 watts of power–or enough energy to power a light bulb.
12. The brain can live for 4 to 6 minutes without oxygen, and then it begins to die. No oxygen for 5 to 10 minutes will result in permanent brain damage.
13. A study of one million students in New York showed that students who ate lunches that did not include artificial flavors, preservatives, and dyes did 14% better on IQ tests than students who ate lunches with these additives.
14. Scientists have discovered that men and women’s brains react differently to pain, which explains why they may perceive or discuss pain differently.
15. Boredom is brought on by a lack of change of stimulation, is largely a function of perception, and is connected to the innate curiosity found in humans.
16. The connection between body and mind is a strong one. One estimate is that between 50-70% of visits to the doctor for physical ailments are attributed to psychological factors.
17. Anomia is the technical word for tip-of-the-tongue syndrome when you can almost remember a word, but it just won’t quite come to you.

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