our brains allow us to process the world understand everything around us learn new things and paradoxically we're still very unaware of how our own brains function however modern neuroscience and cognitive sciences have made great strides in understanding the effect our brains have on everyday function with that comes a wealth of knowledge in facts that you probably didn't know about the brain here are 50 interesting facts and stories about the human brain that are sure to blow your mind nearly all colors have a physical wavelength associated with them but the color magenta doesn't rather your brain is simply processing the color as not green when you find yourself sleeping in a new environment for the first time the brain processes danger and remains half awake in order to be more aware according to researchers at UCLA humans have been observed to have their first bout with anxiety or depression right after stomach illness utilizing brain scans they found that patients who ate probiotics had their brains directly affected by the bacteria all of their research suggests that stomach microbial health has a much greater effect on your brain than once thought a man by the name of Bruce Bridgman spent nearly his entire life 67 years without the ability of depth perception called stereo blindness however after being forced to purchase 3d glasses to watch the movie Hugo in theaters his brain clicked and was able to experience 3d vision for the first time a man in the UK had chronic hiccups for two and a half years of his life and was told that it was likely caused by heartburn after a Japanese TV show picked up the strange phenomena and paid for medical testing a brain tumor was discovered once the man had the brain tumor removed his chronic hiccups went away for good blacking out from drinking is actually caused by the effect of alcohol on the hippocampus the part of your brain responsible for memory you're not physically forgetting anything rather your brain becomes incapable of storing and recording new memories we cry when we're very happy because our hypothalamus in our brain can't distinguish the difference between strong happiness and strong sadness we get chills when we listen to music as a result of our brain releasing dopamine when a song moves you the anticipation from a peak movement in the song triggers the release solitary confinement can actually cause extreme neurological damage to human brains so much so that it can be seen on a eg scans and the brains of solitary prisoners have the same indicators as people who have had traumatic injuries while we sleep our spinal fluid flows through the brain on the outside of the brains blood vessels this removes brain cell waste specifically build-up of amyloid beta proteins this only occurs during sleep and a buildup of these proteins that get cleaned has been linked to greater risks of Alzheimer's a scientist by the name of Theodore Aris men created goggles that completely flip his vision at first he struggled with the flipped perception but within just five days his brain adapted to the change and he saw everything as normal this type of adaptation is also well demonstrated by youtuber smartereveryday who forgot how to ride a bike and relearned the task with flipped steering Alzheimer's disease is caused by a resistance to insulin in the brain causing many to refer to it as type 3 diabetes the world's fastest supercomputer requires 24 million watts of power to operate our brains only require 20 watts and operate at about 100,000 times as fast exercise slows our brains cognitive decline and increased physical activity over the norm can slow our brains aging by 10 years human brains receive 20% of the total oxygen from our bodies even though they only represent 2% of our body's weight certain languages do not have terms for left-right front or back and rather use the terms north south east west people raised in these languages have been found to always know what direction they're oriented resulting in a type of compass brain 73 percent of your brain is just water which means that if you get dehydrated by more than two percent you can suffer from a loss of attention cognitive skills in memory baby's brains grow rapidly a two-year-old baby will have an 80% fully grown brain this rapid development is why paying close attention to your child's development in the early years is so impactful to their ability as an adult information transfer in our brains occurs at a rate equivalent to 260 miles per hour yawning is actually a reaction that sends more oxygen to your brain reptiles birds and mammals all yawn and it's controlled by neurotransmitters in the brain the cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for posture walking and movement coordination it is located in the back of the brain in weighs 150 grams the human brain is split into two sides with each interacting with the opposite side of the body while this interaction is known the reason for it is still not fully understood within your brain there are 150,000 miles of blood vessels that carry blood and oxygen to various parts of the organ you can actually improve your memory if you choose to eat seafood regularly the fatty acids in these foods improve the memory storing parts of your brain the human brain continues to develop until your late 40s it is the only organ in the body that develops for this long of a time and it sees more changes than any other organ as well every second there are 100,000 chemical reactions happening in the human brain babies lose about half their neurons before they are born referred to as pruning this eliminates any brain neurons that don't receive a sufficient input from other areas of the brain studies have found that when mothers speak to their babies the children learned on average 300 more words by the age of 2 ee G's or an electroencephalogram is a non-invasive imaging technique that is used to record small changes of electrical activity in the brain utilizing surface electrodes on the scalp scientists can study many aspects of the brain utilizing this technique tiny fluctuations in the EEG signals indicate whether a person is asleep aroused or somewhere in between researchers from Baylor University have discovered that children who are deprived of hutch play an interaction with others have 20 to 30% smaller brains than what is normal for their age child abuse can thus inhibit brain development in a child and negatively affect their lifetime brain development the brain cannot experience pain this allows neurosurgeons to probe areas within the brain while patients are awake they can then get real-time feedback from each patient allowing them to pinpoint particular regions like for speech or movement the reaction of our pupils constricting when they're exposed to bright light is called the pupillary light reflex this reflex is used by doctors to determine whether the reflex pathway to the brain has been disrupted if one or both of your eyes fails to produce the reflex then doctors can work to pinpoint the exact location of the disconnect 0.5% of the population of the world has epilepsy however it's estimated that 1 in 10 people will have a seizure within their lifetime scratching an itch is actually a strange biological response from a medical perspective it seems to hinder the healing process rather than help it researchers believe that we it because scratching thus damages the skin it causes a fresh rush of endorphins to help the pain every time that you remember something you in turn strengthen that memory in your brain whenever the neural pathways of a memory are exercised your brain makes new connections the older and more times a memory has been remembered the stronger that memory is during sleep your body produces a hormone that prevents you from getting up in acting out your dreams five minutes after a dream your body has already forgotten half of it in 10 minutes later it's 90% gone from your memory our brains can compute 10 to the 13th and up to 10 to the 16th operations per second this is equivalent to 1 million times the people on earth in theory brains are capable of solving problems faster than any computer in the world perhaps better than any computer that will ever exist good nutrition is incredibly - brain health dieting can force the brain to start eating itself and malnourished fetuses or infants can suffer from cognitive and behavioral deficits babies need proper nourishment because their brains use up to 50% of their total glucose supply another reason why they may need so much sleep humans experience 70,000 thoughts each day our sense of smell is the only sense that is directly linked to our limbic system this part of the brain specializes in physical emotional and psychological responses this all means that good smells can change our moods drastically in a snap a group of researchers studied London taxi drivers and found that they had a larger hippocampus the part of the brain responsible for memory this suggests that the more you are forced to memorise the larger this part of your brain grows making music may actually have a quantifiable effect on your brain when you hook up guitar players to electrodes researchers discovered that brain waves of musicians synchronize when they play duets the average weight of brains for men is 2.9 pounds and for women 2.6 pounds however that doesn't correlate to higher intelligence for example Einstein's brain weighed just 2.7 pounds the brain is the only object in the world that can contemplate itself chronic exposure to stress actually overloads your brain with hormones that are only intended for short-term emergency functions in turn that means that long-term exposure can kill brain cells of people ages 1 to 44 traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of disability and death most commonly involved are Falls motor vehicle crashes and assaults the average size of the human brain has decreased by 9 cubic inches over a period of the last 5,000 years scientists aren't exactly sure why deja vu hasn't been fully explained scientists think that it's actually a neurological glitch caused by something being registered in memory before conscious thought what seems like random light when you hit your head is actually just jolts to brain cells responsible for a vision these visual whoo loosen nations are just simple responses to being jarred adult brains contain 126 to 150 milliliters of cerebrospinal fluid this is three times as much as infants and to the full volume is replaced three to four times each day