The Brain

- The typical brain is about 2% of a body’s weight, but uses 20% of its total energy and oxygen intake.

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

- Our brain contains 86 billion brain cells, and each brain on average weighs three pound.  Albert Einstein’s brain weighed 2.71 pounds – 10% smaller than the average.

- Only 5 minutes without oxygen can cause brain damage.

- Brain information moves at an impressive speed of 260 miles per hour. This is faster than a Formula 1 race car which goes at 240 mph.

- The average brain has around 50,000 thoughts per day, and 70% of them are believed to be negative.

- More than 100,000 chemical reactions take place in your brain every second.

- In general, men’s brains are 10% bigger than women’s, even after taking into account larger body size.

- Our brains are getting smaller. Over the past 10,000-20,000 years the size of the average brain has shrunk by the size of a tennis ball.

- We are not getting smarter. Since the Victorian age, average IQs have gone down 1.6 points per decade.

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

- 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.