Human brain contained 10 power of (12) neuron (also known as brain cells). This means that a person's brain should contain approximately 1 trillion neurons (1, 000, 000, 000, 000 neurons). In this post, i will explain every single thing in a very simple form because those scientific terms will usually make us feel sleepy when reading. Anyway, humans are able to think because neurons are passing information from one to another at a very significant speed. The neuron will pass information from one to another through tiny wires, and we called them as fibre. There is a mathematical calculation for this, stating that the transmission between information for the fibre length of 60.8 millimeter will consume approximately 1 second. However, the maximum length of fibre between neuron is 1.1 mm. Based on calculation, the actual transmission speed between 2 neurons are 0.0183 second, an extremely significant speed of transmission. This is why human could think so quickly.


Caption: the human brain

The cells in our brain is known as the brain nerve cells. We could also find other nerve cells all over our body - called the body cells. The only difference between nerve cells and body cells is that nerve cells will die due to aging while body cells will not die. Instead, body cells will regenerate automatically depending on different factors (i.e. food that we consume, medicines that we apply etc.). That is why if we cut our finger, it will recover automatically, in the matter of time. However, when the brain nerve cells die, they will not regenerate anymore.


Caption: structure of our body cell

Neurons will die slowly when human starts aging (the amount of neuron will be reduced every year). If this is the case, when we reached to a certain age when most of the brain cells are dead, then we should be infected by the alzeimer disease (alzeimer is a state where a person's mental capacity decreases - simply unable to use our brain memories anymore - i.e. using the short-term, long-term and episodic memory). However, there are evidences stating that using our brain in critical thinking should help to recover from the alzeimer disease. That is why elder adults were asked to perform critical thinking involving mathematical calculations (i.e. playing mahjong) because doing these activities will help stimulating the brain, and prevent brain cells from dying quicker. Anyway, playing mahjong or poker will only exercise the brain so the brain cells will decrease slower. However, those activities should bypass the central executive easily. In other words, those tasks are not significant enough to produce critical thinking. As practice increases, the processing in our brain will jump to the state of automaticity and will not require brain processing from the central executive anymore. Therefore, those task (i.e. playing mahjong) will somehow become useless and were unable to prevent the alzeimer disease.


Caption: Broadbent (1971) upper-lower mechanism stress theory

Because a person's brain is way too complicated to explain every components contained in the brain, neurologists and cognitive psychologist can only predict some parts with theories and structures. Cognitive psychologists argued that single mechanism should be too simplistic when defining many brain processes. Therefore, they do believe that there are 2 levels in a brain. What happen is, the central brain is the upper mechanism in the theory above. The upper mechanism is important since it monitor the overall progress of our brain, particularly when dealing with stress. When we perceive an information (i.e. sound that we listen), the sound will be sent to the lower mechanism, and if dealing with any stress related activities, that particular sound will be sent to the upper mechanism for further monitoring. Usually, our performance will not be reduced when doing anything, except if we were drunk or in fatigue condition. According to this cognitive psychology theory, sleepy or noisy environment will not affect human performance at all. So, people, do not use sleepy as a reason when you were unable to complete a task :)


Caption: the hippocampus

Somewhere in the middle section of the brain, called the Hippocampus. It is an extremely important component (major component) of our brain that deals with the long-term memory and navigation. People will suffer from the alzeimer disease when the surface of their hippocampus is damaged. The hippocampus is a component in the central executive system of our brain. When linking to the theory above, the hippocampus should be somewhere in the upper mechanism (a part of the central executive).


Caption: structure of a neuron and fibres

If anyone have watched the Mr. Brain (a japanese series), then this section is going to be exciting. According to Mr. Brain, our brain need carbohydrate to increase the brain's processing speed. Well, it can be true that our brain require carbohydrate, but not the way he explained. He said the more carbohydrate we consume, the more efficient our brain would be. It is simply not true, since to date, the only thing that will increase brain processing speed is injection that supply MGso4 to a person's body. Other possibility is by consuming certain fish since some fish contained some element that will exchange the food into MGso4. It has the ablity to boost the speed of processing in our brain. Similar to the theory of a car, needing petrol in order to move. The same theory of applying glucose into our brain to make it function. In other words, our brain can only function with glucose. It is a fact that that our brain can only accept glucose through the blood stream (blood veins) as neurons do not have the capacity to store glucose.


Caption: an indepth structure of neuron and fibre

A rough calculation of critical work processing with our brain is, usually will not exceed 50 minutes. This means we need to rest our brain after working for 50 minutes when handling critical processing (i.e. hard tasks or stress). Experts suggest to take 10 minutes break to refresh our brain. Every 10 minutes break should allow us to use our brain for the next 50 minutes again. The most effective brain resting method is to sleep. Only sleeping will rest the brain well. However, there are other suggestions from different experts, that is to do some leisure activities. Some examples are eating, laughing, watching movies, playing video games, walking around, exercising. Banana is a good source that will help in relaxation since the MGso4 (MGso4 is a chemical combination of magnesium and sulfate) contained in banana provide natural way to calm a person's mind. It also provide sufficient carbohydrate, transforming it to glucose for all body parts in a person, especially the brain. Therefore, consuming carbohydrate is equal to consuming glucose since carbohydrate will be transformed to glucose.

However, too much glucose in a person's body will lead to the diabetes disease. That is an extremely serious disease. Originally, a person's body sugar level should be around 4.5 to 6.3 unit/millilitre. Exceeding 5.5 unit is considered as reaching the first stage of diabetes, and the patient will usually be monitored with medication. However, if the blood level in a person's body is below 4.5 unit, then usually, doctors will suggest the patient to drink some water with glucose in it. This approach will help to raise their sugar level to normal again.

Anyway, you may also wish to read more about human brain by clicking the following links: Part 1 and Part 2