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by Steve Risner

Editor’s note: Due to the popularity of this post, we’re re-posting this one today for your enjoyment.

Ever put any thought into your brain? Strange question, right? The brain is arguably the most powerful super computer on the planet. It operates at extremely high levels while using relatively very small amounts of energy. The brain, brainstem, and spinal cord coordinate every function of your body every second of the day every day of your life. It doesn’t sleep. In fact, studies show us the brain is more active while we sleep than when we are awake. I thought taking a look at this marvelous structure would not only be interesting but also get you thinking about how amazing our Creator is and how absurd assuming this marvelous piece of anatomy we take for granted came about by random, undirected processes. I hope you find it as fascinating as I do.

The brain weighs about 3 lbs. Your average laptop, which is much less productive than your brain, weighs between 5 and 7 lbs. This small but powerful computer will add 250,000 neurons per minute during early pregnancy and will continue to grow (at a slower rate) until about the age of 18 years. It will likely max out at about 100 billion neurons, each making 1,000 to 10,000 connections to other neurons. This is such an amazing network. Estimates for total brain capacity, in terms we use for hard drives, range from 3 to 100 terabytes of information! To make it a little more confusing, there are approximately 250 quadrillion connections in the brain. To further complicate it, each connection is not just an “on/off” sort of connection. There are different thresholds for different connections and the speed at which neurons fire plays a role, too. There are different cell types, as well, that do different things in the brain. There are different neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, axonal branches and dendritic spines, and that doesn’t include the influences of dendritic geometry, or the approximately 1 trillion glial cells which may or may not be important for neural information processing. Because the brain is nonlinear, and because it is so much larger than nearly all current computers, it seems likely that it functions in a completely different fashion.

This little computer will run your entire body using roughly 10-20 watts of power for the day. The average juice used by your laptop ranges from 15-50 watts per hour. Think about that for a moment! Your brain, which is coordinating digestion, your immune system, your endocrine system, your heart, lung, and vascular systems, your liver and kidneys, interpreting your 5 senses (which you are probably not aware of at the moment), muscle control of the eyes including your pupil and lens operation, interpreting what you’re reading and processing it, as well as thousands of other functions your body is performing right now, runs on hardly enough energy to power the computer you’re viewing this blog on for about 10 minutes—and this will run the brain all day! How amazing is that?

The human brain is, pound for pound, the largest brain of any animal on earth when compared to the rest of the body—accounting for about 2% of its weight and 20% of its oxygen consumption. The elephant’s brain is larger than a human’s but is about .15% of the animal’s body weight. These brains are also not put together the same way, making ours much more capable of complex calculations.

Your brain does not feel pain, but the coverings around it are exceptionally sensitive. On the subject of pain—many pain nerves actually travel more slowly than other nerves. There are different nerve fibers that send different types of information to the brain. Some send pressure sense. Others send temperature sense. Others are vibratory in nature. Some send impulses for proprioception (telling your brain where you are in space). Still others relay pain sensation or touch. There are many different types of nerves that send impulses at different speeds. Ever wonder why you grab, shake, or rub something when it hurts? The sensation of touch, pressure, or vibration will get to your brain first, essentially minimizing the amount of pain sense that can arrive at the brain. This is known as the “Pain Gate” theory. If you shove enough other stuff through the gate, the pain isn’t allowed in.

And this is just how marvelous the human brain is! There are many other organisms that have brains much smaller than ours that do amazing things. Have you ever watched a sparrow fly across your lawn at about 15 mph and stop instantly on the wire of a fence that’s 1/16 of an inch in diameter? How much calculation went into that act? Amazing! Or a cat leaping in the air to catch that sparrow as it darts across your lawn? To predict the speed, height, and trajectory of such a feat is breathtaking—and this happens all the time. If we were aware of ALL the work our brains were doing all the time, we’d be exhausted and wouldn’t be able to do anything else.

I hope this was informative and, if nothing else, interesting for you. The human brain is simply far more complex than could ever been dreamed. Believing it could have developed by some sort of series of accidental mistakes…well, how is that even conceivable?

Where did this amazing computer come from? Check out Psalm 139:13-16.

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