A Great Journey Inside Your Brain
You're not logged in yet, your progress will not be saved!
Login now
or
Create an account
Loading...
Did you know that every time you're watching a new video,
it's possible thanks to the world's most powerful supercomputer?
And I'm not talking about your laptop or phone here,
I mean your own brain.
Let's take a journey in there to find out how it works.
But first, I'll need a proper kind of equipment.
This machine here will... hey, what?
Oh my, looks like I've turned myself into a sound wave.
Oh well, whatever works!
And that's my friend down there,
so we'll get to see what happens in his brain.
Interesting!
The outer ear catches the sound wave, and the journey begins.
It's pretty tight in here, in the ear canal.
Ugh.. Let me squeeze in... There we go!
Next stop, the eardrum, it's about half the size of a dime.
Oh, what was that?
The eardrum starts vibrating, I know that feeling so well!
It's like when your neighbors party so hard you can hear it at the other end of the street.
Moving on to the middle ear...
Things are getting too loud here!
And this must be the cochlea.
That's Greek for "snail," by the way because, duh, that's what it looks like!
It's pretty wet in here, it's all filled with liquid, and it's getting stormy.
What are all those cute hairs?
There are so many of them!
Oh, I feel ticklish...
They move and bend, and then the real magic happens.
Vibrations turn into nerve impulses here.
Woohoo! Things are getting crazy fast here!
We're traveling down the auditory nerve.
Next stop, the brain.
I think I need to put my shades on;
it's bright and sparkly in here.
All those trees look like they've come straight out of a sci-fi movie.
What if I touch it?
Oh-ho, it's like a lightning!
Now, these are my fellow neurons,
there are about a hundred billion of them,
about as many as the stars in the Milky Way.
You get most of them at birth,
but as you get older, your brain keeps producing new ones.
Wow, that was bright! And again!
Neurons send somewhere between 5 to 50 messages every second.
More on that later, we have places to go!
There are hundreds of neuron types and three main classes.
Sensory neurons are like little secret service agents,
they collect information from your sense organs, like eyes and ears,
and deliver it to your central nervous system.
These here are motor neurons,
they're the big bosses in your body.
They get information from other neurons and deliver it to your muscles, organs, and glands.
So basically, they're telling you what to do!
All the rest are interneurons,
they collect and receive information from other neurons.
This action is never-ending!
It's like a huge chemical factory.
Neurons work so hard they produce enough energy to light up a low-voltage LED bulb.
Hey, just try it!
Yeah, they did it!
The speeds in here are crazy,
up to 250 miles per hour, like sports cars.
But let's slow down for a moment.
I want to know what happens here.
Welcome to the cerebrum,
the largest part of the brain, or around 85%.
So glad I never skipped anatomy class!
The outer layer of the cerebrum is made of gray matter,
the rest of the core is made of white matter.
Does it matter?
Yes, it does!
The cerebrum interprets your senses of vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch.
You can feel different emotions and learn new things thanks to it.
Did you know your brain has unlimited storage capacity?
So that's what all these folds and grooves here are for.
Okay, enough with the cerebrum.
The next highlight on the itinerary today is the cerebellum,
also known as the "little brain."
It's indeed way smaller than the cerebrum,
but not any less important, of course.
Careful! That was one rough turn!
Your little brain receives info from the sensory systems and the spinal cord
and is in charge of the motor movements.
So thanks to it, you can walk without falling,
have good posture, and even speak!
It also helps you concentrate and keep emotions under control.
That differs person to person, of course.
Are you mostly calm, or is it easy to freak you out?
Let me know in the comment section below!
We still have places to go, so let's keep moving.
Neurons here come in all shapes and sizes
but all have three basic parts:
there's the cell body, the long tail called axon,
and dendrite that looks like tree branches if you zoom in on it,
neurons receive most of their information thanks to the dendrites.
Let's hang on here and watch, that's quite a show!
Information transmission in progress!
Just one neuron can't do much by itself,
so they work together as teams.
They talk in their secret language of electrical and chemical signals.
Ooh, did you see that little light just go out?
Not all messages can go through,
neurons sort of learn the relevant from the irrelevant.
And when you do something again and again, so the same signal is going through,
the message gets even faster and is more likely to reach the goal.
One more thing that makes some parts of your brain more active is love.
It lights up in MRI scan.
Hold on, I think because of all those love talks, we missed our next stop.
Let's go back a bit.
Nope, not what we were looking for...
Hmm, so easy to get lost in this maze.
Maybe it's here...
We're looking for something really small and almond-shaped.
Yay! Meet the amygdala, everyone!
It's on our must-see list today because it plays a super important role.
It handles your emotions like fear and sadness
and helps you keep your temper under control.
And it's like a scrapbook for your memories of events and emotions.
It stores them so you can recognize similar things in the future.
Alright, what's next?
Oh, that must be the brainstem.
It's in charge of communication between the brain and the rest of your body.
And you should also thank it for the things you do automatically:
breathing, keeping your heartbeat regular, digesting food, and other basics.
The brainstem is connected directly to the spinal cord,
that's the central highway of your nervous system.
Oh, what's that?
Traffic police?
Hey, I wasn't speeding, officer, I promise!
Everyone is crazy fast in here.
This highway has lanes moving in both directions, carrying messages to and from the brain.
Hey Steve, what are you doing?
Don't you see that door right in your face?
Do something, brain!
You have to send a signal to his muscles.
Okay, I have to save him. To the rescue!
Phew, made it!
I'm human again, and that phone is still ringing.
How long have I been away for?
Just so you know, it looks like this all happened in one thousandth of a second.
- Next exercise: How Mosquitoes Suck Your Blood
- Previous exercise: How This Pen Changed The World