• Question: How does the human brain work?

    Asked by 989ntrd29 to Chloe, Irene, Pierre, NULL, Uday on 12 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Irene Regan

      Irene Regan answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      The human brain is like a powerful computer that stores our memory and controls how we as humans think and react. It has evolved over time and features some incredibly intricate parts that scientists still struggle to understand.
      The brain is part of the nervous system.
      Together with the spinal cord, the brain makes up the central nervous system. The brain connects to nerves that travel throughout the body.
      Nerves from our senses (hearing, seeing, touch, etc.) send signals to the brain to let the brain know what is going on in the outside world.
      The brain also sends signals using nerves to muscles in order to make our body move.

    • Photo: NULL

      NULL answered on 13 Nov 2015:

      How the brain works is one of the big unsolved questions that lots of scientists are trying to answer. If you want to become a scientist, you should think about getting into Neuroscience, because we need lots of smart brains to help out.

      We know that brains take in information from the outside world, from your senses, and that those signals reach the brain through nerves coming from your eyes, your skin, your nose… And when the signals reach the brain, we know where in the brain they go. Images from your eyes go to the back of your brain, right at the back of your head, for example.

      But we are not really sure how brains think, how they make decisions, and how they remember things.

      The parts of the brain involved in thinking are thought to be at the front, over your eyes. And the parts that control speaking and language are on the left side over your ear.

      No one yet has managed to work out how the brain, which is full of complicated patterns of nerve cells connected to each other, does all the more complicated things.

    • Photo: Chloe Huseyin

      Chloe Huseyin answered on 17 Nov 2015:

      The human brain is perhaps the most complex of organs, it contains between 50-100 billion nerve cells or neurons that constantly interact with each other. These neurons ‘carry’ messages through electrochemical processes; meaning, chemicals in our body (charged sodium, potassium and chloride ions) move in and out of these cells and establish an electrical current.

      These messages allow our brains to make decisions about things like moving our hands and fingers to type on a keyboard and to perceive the world around us such as different smells and sounds.

      The brain also has different parts for different jobs, like Ricardo mentioned with the images from your eyes being processed in the visual cortex which is located at the back of your brain. You can see what I mean here:

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