Biohack Your Brain summary

The human brain is a mind-bogglingly complex thing. 

Every second, billions of messages are sent between brain cells called neurons. This neuronal activity generates real electricity – enough, in fact, to power a low-wattage light bulb. Give it 70 hours and the brain could charge a smartphone. 

The brain also stores vast amounts of data. On average, it holds the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes of digital memory. If all that storage space were taken up by recordings of television shows, you could watch TV continuously for three centuries. 

The brain isn’t just a passive storage device, though. It regulates every part of your conscious and unconscious life, from the loftiest thought down to the tiniest twitch. 

The key message here is: The brain is as complex as it is essential to human life. 

The adult brain contains 100 billion neurons. Each one of these brain cells is connected to around 10,000 other cells. Neurons transmit, or send, messages to each other through this network using gaps known as synapses. All in all, there are about 100 trillion individual connections between neurons. 

To put that into perspective, that’s more than 1,000 times the number of stars in our galaxy. As physicist Michio Kaku puts it, the brain is the “most complicated object in the known universe.” 

Now, the brain’s neuronal activity regulates all the things you do – all of your physical, mental, and emotional operations. 

Some operations are intentional. What you say and how you say it, for example, are deliberate cognitive acts. Others are automatic. You don’t consciously regulate your heart rate, but it happens anyway. Both kinds of operation are possible because neurons are firing messages across synapses. 

The brain coordinates these operations by “translating” sensory stimuli. 

Eyes, ears, noses, and tongues pick up information from the external world, but the brain controls what you see, hear, smell, and taste. This data is relayed from the body to the brain through the spinal cord, which is the second component of the central nervous system (the first component is the brain itself). Once this information has been processed, new messages are generated that allow your body to perform conscious and unconscious operations.

The brain, in short, is a vital tool, which is why you need to look after it. Like a knife, it works best when you keep it clean, sharp, and well-honed. 

So how do you do that? That’s just what we’ll be exploring in these blinks.