Have you ever wondered how humans are able to sub-consciously dream whilst sleeping? How humans are able to faintly recall memories from more than 10 years ago, but sometimes cannot accurately describe what they consumed for dinner the night before? How there is no viable method of predicting an individual’s fate or action? Why organisms are so easily deceived by optical illusions? These are just a few questions that captivate my mind every single day as I strive to learn more about the field of neuroscience.

The brain is one of the most fascinating and complex machines within any organism’s body system. Commonly known as the “command center” within the central nervous system, the brain is responsible for overseeing all of the mechanisms within the body. It receives constant impulses from various sensory neurons and converts these “messages” into muscle cells through motor neurons with every miniscule action you make, at a rate of approximately 11 million bits per second. Even though it weighs only a mere three pounds, this powerhouse is confidently the most energy-induced structure within any functional organism.

There are various structures within the brain that are responsible for many of the vital functions that we subconsciously and consciously control daily – cerebrum, thalamus, hypothalamus, cerebellum, pons, medulla, and the four cerebral lobes.

FUN FACT: As you read each word in this sentence, you are AT THIS VERY MOMENT activating the premise of your frontal and occipital lobe to comprehend all logical aspects of this text. Simultaneously, there are more than hundreds of thousands of neurons meandering across each synaptic circuit with the stress of each syllable you make. These bizarre elements allow the study of the brain to be one with many intricate and engaging facets.

Everything that you have read so far is grouped under the category of neuroscience. Neuroscience is the study of the brain. To expand, neuroscience is formally classified as the micro-analysis of the function, structure, and pathology of the nervous system that underlies the diversity of human behavior that organisms express – internally and externally – every day. Neuroscience can be considered a pretty expansive topic – the ideology of studying over 86 million neurons within the brain, all of which are simultaneously playing significant roles in scattered regions in the body. This “scatter” allows your brain to play a critical role in each and every one of your daily actions – whether it be immediately reacting to touching a hot surface or enjoying the bone-chilling frost of an ice-cream sundae against the tip of your tongue.

I think it’s truly mind-boggling to recognize how much our society has progressed from the beginning of recorded science to the vast neurological innovations that we see in our present date. From the initial Egyptian primitive belief that consciousness and imagination stemmed from the human heart to the first official mapping of human activity in the brain through fMRI’s to the potential possibilities for neuronal cloning in artificial intelligence – there are endless opportunities towards what the future holds in terms of global advancement for human brain analytics. Maybe if we keep pursuing independent research, one day we will be able to measure cognitive control within the nervous system. Maybe with the increased exposure to neurological studies and technology, we might be able to clone human intelligence world-wide and potentially create our own transcontinental demographic.

In today’s rapidly advancing society, the field of neuroscience is becoming increasingly popular through both clinical and research trials. However, with the detrimental global pandemics that are negatively impacted human populations, over 5.7 million Americans are continuously being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease every year and over 150,000 Americans are expressing complications of epileptic seizures annually. Despite its emerging popularity, the versatile field of neuroscience will always continue its search for global influencers and prominent contributors to clear the face of global disparity.

When summing up your reading of the human brain, there are a few things that you should leaving pondering on. Regardless of how complex we, as a human civilization, may think we are – given the ability to handle over 50,000,000 copies of information per second – our attention span has been scientifically recorded as 0.75 seconds less than the average aquatic goldfish. This brings forward a completely new discussion regarding our misconception we have on the true intelligence of goldish in comparison to the human species. These are the unique elements within the brain that never fail to captivate me to learn more about the field of every single day. Thank you for giving me this new life perspective neuroscience.