Top 10 facts about author the brain
BRAIN Awareness Week (dana.org/BAW) begins today campaigning to raise awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research.
1. In the 4th century BC Aristotle thought that the heart was the seat of intelligence and the brain was a cooling mechanism for the blood.
2. He thought that the reason humans are more rational than beasts is that their larger brains cool their hot-headedness.
3. The average adult brain weighs about 3.3lb and contains about 86 billion nerve cells (neurons).
Brain implant allows paralysed monkey to walk again
4. The brain accounts for about 2 per cent of our weight but uses about 20 per cent of our energy.
5. The brains of some ant species account for up to 15 per cent of their total weight.
6. The word “brain” does not occur in the King James Bible.
7. Neanderthals’ brains were about 10 per cent larger than those of homo sapiens.
8. Coca-Cola was first marketed in 1886 as a “brain and nerve tonic”.
9. Two of the leading British neurologists in the first half of the 20th century were Henry Head (1861-1940) and Walter Russell Brain (1895-1966). The latter became editor of the journal Brain.
10. “Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think,” (Ambrose Bierce, Devil’s Dictionary).