10 unnecessary stupid facts about your brain

The room where the magic happens. Your thinking bits. Your brain is a very, very complex organ. Made up of many tens of billions of neurons (comparable to the number of stars in the Milky Way) that perform the simplest to the most difficult tasks. From grabbing a cup of coffee to making plans for the future. Did you already know this about your brain?

1. Your brain is the heaviest organ in your body and weighs about 1.4 kilograms. Despite the fact that this is only an average of 2 percent of our weight, that upper room burns between 20 to 30 percent of all the calories you eat in a day. A lot of work is being done up there!

2. If you've never seen a pair of brains in real life (I, um, assume you haven't), you might be wondering what they look like. They are pale pink in color and have a jelly-like texture. Eww.

3. Oh, and 75 percent of the brain is made up of... Water. Well, a cucumber has nothing on that. Additionally: a whole lot of fat too. Gross.

4. A piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand contains 100,000 neurons and 1 trillion synapses that all ‘talk’ to each other. Aha. I said it: complex things.

5. Did you know that an average of about 60,000 thoughts pass through our heads each day? And not even original ones, because 95 percent of those thoughts we've already thought once. And 80 percent is also negative.

6. At the age of 18, your brain stops growing.

7. You have the largest number of brain cells... When you are born. After that, the cells gradually start to die off. That process can be accelerated by alcohol and drugs, by the way.

8. Is it all downhill from here? Not entirely fortunately. The part of your brain that processes your emotions is only fully developed around your 25th birthday. Your brain continues to develop until about halfway through your forties.

9. Learning something new changes the structure of your brain. For example, your hippocampus becomes ‘thicker’ after you've studied. Our brain is therefore ‘plastic’ and can be shaped.

10. Information in your brain travels at a Speedy Gonzales speed of 431 kilometers per hour. Except when you're drunk, then it goes a lot slower. Pretty funny.

Image: Kirsten van Santen