This is the human brain it's incredible to think that every person we've ever
known ever come across ever heard about in the history of our species who anyone
was can be encapsulated in the singular organ with which you see in front of you
it's a beautiful system that takes a really good chunk of our energy up to a
quarter of our calorie intake per day goes into our brains but what makes a
human brain unique it's not the largest brain and in fact how does it work
scientists used to think that the brain was "as it is" so you're born with it and
you can't change it whereas nowadays we're speaking of the human brain like
it's a muscle it's called neuroplasticity it actually means that
the shape and the small intricacies of the brain can be changed. Parts can be
enlarged by your activities your thoughts what you use in fact the simple
fact of juggling can actually cause quite a pronounced difference to the
insides of your brain but what is inside our brains what makes them so unique
well it's all to do with the cerebral cortex this is an area of gray matter
which I'll draw here that runs along the outside surface of our cerebrum other
animals have a cerebral cortex except ours has a much denser amount of neurons
from the huge amount of power drawn by our brain each day an incredible portion
is burnt by this thin layer of neurons alone now the cerebral cortex is usually
described as being in different areas we call them lobes that perform
higher-level function however use these lobes with caution you see the brain
works as a single unit to produce speech you need input from a number of areas
not just production regions but motor regions sensory regions for example to
produce the sound clearly the same that we only use 10% of our brains therefore
is complete rubbish
this area at their front is called the frontal lobe where human characteristics
come from such as our drive and motivation consideration for others
things that make us tick we know some of this because people that have injuries
or strokes in this area can lose empathy and motivation this area's also we make
the decisions as whether or not action is good or bad so our conscience seems
to stem from this region as well and directly behind it we have the area
called the parietal lobe some traditional senses like touch, texture
detection are computed in this region but working out things like hard or
light touch and object manipulation this region helps us understand all these
inputs from our tactile and other senses it also includes our perceptions of
temperature and pain and then at the very back we have the occipital lobe
this is where our vision comes from the occipital lobe converts light received
by the sensors on our eyes into an understanding of the visual world around
us if you knock at the back of your head you see stars and this is due to the
impacts to this region. The temporal lobe, shown here, does some complex
calculations for example visual memories associating someone you see on the
street for the person you know who your memories recognizing objects determining
if you like or dislike a smell, or a song, so our sensors pick up information and
the temporal lobe processes these linking them with your memories and
thoughts it also helps record and hold long-term
memories so although our brains on the largest in the animal kingdom
for example ours is around one-and-a-half kilograms or three pounds
the same weight as a dolphin's whereas sperm whales have got brains five to six
times larger than ours in addition orcas, blue whales, humpbacks
all have larger brains as do some land animals like elephants but we have by
far the largest cerebral cortex compared to the size of our brain. The thickness
and density of this grey matter or the cerebral cortex is far larger than that
of other animals which means we have more neurons
in the region as I've described before it means more ability to process
conscious thoughts more abilities to process complex memories spatial
understandings intelligence personality planning organization language skills it
requires a large amount of energy that you put each day to run it which is why
we cook a lot of our meals using fire or heat - pre-digesting in our foods which
assists us in absorbing nutrients but we also eat effectively far more calories
per day than other animals who have gatherers hunters or feeders on raw food
this is why we as human beings can feed these extra calories to our hungry
hungry brains now yes we still have a lot to learn about our brains but we're
really starting to understand the beauty and differentiating factors of our
species specific cerebral areas were compared to other species and that's
what makes us different and that's what makes us unique