How The Brain Works

The brain is the body’s control center. It coordinates the basic functions required for survival, controls body movements, and processes sensory data. However, it also encodes a lifetime of memories and creates consciousness, imagination, and our sense of self.

The physical brain At the largest scale, the human brain appears as a firm, pink-gray solid. It is made mostly from fats (about 60 percent) and has a density just a little greater than that of water. However, neuroscientists, the people who study the form and function of the brain, see the organ as being constituted from more than 300 separate, although highly interconnected, regions. On a much smaller scale, the brain is made from approximately 160 billion cells, half of which are neurons, or nerve cells, and about half are glia, or support cells of one kind or another.