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Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Fiona McLean answered on 16 Jun 2014:
Interesting question! I guess the simplest answer is A LOT! The brain truly is an incredible organ. If you just stop what you are doing right this second you may think that your brain isn’t doing much. However your brain at that very second will be taking in what your eyes are seeing, what your ears are hearing and what your nose is smelling. It will also be judging the temperature around you and telling your body to heat itself up or cool itself down depending.
Even though you have lots of other organs in your body the brain is responsible for telling them what to do. On top of all that, it’s also going to be doing stuff just in the brain such as controlling your emotions, making decisions and storing memories. There are of course some things that you do consciously and others that you don’t realise you’re doing. For example you don’t consciously tell your stomach to digest food but you are aware that you need to tell you hand to reach out and drink from your water bottle if you are thirsty. Even when you are sleeping your brain is still telling your lungs to keep breathing and your heart to pump blood around your body.
Whew! The brain is super busy-it’s a wonder we don’t have more than one!
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Kevin O'Dell answered on 20 Jun 2014:
Probably more processes than we’d ever need. So there isn’t really any danger of a healthy brain running out of space. You have about billion neurons in your brain and as new information comes in and is processed they make new connections. Each one has the capacity to make about 1000 connections.
According to Paul Reber, a Canadian Professor of Psychology, the memory storage capacity of a brain is equivalent to 2.5 petabytes. That’s quite a lot!
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