Thinking About the Brain

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The adult brain weighs just three pounds, yet it is more powerful, complex and intriguing than thousands of supercomputers. It's ability to process and store sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, concepts, details, and synthesize all these into the cohesive whole of conscious thought while controlling every autonomous function of our bodies, as well as give us voluntary control over thousands of muscles that coordinate the movement of every part of our musculoskeletal system is simply astounding. The potential brain capacity of someone of average intelligence is estimated as at least equivalent to that of 25 million volumes of books.

The fundamental unit within the brain is the neuron, or nerve cell. Each tiny nerve cell (about 4 billion will fit into a thimble) is a complex molecular machine in its own right with hundreds of millions of molecular components. During the first nine months of life, these complex neural structures form at the astounding rate of 25,000 per minute. At a high level the neuron is comprised structurally of a nucleus and branching fibers called dendrites and axons. Each neuron sends electrochemical impulses along its axon extension to neighboring neurons. Our brain contains about 200 billion neurons. Each neuron is in dendritic contact with perhaps 10,000 other neurons. The total number of neurological interconnections is on the order of 2000 trillion. This number is equivalent to all the leaves on all the trees of a vast forest covering all the land on earth. The total length of the nerve dendrites in an adult brain is over 500 million feet! This is an example of systems integration on a scale and level of complexity that defies imagination. 

The beautiful complexity of our brain contrasts sharply with all simplistic, secular attempts to explain it away. We currently do not even understand 1% of how the brain does all these things, let alone have any reasonable speculation about how it could arise naturally. Our brain remains a frontier of science; we actually know very little about it, but what is known is overwhelming. The brain truly provides the ultimate design challenge for evolution.

To learn more the Society for Neuroscience provides a detailed guide to the brain and nervous system

 (http://apu.sfn.org/content/Publications/BrainFacts/brainfacts.pdf). 

Provided by the East Tennessee Creation Science Association (ETCSA)

 

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