The Cerebral Cortex

The outermost structure of your brain - A tissue of awesome

The surface area of the cerebral cortex of a human brain
is approximately 2,500cm2.
It all fits in our heads because it's folded to maximize the surface.

The Cerebral Cortex plays an important role in much of
what makes us human.

Thought Memory

Language Attention

It is also called Grey Matter!

Because it has a very light grey color and to emphasize the contrast to white matter.

Neurons

Neurons are very important cells of the brain that respond to all the information we are confronted with.

Information
comes in at Dendrites and goes out through the Axon
* No, neurons don't have eyes and a mouth, but I couldn't resits...

The human brain contains approximately 80 BILLION neurons.

Each of them is connected to up to 200 000 other neurons.

If you laid out all your neurons it would go to the sun 330 times!

Synapses

Synapses are the pathways that connect brain cells, or neurons.

They allow neurons to communicate and form networks.
This is how information is connected across our brains.

There are ~100 - 10 000 synapses per Neuron.


Each mm3 of the brain contains ~ 300 MILLION synapses

Although you cannot see synapses you sure can "feel" them!

A great example of feeling your synapses is when you drink alcohol. Synapses get altered and it affects how information is processed in your brain. And that is why you didn't manage to make sense last time when you were drunk ;-)

Vesicles

Synaptic vesicles store chemicals called Neurotransmitters that are released across synapses.

Vesicles are ~50-100 nanometers big.
A sheet of paper is around 100 000 nanometers thick

Scale
10-3
10-6
10-9

That was a no-brainer, wasn't it?

I hope you liked it and it was somehow educational & fun for you. I also would love to hear your thoughts and feedback, please don't hesitate to contact me on twitter: @patrickwied

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The Scale of the Human Brain

An interactive journey through the depth of the human brain

Experimental!
For the best experience please use Google Chrome on 1280x800+!
Also: looks awesome on iPads

Sorry

This interactive infographic is currently in an experimential state! Please use a desktop machine with Chrome/Safari for the best viewing experience.

Apologies for the inconveniences!

An interactive infographic by Patrick Wied licensed under Creative Commons 4.0 | Credits