by Sandra Petersen

Created on: February 11, 2008

In the 1960's, John D. Fitzgerald wrote an amusing series of books about a main character whose nickname was "The Great Brain". This young boy could figure his way out of any problem, plot ways to amass great wealth, develop elaborate schemes to either get his two brothers in trouble or to do his chores, and yet sometimes choose to be kind-hearted or generous. The brain gives us the capability to be loving, to analyze, to remember, and even to scheme but does so much more than that.

When we are born, our brains weigh less than a pound. By the age of six, our brains will have just about tripled that weight. That weight is about one-sixth the weight of an elephant's brain and about 170 times the weight of a squirrel's brain. The approximately one hundred billion neuron cells with which we are born increase in size and develop several nerve connections in the first six years of life. Think about the vast amount of information a child accumulates, analyzes, stores, and retrieves moment by moment from the minute she is born to the day she enters kindergarten. That is quite an impressive amount of data and interconnecting frameworks of information. Our brains are the marvels responsible for this unseen library in us.

Our brains also allow us to determine through our sense of taste whether the Thanksgiving pumpkin pie is perfect or is missing a key ingredient. What would a symphonic music concert be without our ability to process what we hear and see and decide if a player or a section of the orchestra has performed a piece well or played sour notes? Through intricate nerve relays, our brain receives and deciphers a sensation and then tells our muscles to react when we accidentally touch a teakettle with boiling water in it.

Our hearts would stop beating, we would forget to breathe or sleep, our eyeballs would dry out for lack of blinking, and the organ systems of our bodies would simply cease to function if not for the work of the medulla, or brain stem. When was the last time you had to say to your stomach, "Digest that hero sandwich I just ate." Researchers looked at the development of the medulla when trying to solve the puzzling question of what causes SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) in some babies but not in others.

Thinking about the connection between our brains and oxygen, did you know that 20% of all the oxygen our bodies take in is directed to the brain? In fact, if our brains are deprived of oxygen for three to five minutes parts of the brain begin to

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