Chapter 3 - Meet your Amazing Brain

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Meet your amazing brain	115

of brain cells is many times more powerful and sophisticated than most of the computers around the planet today. Each one of these cells connects, embraces, hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands of others. And they shuttle information back and forward. It's been called an enchanted loom, the most astoundingly complex, beautiful thing in existence. And each person has one." 3
  Of those trillion brain cells, about one tenth consist of active neurons or nerve cells. Each one is capable of making up to 20,000 different connections with other cells. Stanford University Professor Robert Ornstein says, in The Amazing Brain, that the possible number of connections is probably bigger than the number of atoms in the universe.4
  Doubt it? Then consider what happens if you took only ten everyday items - like the first ten things you did this morning - and combined them in every possible sequence. The result would be 3,628,800 different combinations. Take 11 items, connect them, and the number of possible combinations is 39,916,800! So now try combining 100 billion cells in every possible way - when each one can make up to 20,000 different connections - and you get some idea of the creative capacity of your own brain.
  And how do you make the most of its great ability? Says Buzan: "You make the most of your mind by first studying what it is. The first thing you do is find out what it's made of. Then how it works. How does the memory work? How does concentration work? How does the creative thinking process work? So you literally start to examine and explore yourself." Start that exploration and you come up with some surprises:

Your four brains in one
 
  First, you've got four brains in one - on three different levels, from top to brain-stem, and with the fourth tucked in behind.
  Next, your brain has two sides. Each controls different functions and processes information in different ways. These sides are linked by an amazing electronic and chemical relay-system that itself has 300 million operating nerve-cells. This shuttles information around instantly like a multinational automatic telephone exchange.
  We also now believe that each of us has many different "intelligence centers" in the brain. But very few of us develop more than a small part of that latent ability.
  Your brain also works on at least four different electrical wave-

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