Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Brain drain

at what rate do brain cells die?

How many brain cells do we have?

what is the maximum amount of time our individual knowledge and memories can last?

(assume that the longevity of the rest of the human body is infinite)


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"Take me to your leader"
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I was just about to answer that question but my mind went blank.

But seriously, I seem to remember hearing somewhere that we have about 100 billion brain cells (neurons) on average and lose either 1000 or 10,000 (I forgot) per day.

But that was a long time ago and may well be wildly inaccurate.

Don't they regenerate?

You could easily answer your first question by googling for it. A cool 100 billion is the estimate I found for it.

As for regeneration, it was once thought that adult brain cells, once damaged or destroyed, would never regenerate. However, more recent information suggests that this is not the case, and the evidence is now suggesting that in some cases there is significant regeneration in the central nervous system.

http://www.brainlightning.com/regen.html

I got 1,260,000 hits on "Brain Cell Regeneration" on the first try. Try doing your homework before you come to school.

Popular thought has it that:

'After the age of 20, humans lose 50,000 brain cells a day to atrophy.'

- Inside Britannica.

Even if this were true, 18,000,000 a year from 100 billion is nothing to lose your mind over.


But latest research seems to be telling us that this is a myth:

'When new technology became available to actually count cells in different parts of the brain, neurologists at the Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital used it to determine just how bad the loss might be. They came up with a pleasant, dogma-busting surprise.'

- http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1996/10.03/AgingBrainsLose.html

Blacknad.

"You could easily answer your first question by googling for it."

The reason I don't google for an answer to every one of my questions is because I want people who take everything that they hear as fact to have the chance to have that fact challenged. Say I had googled it, people reading this would not know any of what you have just posted. I mean, this whole thread could have been avoided by googleing anyway...

I wonder if this brain cell death information comes from the same source that says, "We only use 10% of our brains."