Neuroscience Facts

Most people instinctively close their eyes while kissing, but a significant minority prefer to keep them open. Scientists believe eye closure helps the brain focus on tactile sensations by reducing visual distractions.

Your brain is 80% water.

The human brain contains roughly 86 billion neurons connected by approximately 100 trillion synaptic connections—far more connections than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Poor eyesight (myopia) is associated with higher IQ.

After age 30, the brain begins to gradually shrink, losing about 5% of its volume per decade after age 40, with some regions like the hippocampus shrinking as much as 0.84% annually.

Yawns are more contagious among people with closer relationships.

When someone looks at a new love, the neural circuits that are usually associated with social judgment are suppressed.

The storage capacity of the human brain is estimated at around 2.5 petabytes—equivalent to about 2,500 terabytes or roughly 3 million hours of TV shows.

The human brain doesn't stop developing until about 25 years old.

Brain scans show that people who view photos of a beloved experience activation of the caudate - a dopamine-rich part of the brain's reward system involving motivation and desire.

You have no sense of smell when you're sleeping!

On average, there's 100 billion neurons in the human brain.

Listening to music while working can boost mood and productivity, but the effect depends on the type of task and music—lyrics can interfere with reading or writing, while instrumental music often helps with repetitive tasks.

One quarter of the human brain is used to control the eyes.

Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right or left handed... or is that paws?!

Listening to music activates the same dopamine reward system in the brain that responds to sex, food, and drugs.

When you wake up with a jolt, it's called a hypnic jerk. This usually happens during the lightest stages of sleep, and can occur as a natural reaction when you fall asleep in a car or airplane.

During REM sleep, your brain can be as active as when you're awake, with some regions showing even more intense activity than during waking hours.

Daydreaming activates the brain's 'default mode network,' which research links to enhanced creativity and insight-based problem-solving.

Craniopagus conjoined twins Krista and Tatiana can see through each other’s eyes.

The chills you sometimes feel when listening to music is called "musical frisson."

In the 1960s, neuroscientist John Lilly conducted NASA-funded experiments where researcher Margaret Howe Lovatt lived with a dolphin named Peter for months, attempting to teach him to vocalize English words.

There's a phone app called RoboRoach that allows you to remotely control a cockroach through a chip that you to manually implant into the unwitting critter.

The idea of left brain (logical) and right brain (creative) has no basis in neuroscience and is in fact a myth.