Humanity’s greatest challenge is to understand how the brain works.¹ Neuroscientists, aided by discoveries in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, are inching closer to this answer each day. While the brain’s full functionality remains a mystery, we have enough information to form a general concept. This concept helps us understand how the brain, as a living biological network, plays a crucial role in creating our perception of reality. 

Our brain produces roughly fifty thousand to seventy thousand thoughts daily, and we get so caught up in our perspective that we rarely consider the viewpoint of the cells that create them. ² Each person’s brain is a bustling community of 86 billion neurons and 85 billion support cells.³ Protected by the blood-brain barrier, these two categories of cells work together harmoniously, forming a biological cellular network that produces our reality. 

 Before moving on to more significant concepts, we must examine life from the perspective of our neurons and support cells. This post will focus on neurons, while the next one will cover support cells. 

Neurons, the building blocks of our brain, first appeared in species between 635 and 540 million years ago.⁴  From humans to worms, they have similar designs and functions wherever they live. The differences between humans and other life forms with neurons are the number, regions, configuration, and connectivity of those neurons.

Our neurons are a community of cells living in a quantum world, experiencing life and death just as we do. They work by accumulating a charge and firing a spike when reaching a specific threshold. It is a similar process to when we get a static shock. Our body builds up a charge, and when it reaches a certain level, it can release a spike of energy. When a neuron is at rest, its total charge is -70 millivolts, and it fires when it reaches +40 millivolts.⁵ As soon as it reaches the firing threshold, it discharges an electrical spike, resetting to -70 millivolts to repeat the process. Each neuron fires 5-50 times a second, producing an electrical spike that releases chemicals.⁶ 

 Each neuron is born as a free agent performing the function of firing electrochemical signals. They are individuals performing a job that collectively contributes to how we think and feel. The activity of billions of individual neurons firing signals as a collective unit leads to thought and reality as we know it. Every thought you have is the activity of neurons. Everything you see, hear, or feel is also the activity of neurons. Our mental states and the activity of neurons are one and the same.⁷  

Although there are many different types of neurons, they all share the same general layout with an input for receiving,  a body for processing, and an output for sending signals. The input has one to several thousand fibrous branches filled with granular spines that take in signals from neighboring neurons.⁸  The input branches and spines are highly malleable, growing and withering away based on their activity. The signal received from the input determines whether a positive or negative charge flows into the cell body. 

The body is where incoming charge flows, and when it reaches the firing threshold, it generates an electrical spike. The cell body is the control room that processes information and manages signaling operations.⁹ The spike the cell body generates shoots down its output cable of varying lengths, ranging from microscopic to three feet long.¹⁰  The signal travels down the output cable up to 250 miles per hour or the length of a football field in one second. ¹¹ When the electric spike reaches the end of the cable, it triggers the release of chemicals known as neurotransmitters that flow to neighboring neurons. Common examples of neurotransmitters are dopamine, adrenaline, serotonin, and melatonin.¹² These flow to thousands of neighboring cells, influencing whether they fire or not. 

Neurons are often placed in layers, pointing their output cables at the inputs of neurons in the next layer for optimal signal transfer. The outputs and inputs never touch, separated by one-millionth of a centimeter, called the synapse.¹³ Synapses are the only way neurons can talk to each other, acting as connection points that facilitate the transfer of chemicals from one cell’s output to the input of another. Each neuron has thousands to tens of thousands of synaptic connection points for transferring chemicals. They grow and wither away based on use, as neuronal activity influences their behavior. When spread across the brain, our neurons produce 100 trillion synaptic signals in a second.¹⁴ 

From what we have seen with neurons, they are not simple on-and-off switches but complex agents performing millions of functions daily.¹⁵ Dr. Joe Dispenza says each neuron is like a super-processing computer performing many functions and sending signals to others. Rather than being a giant computer, the brain is 86 billion computers that send signals in complex patterns to create our projection of reality. We will continue to expand on the idea that the brain is a complex network of computers and how that translates to life as you know it.