Essay About Important Discoveries And Intriguing Questions

Just Sheer Naked Magic
Essay title: Just Sheer Naked Magic
What weighs about three pounds but has more parts than there are stars in the
Milky Way galaxy (Flieger)? What fills the space occupied by only three pints
of milk yet includes components that, laid end to end, would stretch several
hundred thousand miles (Diagram 19)? What looks like an oversized walnut
made of soft, grayish-pink cheese but contains the equivalent of 100 trillion tiny
calculators (Restak, Brain 27)? What, according to James Watson,
co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA, is “the most complex thing we
have yet discovered in our universe” (qtd. in Begley 66)? To all four of these
intriguing questions there is but one surprising answer: the human brain. This
miraculous organ is remarkable in its structure, its function, and its chemical
Doe 2
composition.
What is the brain? According to Richard Restak,
the human brain is the master control center of the
body. The brain constantly receives information from
the senses about conditions both inside the body and
outside it. The brain rapidly analyzes this information
and then sends out messages that control body
functions and actions. (“Brain” 561)
According to Tether, the brain is divided into three main parts: the cerebrum, the
cerebellum, and the brain stem (421). These parts, in turn, are largely made up of
nerve cells, called neurons, and helper cells, called glia. Researchers have
discovered that there may be as many as 100 billion neurons in the brain and a far
greater number of glia, possibly as many as one trillion (Kolb and Whishaw 1).
Important discoveries throughout the decade of the 1990’s in molecular biology
and genetics are revolutionizing our understanding of how the human brain