POWER OF THE BRAIN AND ITS HYGIENE

Compiled by MUHAMMAD IMRAN MUHAMMAD imranmuhd2000@yahoo.com www.facebook.com/imranmuhd2000

INTRODUCTION The brain is a complex and fascinating organ serving as the command centre for the body's nervous system. It supplies human beings with an extraordinary amount of physical and cognitive abilities. This relatively small organ is capable of even more than most people are aware of. The brain has the power to learn new languages, perceive beauty and remember tens of thousands of individual bits of information. The vast and incredible power of the human brain is only beginning to be understood by scientists and neurologists. PARTS OF THE BRAIN AND THEIR FUNCTIONS The brain controls multiple bodily functions, ranging from simple to high-level tasks. Each part of the brain is responsible for separate duties, but they interact with each other through neural connections. The brain can be divided into three major parts: the cerebrum, the cerebellum and the brain stem. The cerebrum has four lobes: the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe and occipital lobe. The brain stem is also subdivided into pons and medulla. Frontal Lobe: The University of Washington states that the frontal lobe is responsible for many functions, like reasoning, planning and problem-solving. The frontal lobe also controls some basic movements and responses to emotional situations. It is the most important part of the brain. The Quran calls if FORELOCK. "I put my trust in Allah, my Lord and your Lord! There is not a moving (living) creature but He has grasp of its forelock. Verily, my Lord is on the Straight Path (the truth). Quran 11:56 Tell me if he (the disbeliever, Aboo Jahl) denies (the truth, i.e. this Quran), and turns away? Knows he not that Allah does see (what he does)? Nay! If he
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(Aboo Jahl) ceases not, We will catch him by the forelock; A lying, sinful forelock! Then, let him call upon his council (of helpers); We will call the guards of Hell (to deal with him)! Quran 96: 13 18 Parietal Lobe Within the parietal lobe is the sensory cortex, where the brain reacts to information from touch, pressure, temperature and pain, which leads to spatial relationships. Also, it is responsible for visual attention and voluntary movement. Temporal Lobe: This houses the hippocampus, which is responsible for turning short-term memories into long-term memories, thus making them permanent. It also contains the Wernicke's area, which is the language comprehension centre. Other temporal lobe functions include smell, hearing and object categorizing. Occipital Lobe: The occipital lobe is the visual centre, and identifies colour and movement of an object. Cerebellum: The cerebellum is the centre of voluntary movement. It also controls balance, posture and equilibrium. Pons: The Children's Hospital Boston states that the pons is a section of the brain stem, and its functions involve movements in the eyes and face. Medulla: The medulla controls vital functions, such as heart beat and breathing. SIZE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN The brain is very lightweight--on the average, measuring 140mm in width, 167mm in length, 93mm in height and it's slightly more than three pounds (1.4 kilograms) in weight. Though it can vary in weight depending on the overall size of the body. A person with a large body size would most likely have a brain that weighs more than that of a smaller person. When comparing the ratios of animal brain size to animal body size, human beings have the largest brains, which comprise about 2% of the total body weight. While an elephants brain itself is six times heavier than a human brain, it is still smaller in relation to overall weight of the body. Conversely, the brain of a cat is very small, weighing in at only 28.35 grams, and accounts for around 1% of the cat's body mass.
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Male humans have about a 10% larger brain than females. A study of 46 adults aged 22-49 years found an average brain volume of 1273.6 cubic cm for men, and 1131.1 cubic cm for women. However differences in male and female brain weight and size do not mean differences in mental ability. Surprisingly, the blood vessels in the brain would reach a distance of 100,000 miles, or four rotations around the earth, if they were stretched flat! THE SENSES OF HEARING AND SIGHT IN CONNECTION WITH THE BRAIN: EVIDENCE FROM THE QURAN Whenever the senses of hearing and sight are mentioned in the Quran together, hearing always comes before sight. Consider the following verses: And Allah has brought you out from the wombs of your mothers while you know nothing. And He gave you hearing, sight, and hearts that you might give thanks (to Allah). Quran 16:78 And We had assigned them the (faculties of) hearing, seeing, and hearts, but their hearing, seeing, and their hearts availed them nothing since they used to deny the Ayat of Allah, and they were completely encircled by that which they used to mock at! Quran 46:26 It is He, Who has created for you (the sense of) hearing, sight, and hearts (understanding). Little thanks you give. Quran 23:78 Now the question: Why does hearing comes before sight? Some scholars are of the opinion that the sense of hearing is more important than the sense of sight because the sense of hearing is useful both during the day and at night while the sense of sight is useful during the day only. Also, one can hear from all directions but is able to see only what is in front of him. So, hearing is more vital than sight. However, Scientists have found Hearing Centres inside the human brain, which perceive sounds and give them reason. They also found centres for the vision inside the human brain, which perceive the visible things and give them reason. They found that the tool of the Hearing Centre is the ear, which brings the voices, while the tool of the Vision Centre is the eye, which brings the images. Though the eye comes before the ear in the human face, but anatomically the Hearing Centre comes before the Vision Centre inside the brain. Therefore, the words hearing and sight in the Quran are according
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to the locational order of the Hearing and Vision Centres inside the human brain. COMPARING THE PROCESSING POWERS OF THE HUMAN BRAIN AND THE COMPUTER The processing power of the average human brain can only be estimated because there is no way to measure it quantitatively as of now. If the theory of taking nerve volume to be proportional to processing power is true, then the human brain's processing power can be estimated using the retina whose structure and functionality have been studied to a great extent. The retina is a transparent, paper-thin layer of nerve tissue at the back of the eyeball on which the eye's lens projects an image of the world. It is connected by the optic nerve, a million-fibre cable, to regions deep in the brain. It is a part of the brain convenient for study, even in living animals because of its peripheral location and because its function is straightforward compared with the brain's other mysteries. A human retina is less than a centimetre square and a half-millimetre thick. It has about 100 million neurons, of five distinct kinds. Overall, the retina seems to process about ten one-million-point images per second. Consequently, for the reason that the 1,500 cubic centimetre human brain is about 100,000 times as large as the retina, by simple calculation, it can be estimated that the processing power of an average human brain is about 100 million MIPS (Million computer Instructions Per Second). To have a better understanding of this speed, lets make an analogy. 1999's fastest PC processor chip on the market was a 700 MHz Pentium that did 4200 MIPS. Thus, we would need at least 24,000 of these processors in a system to match up to the total speed of the brain! Which means the brain is like a 16,800,000 MHz Pentium computer. DEEP BLUE VERSUS GARY KASPAROV Deep Blue, is a chess machine that used 256 specialized chips, orchestrated by a 32 processor mini-supercomputer. It examined 200 million chess positions a second and can process chess moves at a speed equivalent to a 3 million MIPS universal computer. That is 1/30 of estimated total human performance. The worlds best chess player ever, Gary Kasparov played against Deep Blue. The machine won the first game of the 1996 match. But, Kasparov quickly found the machine's weaknesses, and drew two and won three of the remaining games in 1997 because he was able to apply his brainpower to the strange
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problems of chess with an efficiency of 1/30. Deep Blue's near equality with Kasparov's chess skill supports the retina-based extrapolation. WHY THE COMPUTER DOES SOLVES PROBLEMS FASTER THAN HUMANS IF THE BRAIN HAS A HIGHER PROCESSING POWER? There are many reasons why the brain loses out to computers in simple and straightforward jobs (especially computational and recording jobs). The brain is made for general purposes, not specifically just for computational jobs. In theory, the brain could be as quick as a computer in computational and recording jobs but in real life, it will never be possible because the average human is constantly distracted by his overwhelming senses, his emotions and his own thoughts. There are exceptional people who could read through a 500 page book in less than an hour and remember all the contents as well as people who could perform mathematical calculations at a snap of their fingers but they are only rare examples that prove the hidden potential of the human brain. When the human brain is calculating a math problem, it is subconsciously processing data from millions of nerve cells that handle the visual input of the paper and surrounding area, the aural input from both ears, and the sensory input of millions of cells throughout the body. The brain is also regulating the heartbeat, monitoring oxygen levels, hunger and thirst requirements, breathing patterns and hundreds of other essential factors throughout the body. It is simultaneously comparing data from the eyes and the sensory cells in the arms and hands to keep track of the position of the pen and paper as the calculation is being performed. If a normal higher-end computer was fed with the information from a human's senses constantly and asked to process and react to them, the computer would overload from too much information because it can't react as fast as the brain could. HYGIENE OF THE BRAIN Traditional Chinese medicine holds that in order to maintain brain health and hygiene, the brain should be used frequently. Cao Cishan of the Qing Dynasty said, "Never stop studying because of old age." This is because the brain deteriorates gradually with the aging process, but frequent use can postpone aging, provide more blood and oxygen to the brain and promote the growth of brain cells. Scientific research shows that frequent use of the brain benefits people of all age groups. Mental workers have a later aging process in the brain cells and a higher intelligence quotient in old age than manual labourers.
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Furthermore, a study conducted by Dr James M. Noble of Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City and his team discovered that gum disease could have an adverse effect on brain function. In other words, there is a link between good oral care and aging adults retaining their mental sharpness. The researchers found during the study that adults aged 60 and older with very high (greater than 119 units) and very low (57 units or lower) levels of the gum disease-causing pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis were three times more likely to have a hard time remembering a three-word sequence after a period of time. Also, adults with very high levels of this pathogen were twice as likely to fail three-digit reverse subtraction tests. Brain tissue contains fat, protein, sugar, the vitamin B complex, vitamin C, vitamin E and calcium, of which fat ranks first. Sufficient nutrition for the brain increases the ability of the cerebral cortex to control excitation and inhibition, and thus raises work efficiency. Undernourishment causes a series of ailments. The following foods contain tonics for the brain: nuts, black sesame seeds, peanuts, corn, millet, dates, pumpkin seeds, chestnuts, honey, marine algae, fish, shrimp and human milk. The nourishment of the brain should start from the embryo stage. Therefore, pregnant women should eat more of these foods, since they are beneficial to the growth of the embryo's brain. CONCLUSION The human brain is the most complex object in the universe. Each one of us carries within our skulls a three-pound lump of fats and proteins with the consistency of jelly that we call a brain. The brain contains 100 billion neurons that link to one another in a pattern more complex and unique than the fingerprint. Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both (Jinns and men) deny? Quran 55:16

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REFERENCES
Hans Moravec (1998). When will computer hardware match the human brain? Journal of evolution and Technology. Vol 1. "Human Brain Facts and Answers." Disabled World - Disability News for all the Family.http://www.disabledworld.com/artman/publish/brainfacts.shtml#ixzz2MSQRMk2k Hussein Rudwan Al-Lubaidy. Physique Of The Human Brain In The Light Of The Holy Quraan. Retrived from: http://www.answering-christianity.org/mahir/brain_heart_miracle.htm Lia Stannard (2011). Parts of the brain and their functions. Retrieved from: http://www.livestrong.com/article/77671-parts-brain-functions/ Liu Zhanwen. Brain hygiene and longevity. http://www.chinavoc.com/kungfu/keephealth/brain.shtml Man Vs Machine. Retrieved from http://www.brainpower.com Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan. Interpretation of the meaning of the Qur'an in the English Language. Poor Dental Hygiene May Hinder Brain Function (2009, November 13). http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1785542/poor_dental_hygiene_may_hinder_brain_f unction/ 10 amazing brain facts. Retrieved from: http://www.brainpower.org/brain-facts.html Retrieved from:

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