Once development is complete, it never proliferates again. Only the number of brain cells available at birth, about 14 billion, is available in a person’s lifetime. Other organs or tissues such as bones, liver, and muscles can be restored quickly after damage due to cell division and proliferation, but brain cells are not renewable. Currently, there is no better way to change the non-renewable nature of brain cells.
Brain cells are in a process of continuous death and never rejuvenate and proliferate, one less than the other, until they die out. This is a programmed death, also called apoptosis. After the age of 20, if these cells are left unused, they will become obsolete at a rate of 100,000 per day. Although this is an unpleasant thing, it is true that brain cells gradually decrease with age. Comparing an 80-year-old person with a 40-year-old person, the former has about half as many as the latter, a difference of about twice as much, which has been scientifically proven.
However, not all parts of the brain decrease in the same proportion, for example, the cells of the brainstem remain almost unchanged. From this point of view, the brainstem is an absolutely essential part for human survival, and the destruction of this part will cause the organs to lose their functions. This part of the brainstem, which is associated with the maintenance of minimal life activities, is the earliest part to mature in genesis, and the myelin sheath of the motor nerve in the brainstem is fully developed in infants just one day old. Such a site is not only unaffected by age-related changes, but is also less susceptible to disease.
Brain cells can be divided into three types according to their maturity
One type is the fully developed brain cell, which has the highest maturity, with each cell having up to 20,000 lines of business connections with other cells. These are the elite cells that are in a working state, and they perform all the slightly difficult tasks available to humans.
The other category is the underdeveloped brain cells, whose maturity is relatively low, and each cell generally has only a few dozen lines of communication with other brain cells, undertaking some simple tasks that are within their reach. We call this part of the brain cells in a semi-inhibited state.
The third category is the completely undeveloped primitive state of brain cells, which are neither immediately dead nor involved in work and are in a leisurely state. We call them brain cells in a completely inhibited or sleepy state.
There are about 12 billion brain cells in the human brain, at most less than 10% are fully developed and often used, while the rest are still in a primitive state of underdevelopment or no development at all.
The vast majority of the lines of contact between brain cells are formed gradually after birth by the stimulation of the external environment. The more brain cells contact lines, the more the cells can play the division of labor between each other, the more intelligent people will be, the higher the IQ. Therefore, if an infant is isolated from the outside world after birth, the contact lines between the cells will not develop, and it will never be a highly intelligent person in the future.
Brain cells are the smallest units of brain activity, and if each cell is compared to a telephone exchange, its telephone lines are 1400 times more complex than the world’s telephone network.
How do cells exchange information with each other?
It is commonly believed that brain cells are densely arranged, like an electrical circuit, and that weak electrical currents flow through these cells and communicate the brain’s commands.
In fact, this is not the case. Cells are not directly connected to each other, and there are small gaps in between.
What acts as a wire are the hormones, also called hormones, that are diffused between cells and act as transmitters of information in the brain. These hormones are secreted in various parts of the brain, through which the brain transmits instructions to the whole body, so that the body also secretes the same hormones, through which the cells receiving the information act on the orders. Without hormones, a person would not be able to think or act, and a person would not feel.
Some people also compare brain cells to a tiny biological battery, ready to discharge. The charged elements are called ions, and they are present in unequal numbers inside and outside the brain cell, thus creating a tiny potential difference on either side of the cell membrane. The potential recorded inside a human brain cell is 70 millivolts (expressed as -70mV) lower than the external potential, which is called the resting potential, and this “positive outside, negative inside” state of the cell membrane is called polarization.
Information from another brain cell alters the resting potential so that its negative value changes to a level called the threshold, causing a discharge. The threshold of human brain cells is about
-55 mV, and when this value is reached, the brain cell produces an electrical change propagating along the axon called an action potential or nerve impulse. The nerve impulse causes the release of a transmitter accompanied by a change in potential.
The brain is a network organization of brain cells (neurons) that functions through signaling between brain cells. Clearly, the basic structural unit of the brain is very simple and well defined. In other words, the brain consists of single functioning neurons and glial cells that support the function of neurons. The glial cells mainly include astrocytes and Schwann cells. Astrocytes, so named because of their starfish-like shape, together with vascular endothelial cells, are important in forming the blood-brain barrier. Schwann cells, on the other hand, are wrapped in thin sheets around axons and form the so-called myelin sheath. The myelin part is not conductive, so it has better cable properties, which greatly improves the conduction speed of action potentials and can make the information transmission between brain cells in a superconducting state. It has been scientifically calculated that the difference in nerve conduction speed between the two conditions with and without myelin sheaths can be as large as 10,000 times. When neuromyelin is disconnected or damaged, the time-efficient rate of mental activities such as memory and thinking is greatly reduced.
Three important stages of brain development
The first stage: the peak of brain cell appreciation (3-6 months). 3-6 months is the first peak of fetal brain cell appreciation, during which the fetal brain cells increase dramatically at an average rate of 250,000 cells per minute, and by the time of birth, a eugenic child with good brain cell growth and development will have 100 billion brain nerve cells. Here is a special emphasis: the child’s brain nerve cells can only grow in the womb, it is impossible to increase after birth, miss this opportunity and then supplement any nutrient is useless.
The second stage: from 7 months to birth – is the second stage of brain cell growth and development. During this stage, brain cells continue to increase, cell volume increases, dendritic branches increase, and synapses begin to form. Special note: the second stage is the last time the number of brain cells in the womb increases, once missed will be a lifelong lack of brain cells, while brain cell quality level is also mainly determined by this stage, with special emphasis on brain reaction speed, memory, thinking ability, IQ, eugenics can not catch up type, once the child is born, brain cell quality lifelong difficult to change, the mother to avoid causing lifelong child Difficult to make up for the regret!
The third stage: 1 year after the birth of the child is the last peak of brain cell growth. At this stage, brain nerve cell bodies continue to increase in size, glial cells rapidly divide and proliferate, and nerve cells form the neural pathways that transmit information throughout the body, just like the circuits that transmit electrical signals.
German scientists find a way to regenerate brain cells
A research team led by Professor Majdana Gott of the Institute for Stem Cell Research at the GSF National Center for Environmental and Health Research in Munich, Germany, recently discovered that using special regulatory proteins, astrocytes can differentiate into functional neural cells, which promises to be a new way to replace brain cells damaged by injury or disease.
Most cells in the human brain are not nerve cells but astrocytes. Previously, glial cells had been thought of only as the “glue” that holds nerve cells together. Several years ago, the team demonstrated that these glial cells can differentiate into functional neural cells during growth, just like stem cells. However, the cells lost their ability to differentiate later in their growth. Thus, when the adult brain is damaged, the glial cells can no longer produce any neural cells.
In order to keep the process working, scientists have investigated what molecular switches play an important role in the growth and differentiation of glial cells into nerve cells. Molecular switches are proteins that precisely control intracellular signaling responses. The researchers introduced these regulatory proteins into glial cells in the adult brain, enabling glial cells to respond by turning on the expression of neuronal proteins so that they can continue to differentiate into nerve cells.
The researchers demonstrated that a single regulatory protein is sufficient to regenerate new functional neuronal cells from glial cells. They noted that glial cells need more time and days to reprogram themselves until they grow into normal nerve cells with the electrical properties evident in normal nerve cells. The results are exciting because it is crucial to regenerate functioning nerve cells from adult glial cells, which means that scientists have taken a big step forward in discovering nerve cells that replace damaged brain cells.
At the beginning of the 20th century, German neurologist Feld asserted that damaged brain cells were not regenerable. Influenced by the theory of “non-renewable nerve cells,” for nearly a century, the medical profession has focused on the treatment of brain diseases mainly on the cerebral blood vessels, while the research on brain cell repair has lagged behind. It was only in 2006 that scientists discovered that adult brain cells could still grow new nerve cells after being implanted into the brains of experimental rats.