Fascinating study involving 3,000 people reported by the U.K. Telegraph: Men think of sex 13 times per day (= 4,700 times per year). Men end up having sex 104 times per year, on average. Woman think of sex five times per day (= 1,825 times per year).
Quick! Name a small and numerous component in the brain that allows us to think. If you said "neuron," you would be only partially correct. According to Carl Zimmer's blog at Discover, "The Loom," evidence is accumulating that thinking is also accomplished by astrocytes
—named for their starlike rays, which reach out in all directions—are the most abundant of all glial cells and therefore the most abundant of all the cells in the brain. They are also the most mysterious. A single astrocyte can wrap its rays around more than a million synapses. Astrocytes also fuse to each other, building channels through which molecules can shuttle from cell to cell.To put glia into a broader perspective, consider Zimmer's introduction to his post on glia:
I’ve asked around for a good estimate of how many neurons are in the human brain. Ten billion–100 billion–something like that, is the typical answer I get. But there are actually a trillion other cells in the brain. They’re known as glia, which is Latin for glue–which gives you an idea of how little scientists have thought of them.
It has now been shown that astrocytes can sense incoming signals, respond with calcium waves, and produce outputsIn other words, they have at least some of the requirements for processing information the way neurons do. Alfonso Araque, a neuroscientist at the Cajal Institute in Spain . . . find that two different stimulus signals can produce two different patterns of calcium waves (that is, two different responses) in an astrocyte. When they gave astrocytes both signals at once, the waves they produced in the cells was not just the sum of the two patterns. Instead, the astrocytes produced an entirely new pattern in response. That’s what neurons—and computers, for that matter—do. If astrocytes really do process information, that would be a major addition to the brain’s computing power . . . neuroscientist Andrew Koob suggests that conversations among astrocytes may be responsible for “our creative and imaginative existence as human beings.”
Repeat any word and it starts to sound like an unknown word in a foreign language. Toaster toaster toaster toaster toaster . . . toaster? It starts to sound like a word you’ve never heard before. For me, this phenomenon seems to happen to all words except the word “no.” Whenever I hear the word “no” it resonates deep down and immediately. The word "no" never sounds alien and it always and immediately means “no.” We seem to have special power when it comes to negating. In fact, I would suggest that "no" is the engine of reason. Now consider this: Based on introspection (a shaky foundation, I admit), it seems that we don’t directly decide what to say or do. Rather, it seems that many of our ideas and impulses somehow “rise” to our consciousness and that our main power is whether to exercise “veto-power” over them. It seems that our inner executive is not a creator, but (at most) a judge with veto-power. The power to inhibit our own actions is central to our ability to operate at a high function. Those of us who successfully function in the world seem to be especially able to inhibit our own thoughts and actions—this allows us to delay gratification and it gives us time to consider alternate options to that first idea that popped into our heads. It is important to cultivate this power to inhibit impulses while we are young. To the extent that we are successful in developing the power to inhibit our impulses and ideas, we will grow into more disciplined and therefore more successful adults. Consider that toddlers who have sufficient discipline to wait a few minutes for two marshmallows (rather than eating one immediately) grow up to score an average of 250 points higher on the SAT. The statistics are truly shocking. This ability to control impulses does far more allow us to score better on tests. I suspect that our ability to inhibit impulses is the basis for our sense of character coherence and our sense of personal freedom. Inhibiting our impulses (having the power to say no to thoughts and actions) allows us to steer a path among the wreckage of the ideas we reject. Saying “no” to 100 ideas that pop into our head might be the only way that we would ever have to get the opportunity “yes” to that 101st idea-- that 101st idea would never occurred had we not vetoed the first 100 ideas. Did you wait to marry a highly compatible partner or did you commit to the first romantic partner who paid any attention to you? Did you take the first job offered to you or did you turn down various offers, patiently waiting for a job that was an especially good fit between your skills and the job duties? Many people who can't wait end up paying a big price for their inability to say no.
What happens to our brains when we sit at our computers for long periods of time interacting with the cyber world? This question was considered in an article called "Meet Your iBrain," appearing in the October/November 2008 issue of scientific American Mind. The authors cite a 2005 Kaiser family foundation…