Question: How does the brain work?

Rebecca Dewey answered on 15 Jun 2015:

We don’t know all of it! All we can do is measure the things we do know with the tools we have available. We know that there are a lot of nerve cells in there, and they work quite a lot like nerve cells anywhere else in the body – they transmit information from one end to the other. They seem to be arranged into groups depending on what they do (cells that deal with sounds over here, cells that deal with pictures over there, etc.), and that these arrangements are pretty similar from person to person. But not identical! For the cells to work, they need oxygen and energy, and these are delivered through tiny blood vessels. Blood vessels and transport of oxygen / energy are quite easy to measure, so this is usually how we study the brain, by asking it’s owner to do something (tap your fingers, look at some pictures) and we see where the blood rushes off to.