The Human Brain is Complicated but I didn't know it Was Like This

Well, this article certainly exposes how fiendishly complicated the human brain is.

A typical, healthy one houses some 200 billion nerve cells, which are connected to one another via hundreds of trillions of synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor, and tens of thousands of them can connect a single neuron to other nerve cells. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies.

This part was really an eye opener.

One synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth.

So the brain contains 125 trillion microprocessor-like synapses each with 1000 molecular switches each. That means there are 125 quadrillion switches in a human brain. There are supposed to be 70 sextillion stars in the known universe. That means there are more neurons in 560,000 people than all the stars in the universe. 560,000 is basically the population of Vancouver, Canada. So there are more neurons in Vancouver, Canada then there are stars in the known universe. Now that is pretty staggering.