
These impulses travel very quickly: it takes about a hundredth of a second for a pain in your little toe to register in your brain. They are specialised cells that act like telegraph wires carrying messages in the form of electrochemical impulses throughout the body. Neurons are the basic units that make up the brain and nervous system.

It is nothing remarkable to look at-a wrinkled object about the size of a number 13 chicken-but it consists of a complex and intricately tangled mass of nerve cells, called neurons. It sits inside the skull, immersed in a fluid that cushions it from sudden impacts to the head.

Weighing in at around 1.3 kilograms, it is one of the largest organs in the human body. The basic facts about the brain are well known.
