"Impossible as it sounds, we have more brain cell connections than there are stars in the universe... Linger with that thought a moment, picturing the infinities of space --- a carbon-paper night struck through with countless stars. Then picture the microscopic hubbub in one brain. A typical brain contains about 100 billion neurons, consumes a quarter of the body's oxygen, and spends most of the body's calories, though it only weighs about three pounds... In a dot of brain no larger than a single grain of sand, 100,000 neurons go about their work at a billion synapses. In the cerebral cortex alone, 30 billion neurons meet at 60 trillion synapses a billionth of an inch wide. Only a tiny lightning-bolt-like apostrophe, and a space essential as the gap between neurons, stands between impossible and I'm possible."
-- Diane Ackerman, "An Alchemy of Mind"
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