A superb amount, since the human brain is the most complex machine in the known universe. Furthermore, it is a display of miniaturization, since our brains are no bigger than a bunch of grapes. All our abstract thinking, as well as inventiveness, comes from the skin of those grapes, that is, from a folded layer just 3 millimeters thick that is called the neocortex or cerebral cortex.
Marveling at the capacity of our thinking cap, the English philosopher and physicist Robert-Hooke (16351703) estimated that the mind was capable of containing 3,155,760,000 different ideas. It was very short, if we take into account the figure recently estimated by the British journalist Mike Holderness in New Scientist magazine: 10 raised to 80,000,000,000,000 , a figure that exceeds the number of atoms in the universe . The calculation is based on the number of neurons that fit in the head and the connections of all these cells to each other.
