How do medicines work in the brain?
In order to try to understand a little about how medicines work in the brain, it is best to first learn a bit about the brain.
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Each human being has one head and one brain (NB Zaphod Beeblebrox wasn't human) |
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The brain has a very complex structure about which, in all honesty, we know very little. |
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Each brain has somewhere around 100,000,000,000 brain cells (also called neurons). |
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Each brain cell connects with other brain cells by means of nerve fibres (the wiring connecting brain cells together). There are about 4 million miles of nerve fibres in each brain. Some fibres may have up to 10,000 branches in them. |
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Brain cells have lots of connections with other cells, up to around 10,000 each! The junctions at the end of the neurons are called synapses. There are probably around 150,000,000,000,000 synapses in a healthy adult brain. |
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As you can see, overall the brain is a most extraordinary and complex part of the body. It is surrounded by a membrane (the ‘blood-brain barrier’) that controls very carefully what gets into and out of the brain.
Updated 11.11