Your Brain As A Company
March, 2023
Introduction
When I was first learning about the brain, I was told that it was mostly made up of neurons, but that there were also a bunch of “other vital cells” in the brain that keep it working. I didn’t like the fact that the other cells were just brushed over. Why were only the neurons being explained if the other cells are just as vital? Since it is possible to model the brain at different scales (similarly to classical and quantum physics) I concluded that perhaps it just did not make much sense to speak about them. In this document, I'll explain the following: I’ll be starting with the neurons, and then the other cells within the brain, but I will not be going further into the individual atoms that make up the neurons. The truth is that the brain is a complex ecosystem made up of much more than just neurons, and those other systems should be explored.
The Company
I like to think of the brain as one massive company, with billions of employees, each with their own specific job. Generally, companies provide a product or service, in the case of your brain, the service it provides is conscious thought. In order to provide this service, your brain has around 86 billion employees working day and night to actually keep the operation running. Your employees are hard at work, constantly transferring messages to each other.
Neurons
The employees in your brain represent your neurons. Here’s what a neuron looks like:
Without your neurons, you don’t have conscious thought. Which makes sense since without employees, your brain can’t provide its services. Neurons have many different components, but as a whole, its main purpose is to receive and send information.
Dendrites and Terminals
The body of the neuron is called the soma, this is where the neuron builds up inputs before eventually sending a signal down. We can think of this part as the employee soaking up information. To provide conscious thought, your employees need to communicate with each other. Neurons communicate using electric current and chemicals (those chemicals being metabolites, neurotransmitters and ions). They receive information through the dendrites where the current is sparked and stored in the body. If a certain threshold is reached, then the current travels to the terminals and tells them to release their chemicals. These chemicals then trigger the dendrites of other connected neurons.
Your employees love talking with each other, and it happens that it’s their job too. But before ever getting up, they make sure they’ve actually got something worthwhile to say. Though the body of a neuron doesn’t actually move when transferring information, for the sake of entertainment, your employees do.
Axon
The signal from the neuron travels through a stem-like section called the axon. Signals take a long time to travel through the axon, and degenerate in strength. Think of this like an employee running across the globe to deliver a message. By the time they reach their destination, they are out of breath and have forgotten part of what they were going to say.
To counter this time constraint, axons have Myelin sheets covering them. Myelin is a slightly fatty material that reduces conductivity, so the electrical circuit jumps between sheets, making it travel a much smaller distance. Your employees on the other hand, have teleporters. So now, they can deliver the message in a much shorter period of time.
Glial Cells
Oligodendrocytes
The next question you might have is “How the heck do my employees have teleporters??!”, well that’s the job of the Oligodendrocytes (yeah it’s a bit of a mouthful). Oligodendrocytes float around and produce myelin sheets on the neuron’s axons. In the case of our employees, I’m going to call them Oliver.
All your employees named Oliver, instead of producing conscious thought, run around building teleporters between your other employees to facilitate communication. (They don’t talk though, they are very introverted)
Microglial
Now that you have working teleporters for your employees, you need some people to make sure everything is smooth sailing. These are your supervisors, or microglial cells. The microglial cells also float around in your brain, exploring and constantly checking for any signs of infection, injury, or disease. If anything is spotted, they will call in for more cells to come and help, then attempt to deconstruct whatever is wrong in the system, in order to reconstruct it functionally afterwards. They are like micromanaging supervisors.
They lean over the shoulders of all your other employees, and if any of them do something wrong, they quickly rush in to fix the problem for your employee instead, while calling for help and backup in case they can’t fix it.
Astrocytes
And finally, you have workers, you have supervisors, you have teleporter constructors, all that’s missing are the janitors. Your employees are actually incredibly dirty, often bringing food wrapped in plastic and just leaving junk around. In fact, they often don’t even eat all of their food and leave it on their desk, or the ground.
Your janitors have a lot of work to do every single day, which is why they far outnumber your two other secondary workers (teleporter constructors and supervisors). These janitors are called astrocytes.
Neurons release waste due to their metabolic activities, which astrocytes clean up. They keep the entire system at an equilibrium. Without your janitors, your employees would slowly start working through more and more gunk, which severely slows down progress. In fact, your entire company would grind to a halt and eventually implode in a spectacular fashion.
Conclusion
Your brain is made up of much more than just neurons. All of your company’s components are incredibly crucial, and without any single one of them, everything would cease to function. As a result of all of these moving parts, you get you. If you ask me, you’re pretty incredible, so I’d say that your company is doing a great job.