What is "brain"

Brain \Brain\ (br[=a]n), n. [OE. brain, brein, AS. bragen, br[ae]gen; akin to LG. br["a]gen, bregen, D. brein, and perh. to Gr. bre`gma, brechmo`s, the upper part of head, if [beta] = [phi]. [root]95.]

1. (Anat.) The whitish mass of soft matter (the center of the nervous system, and the seat of consciousness and volition) which is inclosed in the cartilaginous or bony cranium of vertebrate animals. It is simply the anterior termination of the spinal cord, and is developed from three embryonic vesicles, whose cavities are connected with the central canal of the cord; the cavities of the vesicles become the central cavities, or ventricles, and the walls thicken unequally and become the three segments, the fore-, mid-, and hind-brain.

   Note: In the brain of man the cerebral lobes, or largest part of the forebrain, are enormously developed so as to overhang the cerebellum, the great lobe of the hindbrain, and completely cover the lobes of the midbrain. The surface of the cerebrum is divided into irregular ridges, or convolutions, separated by grooves (the so-called fissures and sulci), and the two hemispheres are connected at the bottom of the longitudinal fissure by a great transverse band of nervous matter, the corpus callosum, while the two halves of the cerebellum are connected on the under side of the brain by the bridge, or pons Varolii.

2. (Zo["o]l.) The anterior or cephalic ganglion in insects and other invertebrates.

3. The organ or seat of intellect; hence, the understanding; as, use your brains. `` My brain is too dull.''
   --Sir W. Scott.

   Note: In this sense, often used in the plural.

4. The affections; fancy; imagination. [R.]
   --Shak.

5. a very intelligent person. [informal]

6. the controlling electronic mechanism for a robot, guided missile, computer, or other device exhibiting some degree of self-regulation. [informal]

   To have on the brain, to have constantly in one's thoughts, as a sort of monomania. [Low]

   no-brainer a decision requiring little or no thought; an obvious choice. [slang]

   Brain box or Brain case, the bony or cartilaginous case inclosing the brain.

   Brain coral, Brain stone coral (Zo["o]l), a massive reef-building coral having the surface covered by ridges separated by furrows so as to resemble somewhat the surface of the brain, esp. such corals of the genera M[ae]andrina and Diploria.

   Brain fag (Med.), brain weariness. See Cerebropathy.

   Brain fever (Med.), fever in which the brain is specially affected; any acute cerebral affection attended by fever.

   Brain sand, calcareous matter found in the pineal gland.

Brain \Brain\ (br[=a]n), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Brained (br[=a]nd); p. pr. & vb. n. Braining.]

1. To dash out the brains of; to kill by beating out the brains. Hence, Fig.: To destroy; to put an end to; to defeat.

   There thou mayst brain him.
   --Shak.

   It was the swift celerity of the death . . . That brained my purpose.
   --Shak.

2. To conceive; to understand. [Obs.]

   'T is still a dream, or else such stuff as madmen Tongue, and brain not.
   --Shak.

"to dash the brains out," late 14c., from brain (n.). Related: Brained; braining.

Old English brægen "brain," from Proto-Germanic *bragnam (cognates: Middle Low German bregen, Old Frisian and Dutch brein), from PIE root *mregh-m(n)o- "skull, brain" (cognates: Greek brekhmos "front part of the skull, top of the head"). But Liberman writes that brain "has no established cognates outside West Germanic ..." and is not connected to the Greek word. More probably, he writes, its etymon is PIE *bhragno "something broken."\n

\nThe custom of using the plural to refer to the substance (literal or figurative), as opposed to the organ, dates from 16c. Figurative sense of "intellectual power" is from late 14c.; meaning "a clever person" is first recorded 1914. Brain teaser is from 1923. Brain stem first recorded 1879, from German. Brain drain is attested from 1963. An Old English word for "head" was brægnloca, which might be translated as "brain locker." In Middle English, brainsick (Old English brægenseoc) meant "mad, addled."

n. The control center of the central nervous system of an animal located in the skull which is responsible for perception, cognition, attention, memory, emotion, and action. vb. 1 (context transitive English) To dash out the brains of; to kill by smashing the skull. 2 (context transitive slang English) To strike (someone) on the head. 3 (context transitive figurative English) To destroy; to put an end to. 4 (context transitive English) To conceive in the mind; to understand.

1. v. hit on the head

2. kill by smashing someone's skull

1. n. that part of the central nervous system that includes all the higher nervous centers; enclosed within the skull; continuous with the spinal cord [syn: encephalon]

2. mental ability; "he's got plenty of brains but no common sense" [syn: brainpower, learning ability, mental capacity, mentality, wit]

3. that which is responsible for one's thoughts and feelings; the seat of the faculty of reason; "his mind wandered"; "I couldn't get his words out of my head" [syn: mind, head, psyche, nous]

4. someone who has exceptional intellectual ability and originality; "Mozart was a child genius"; "he's smart but he's no Einstein" [syn: genius, mastermind, Einstein]

5. the brain of certain animals used as meat

Brain is the industry standard name for a computer virus that was released in its first form in January 1986, and is considered to be the first computer virus for MS-DOS. It infects the boot sector of storage media formatted with the DOS File Allocation Table (FAT) file system. Brain was written by two brothers, Basit Farooq Alvi and Amjad Farooq Alvi, from Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan.

The brain is a biological organ.

Brain(s) or The Brain may also refer to:

The Brain is a fictional character, a supervillain in the and frequent enemy of the Doom Patrol. He is a French mastermind and criminal genius.

Brain is a medical thriller written by Robin Cook. It describes how a future generation of computers will work hard-wired to human brains.

Brain is an album from Hiromi Uehara's trio featuring bassist Tony Grey and drummer Martin Valihora.

The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. Only a few invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, adult sea squirts and starfish do not have a brain; diffuse or localised nerve nets are present instead. The brain is located in the head, usually close to the primary sensory organs for such senses as vision, hearing, balance, taste, and smell. The brain is the most complex organ in a vertebrate's body. In a typical human, the cerebral cortex (the largest part) is estimated to contain 15–33 billion neurons, each connected by synapses to several thousand other neurons. These neurons communicate with one another by means of long protoplasmic fibers called axons, which carry trains of signal pulses called action potentials to distant parts of the brain or body targeting specific recipient cells.

Physiologically, the function of the brain is to exert centralized control over the other organs of the body. The brain acts on the rest of the body both by generating patterns of muscle activity and by driving the secretion of chemicals called hormones. This centralized control allows rapid and coordinated responses to changes in the environment. Some basic types of responsiveness such as reflexes can be mediated by the spinal cord or peripheral ganglia, but sophisticated purposeful control of behavior based on complex sensory input requires the information integrating capabilities of a centralized brain.

The operations of individual brain cells are now understood in considerable detail but the way they cooperate in ensembles of millions is yet to be solved. Recent models in modern neuroscience treat the brain as a biological computer, very different in mechanism from an electronic computer, but similar in the sense that it acquires information from the surrounding world, stores it, and processes it in a variety of ways, analogous to the central processing unit (CPU) in a computer.

This article compares the properties of brains across the entire range of animal species, with the greatest attention to vertebrates. It deals with the human brain insofar as it shares the properties of other brains. The ways in which the human brain differs from other brains are covered in the human brain article. Several topics that might be covered here are instead covered there because much more can be said about them in a human context. The most important is brain disease and the effects of brain damage, covered in the human brain article because the most common diseases of the human brain either do not show up in other species, or else manifest themselves in different ways.

Brain is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of neurology, founded in 1878 by John Charles Bucknill, David Ferrier, James Crichton-Browne and John Hughlings Jackson. It is currently published by Oxford University Press. Its full name is "Brain: a Journal of Neurology".

It was edited by John Newsom-Davis from 1997 to 2004. Under his editorship it became one of the first scientific journals to go online. From 2004 to 2013 the journal was edited by Alastair Compston ( Cambridge University). The current editor is Dimitri Kullmann ( University College London).

According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2015 impact factor of 10.103.

Brain is a 2011 South Korean medical drama, starring Shin Ha-kyun, Choi Jung-won, Jung Jin-young and Jo Dong-hyuk. The series revolves around a top neurosurgeon who is obsessed with success and dreams of becoming the hospital director, then finds himself embroiled in professional rivalries and an unexpected romance. The series received positive reviews, particularly for Shin Ha-kyun's performance.

It aired on KBS2 from November 14, 2011 to January 17, 2012 on Mondays and Tuesdays at 21:55 for 20 episodes.

Brain is a surname.

Those bearing it include:

• Aubrey Brain (1893–1955), British French hornist
• Benjamin Brain (1753-1794), British boxer
• Brian Brain (born 1940), British cricketer
• Charles Kimberlin Brain (born 1931), South African paleontologist
• Dave Brain (1879-1959), American baseball player
• David Brain (born 1964), Zimbabwean cricketer
• Dennis Brain (1921-1957), British French hornist
• Errol Brain, New Zealand rugby player
• George Brain (1893-1969), Australian politician
• Jimmy Brain (1900-1971), British football player
• Jonny Brain (born 1983), British football goalkeeper
• Lester Brain (1903–1980), Australian air force office and airline executive
• Louis Brain (born 1982), English-Australian football player
• Marshall Brain (born 1961), American computer scientist and entrepreneur
• Matias Brain (born 1974), Chilean triathlete
• Peter Brain (born 1947), Australian bishop
• Russell Brain (1895–1966), British neurologist
• Terence Brain (born 1938), British bishop
• Terry Brain (born 1907), Australian rules football player
• Tim Brain (born 1954), British police chief

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