The Size of a Real Mind:  Beyond the Physicist's Paradigm The human brain contains somewhere around 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses.  That's the hardware.  The software of the human brain is the result of millions of years of evolution and contains perhaps tens of thousands of complex functional adaptations.  The brain itself is not a uniform lump but a highly modular supersystem; each of the two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex is divided into 52 areas, most of which can be further subdivided into five or six maps.  The evolutionarily ancient subcortical structures are more modular still. (more...)