Your brain runs on 20 watts
Your brain runs on about 20 watts — enough to power a dim light bulb.
Reviewed by the CurioVault curator · 8 October 2026 · Last updated 1 October 2026 · Editorial standards
Your brain runs on about 20 watts — enough to power a dim light bulb. Despite being 2% of body weight, it uses 20% of your energy, with 86 billion neurons firing constantly. It never truly rests; even in sleep it replays memories and clears waste via the glymphatic system. It generates about 70,000 thoughts a day and processes 11 million bits of sensory info per second, though you notice only a fraction. No supercomputer matches its efficiency. Evolution built the most powerful processor known, and it runs on a sandwich.
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