Question: what is the most amazing thing you have found out about brains

Daniel Mietchen answered on 22 Jun 2010:

Perhaps that, by analyzing the shapes of brains of humans and other primates (see this poster), we can, in principle, work out how the brain of species may have looked like that were ancestral to our species but did not leave brains for contemporary scientists to analyze. We are working on this right now (see notes). So far, the combination of brain MRI scans from multiple species, and a technique called ancestral node reconstruction provides the only way to make some inferences about brain shape that go beyond the impressions the brain has left on some fossil skulls.

There are many amazing things about the brain, though. Amongst the ones that are less often mentioned, one of my favourites is that when cold-hardy frogs are subjected to temperatures below 0°C, their whole body freezes, but the brain does it last, and as long as it does not freeze, the animal will be able to revive once the temperature goes back up. The paper is here.