The brain releases "sparks": The human brain produces electricity all the time. When you wake up, your brain produces enough electricity to light a small lamp. The brain is made up of billions of brain cells called neurons, which it uses to communicate with each other. The combination of millions of neurons sending signals at once produces a huge amount of electrical activity in the brain, which can be detected by the electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures the levels of electricity in the scalp area.