Amazing Facts About Brain Page 3 of 7

Amazing Facts 21# 

Leaving aside degenerative brain disease, your brain never loses the ability to learn, change and adapt to new situations, because it’s effectively plastic and constantly rewiring itself depending on the context.
Leopards may indeed not change their spots, but you’re not a leopard and you can change, if you really want to that is, and your brain is up for the challenge whenever you are.

Amazing Facts 22# 

It’s another self development urban myth that we only use 10% of our brain’s capability. I once saw somebody on Twitter try to explain the Law of Attraction based on this faulty and quite frankly ridiculously outdated premise.
He suggested that if we can do what we can now using 10% of our brain, manifesting should be a breeze when we tap into the other 90%. Now he may be the exception that proves the rule and indeed may have only been using 10% of his brainpower, but he’s not normal in that respect.

If you have any doubt whatsoever that you do indeed use all of your brain, cut a bit out and see what happens. Just don’t sue me afterwards if you lose the ability to plan, forget how to tie your shoelaces, can’t remember what your name is, fall over a lot or get angry for no apparent reason.

Amazing Facts 23# 

If you were to measure your brainwave activity you wouldn’t see any drop off whatsoever when you’re asleep.

You may be napping, but your brain isn’t. It’s still working hard pumping your heart, digesting your food, maintaining your blood pressure, processing the day’s events, and much more to make sure you don’t wake up dead.

Amazing Facts 24# 

Research has shown that the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that deals with visual-spatial awareness, is larger in London Taxi drivers than normal people. London ‘cabbies’ have to spend months, sometimes years, learning literally every single street in the UK’s Capital before they are granted a license to rip off tourists.

This process is known as ‘The Knowledge’ and it literally enlarges that part of their brain. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help them with anger management issues when cyclists get in their way or stop them saying “South of the river at this time of night? That will be double guv’nor”.

Amazing Facts 25# 

Speaking of scientists getting things potentially wrong, there was a common belief that yawning was the body’s way of getting more oxygen into the bloodstream when it felt fatigued.

That may still be true; however, research conducted at Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience suggests that yawning may also help cool the brain when the air is cooler outside the body than inside. Apparently this was based on studies that showed people in Tucson, Arizona yawned almost twice as much in the winter as they did in the summer.

This may seem like research to file under the “WTF are they wasting money on that for?” until you realize it may give an insight into diseases like multiple sclerosis and epilepsy that are accompanied by frequent yawning.

Amazing Facts 26# 

You have something in your brain called mirror neurons. If you see somebody stub his toe for example, the same pain area will light up in your own brain causing you to flinch.

Mirror neurons weren’t even known to exist prior to the early 1990’s, but now there is a growing belief in the scientific community they are responsible for us feeling empathy toward others.

Amazing Facts 27# 

When somebody takes cocaine, the pleasure center (nucleus accumbens) lights up and dopamine and serotonin are released. Fortunately, you don’t have to blow your life savings, act like a dick and lose your nasal lining to get similar results.Giving to charity or helping people in need also activates the nucleus accumbens. Okay so maybe not quite as intensely but who cares because you’re creating a real win/win and have no wish to spend most of your life in a bathroom?

Amazing Facts 28# 

The reason it’s uncomfortable when people stare hard at you is because your brain automatically perceives it as a threat. A smile breaks that discomfort though, as long as it’s a genuine, warm smile.

Amazing Facts 29# 

Your brain can usually tell the difference between a real smile and a fake one (which is why people that fake smiles a lot often look slimy) because there are muscles that you cannot control consciously and only come into play when you are truly smiling about something that makes you happy or warm and fuzzy.

Having said all that, you actually CAN fake a smile if you are skilled enough to fake the emotion behind the smile first so that even your brain thinks you’re happy. Method actors and some politicians are adept at this, beauty competition contestants, not so much.

Amazing Facts 30# 

Multi-tasking is largely a self development urban myth and you probably cannot do it efficiently no matter what manufacturers of smart phones and tablets want you to believe.

Actually that’s not technically true because according to the University of Utah, there are a few people (about 2.5% of the population) who can do two things consciously* at once without seeing any degradation in performance. The term super-taskers has been coined for such people.

However, for most people all the brain is doing is going backwards and forwards very quickly and giving the illusion of multi-tasking. The reality is that performance is inhibited by this approach, not improved and doing just two things at once can reduce the performance of a Harvard Professor to that of an 8 year-old child.

* I do appreciate that you can do multiple things unconsciously at once such as driving and talking. (Not texting though, which is why you’re 27 times more likely to have an accident if you are texting at the same time - don’t do it, ever!)