If you used your brain power more productively, your life would be more successful and happier. Some interesting facts about the human brain.
The most complex supercomputer in the world looks like a Lego constructor compared to our brains. This miraculous device consists of one hundred billion neurons, each of which performs a different function. Here are some more interesting facts about the human brain from Maximum Concentration.
The brain is flexible and is changing right now
Surprisingly, our brains are constantly evolving. And the fact is that he tirelessly creates new connections, which are called synapses. Thanks to them, the neurons of the brain are in contact with each other at an amazing speed. There are between 100 and 1000 trillion synapses in the adult brain.
For a long time, scientists thought that the brain of an adult remains unchanged. New research over the past half century has proven this belief to be wrong. The term "plasticity" refers to the brain's ability to transform throughout life. Although the brain is more plastic during childhood, neurons continue to form new connections and structures, rebuilding the brain of even an adult.
Our Behavior Affects the Brain
Brain changes are the result of what we do day in and day out. For example, an MRI image of the brain shows that when taxi drivers learn routes better, the part of their brain that is responsible for orientation in space becomes larger.
Professional musicians (even those who started playing in adulthood) have a larger part of the brain that controls finger functions than non-musicians. Even Buddhist monks who practice daily meditation have enlarged parts of the brain responsible for mindfulness and reasoning.
Therefore, you need to be smart about what you are doing and what you are learning. Your skills are constantly being recorded by your brain. We used to think that the brain determines behavior, but in fact, behavior also affects the human brain.
It takes time to change your brain
Rebuilding the brain takes time, and that's a good thing. We would not be happy if every thought, word and action significantly changed our personality. It takes about a month for the first changes in the structure of the brain to appear. As a person learns new finger movements, fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging, which can be done when a person moves) records changes in their brain activity after three to four weeks.
Significant changes take even longer. The taxi drivers in the study traveled around town for two years. Experienced musicians have played instruments for seven to seventeen years. And Buddhist monks practiced meditation in aggregate from 10 to 50 thousand hours for 15-40 years.
Repetitive actions change the brain, and they require long, sustained attention. Taxi drivers, musicians, Buddhist monks focused on business for long hours in order to develop their skills.
You can choose which neural connections to strengthen
Attention shapes the human brain from birth. There are about 200 billion neurons in the brain of an infant, that is, twice as many as in an adult, but it immediately begins to lose unused neurons. At birth, each child is able to clearly distinguish the phonemes of any language. Then, hearing only his own language, he loses the ability to process sounds that he doesn't need. This natural contraction of unused neurons is called neuronal pruning.
Throughout life, the principle "use it or lose it" applies to synapses, structures, and even entire parts of the brain.
When blind people learn to recognize Braille, the portion of the brain that controls fingertips enlarges and occupies areas that could be used for vision. And ask someone (not a math teacher) who has ever tried to help their child solve a trigonometry problem. Surely in their brains, the connections responsible for remembering the definitions of sines, cosines and tangents have disappeared over time as unnecessary.
Our mental faculties, like our muscles, become stronger if we exercise, and otherwise weaken.
The most underestimated danger of distraction in the digital age may lie in the invisible weakening of structures responsible for sustained attention in the prefrontal cortex.
Concentration can strengthen the prefrontal region of the brain
The prefrontal region is located in the frontal part of the head. This is the historically newest brain formation, which is more developed in humans than in animals. It contains the "main control" of the brain. It is the governing center responsible for attention, planning, structuring, logic, information processing, abstract thinking, and decision making.
It is the prefrontal region of the brain that is involved when you are doing several things at the same time. In fact, she is not engaged in two tasks at once, but simply quickly switches from one to the other. Multitasking gives us confidence in our own intelligence and makes us feel like we are doing better. But this is a misleading impression. When you are working on several tasks at once, you are not in a state of calm contemplation and maximum concentration.
The prefrontal area is activated during meditation, which is the quintessence of sustained attention.
In one study, MRI results showed that the prefrontal cortex of people who meditated regularly was thicker than that of people in a control group. This thickening is believed to make us more resilient to stress and aging.
