The fastest computer in the Universe is made of 73% water.
The human brain.
It barely weighs 3 lbs. but takes up 20% of the body’s available energy.
It is the most complex thing, with trillions of connections. A brain tissue the size of a single grain of sand is packed with 100,000 neurons and contains 1 million connections. We are only starting to unravel its powers, but the latest insights into it point to a virtually unlimited capacity for storing information.
The brain facilitates thought, mediates feelings, and stores memories. But how does it exactly do that? Let’s find out.
How Are Memories Made?
Walk on the street, you get a whiff of perfume, and memories come flooding back to you. You remember an event in your life as if it was yesterday. How is this possible? What is taking place in the brain when you have this experience?
Well, it has something to do with the neural connections and clusters in our heads.
The brain is made up of billions of specialized cells called neurons. Imagine these cells having two hands and a body. One “hand” receives signals in the form of an electrochemical stimulus. From the receptor site, the signal travels through the body, to the other “hand” which sends the information to nearby neurons. (These hands have root-like “fingers” that allow them to connect to many other neurons.)
A “firing” neuron sends and receives electrochemical signals.
A neuron, by itself, would not be very meaningful. But luckily, there are billions of them and they connect to eat other in trillions of different ways. Memory is a very specific cluster of neurons that are “firing” together.
When you eat a pepperoni pizza, get a whiff of your favorite perfume, or remember your first crush, there are specific clusters or groups of neurons that are being activated. These neurons and how they connect are initially coded by a complex self-organizing brain, which we have yet to understand fully.
Although our brains have plenty of similarities, such as the general features and functions of the different regions, each brain is unique from all others. Like individuals having their unique fingerprints, each has unique brain anatomy with his neural fingerprint.
These differences are owed, in large part, to the differences in our personal experiences, (as well as how we perceive them.)
For example, a tennis player who has spent decades on the court will have muscle memory for the game. That is, he has encoded a well-worn cluster of neurons that fire automatically when he serves, executes a volley, or a forehand. He doesn’t even have to think about it. He executes them automatically because repetition has trained the connections between these neural clusters to be strong.
Now, compare that to someone who just stepped on the court and is getting his first tennis lesson. The connections in the brain have not been made yet. He’s moving awkwardly and committing all sorts of mistakes. He has to go through numerous repetitions to strengthen the “neural cluster,” and that is when he gets better at playing the game.
3 Persistent Brain Myths We Need To Forget
Maybe these are not “myths” so much as corrections to our convictions regarding the brain. We are learning more about this complex system, so our understanding of it is continually being sharpened and honed.
Myth #1 “Right-brained” people are creative. “Left-brained” people are logical.
This myth comes from the belief that there is a standard configuration for a brain—that certain skills reside in this area, or that certain experiences are stored in this or that region.
This is true to a point, but when we begin to make motherhood statements such as “Right brain is creative and left brain is logical,” we are oversimplifying a very nuanced and complex system.
In the 1800s when scientists were beginning to map the different functions of the brain, they noticed that for a great number of people, language, speech, and verbal memory lie on the left side of the brain, while the visuospatial function lies on the right side. This led them to believe that creative people must be using more of the right side of the brain, while logical people are using more of the left side of the brain.
But a study from the University of Utah found that this is necessarily not the case. For example, in left-handed people, language and speech hemispheric dominance can reside on either the left or right side of the brain.
And it’s not like one side of the brain can work independently of the other. Reducing creativity (however we define it) and language into left-brain or right-brain dominance does not reflect the complex processes that take place at unimaginable speeds.
Brain processes are integrative and people performing “creative” and “logical” tasks use both sides of the brain.
Myth #2 People have a learning style most suitable for them.
“I’m a visual learner!” claims one student. This would be taken to mean that her brain is more suited and learns best with visual inputs. Teachers of such a student are then encouraged to use tools and techniques that employ visual elements like images, movies, and graphs. There would be a different set of tools for other types of learners (eg. auditory and kinesthetic learners).
This idea is contrary to research. A study published in the British Journal of Psychology found no correlation between supposedly called “visual learners” performing better in visual tests. Employing visual input does not give visual learners a leg up in the memory tasks involved. Another study also found that students given learner-compatible inputs did not perform better than others.
Perhaps “learning preference” would be a more accurate term. People have a preferred medium for learning. But if you like visual cues, this does not mean you are a “visual learner” and learn best visually. It is just your preference. You are as good a learner with auditory or kinesthetic content. In short, you are a visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learner all at the same time. And your brain can easily process all these types of input.
Myth #3 The older you get, the duller your brain gets.
There’s this persistent idea that after a certain age, the body, especially the brain, suffers from wear and tear and that it’s all downhill from there.
Well, it’s partly true that people do experience cognitive decline with age. For example, speed and accuracy in memorizing a random set of words can be very challenging for seniors. Language learning can also be tough. Adults get easily beat by kids who absorb like sponges when learning a language.
But that said, research shows that cognitive declines are simply minimal and happen at an advanced age. And if at all, they are caused by a lack of practice. As we know the lifestyle of seniors is quite different from that of the youth, so they are at a natural disadvantage in some of the tasks that are required in the experiments. However, with enough practice, seniors can easily get with the program.
Research has shown that the brain is plastic throughout its lifetime. This means even at an advanced stage, the brain can change, improve and get better.
A lot of research shows that we get smarter as we age. There’s a particular skill set that older people do a lot better. Experience would be on their side when it comes to vocabulary depth, conflict resolution, emotion regulation, social wisdom, and being a better judge of character.
So old age is not an excuse. At any age, the brain can learn new tricks.
These are just some of the “myths” that have persisted over the years. They are a reflection of our growing knowledge of the human brain. On the surface, they might have made sense initially, especially when earlier studies seemed to back them. But upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that they don’t provide the full picture.
We still don’t have the full picture of the brain, but it is at a point where we can say that those three things mentioned above need to be revisited and checked.
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