Amazing facts about BRAIN

The Effects of Modern Lifestyle on Our Brains

Our modern lifestyle is changing our brains. Theres some evidence its not all for the better.

21. Our brains are getting smaller. Over the past 10-20,000 years, the size of the average human
brain has shrunk by the size of a tennis ball.

22. We are not getting smarter. Since the Victorian era, average IQs have gone down 1.6 points per
decade for a total of 13.35 points.

23. Multitasking makes you less productive. When you multitask, your brain simply rapidly toggles
back and forth between tasks. This results in decreases in attention span, learning, performance, and
short-term memory.
24. Surprisingly, millennials (aged 18 to 34) are more forgetful than baby boomers. They are
more likely to forget what day it is or where they put their keys than their parents!

25. The human brain is usually compared to the most advanced technology of the day. Its been
compared to a clock, a switchboard, a computer, and most recently to the internet.

26. Our attention spans are getting shorter. In 2000, the average attention span was 12 seconds.
Now its 8 seconds. Thats shorter than the 9-second attention span of the average goldfish.

27. Brain cells cannibalize themselves as a last ditch source of energy to ward off starvation. So in
very real ways dieting can force your brain to eat itself.

28. Your brains storage capacity is considered virtually unlimited. It doesnt get used up like RAM
in your computer.

Brain Myths Debunked

Rapid advancements in neuroscience means information gets outdated fast.

Thats one of the reasons theres a lot of misinformation floating around about the brain.

Here are some well-accepted brain facts that have been proven to no longer be true.

29. The popular myth that we use only 10% of our brains is flat-out wrong. Brain scans clearly show
that we use most of our brain most of the time, even when were sleeping.

30. There is no such thing as a left-brain or right-brain personality type. We are not left-brained or
right-brained; we are whole brained.

31. In spite of what youve been told, alcohol doesnt kill brain cells. It only damages the connective
tissue at the end of neurons.

32. The Mozart Effect has been debunked. While listening to certain kinds of music can improve
memory and concentration, theres nothing unique about listening to Mozart.
33. You may have heard that we have more brain cells than there are stars in the Milky Way, but this
is not true. Best guess estimates are that we have 86 billion neurons and there are 200-400 billion
stars in the Milky Way.

34. Its often said there are 10,0000 miles of blood vessels in the brain when, in fact, that number is
closer to 400 miles. Still a substantial amount!

35. Contrary to prevailing medical belief, having high total cholesterol is not bad for your brain. In
fact, it actually reduces your risk of dementia.

Facts About Memory

It was once thought our brain recorded memories like a camera, but this is not how memory works.

Our memories work less like a digital recording and more like listening to live improvisational jazz.

36. Memories are shockingly unreliable. Emotions, motivation, cues, context and frequency of use
can all affect how accurately you remember something.
37. Memory is more of an activity than a place. Any given memory is deconstructed and distributed
in different parts of the brain. Then, for the memory to be recalled, it gets reconstructed from the
individual fragments.

38. Your brain starts slowing down at the ripe old age of 24 but peaks for different cognitive skills at
different ages. In fact at any given age, youre likely getting better at some things and worse at others.

39. If you were drinking and dont remember what you did last night, its not because you forgot.
While you are drunk your brain is incapable of forming memories.

40. The human brain is not solid. Its soft and squishy similar to the consistency of soft tofu or
soft gelatin. And its very fragile.

41. Sometimes half a brain is a good as a whole one. When surgeons perform ahemispherectomy,
they remove or disable half of the brain to stop seizures. Shockingly, patients experience no effect on
personality or memory.

42. Think youre in control of your life? Think again. 95% of your decisions take place in your
subconscious mind.

43. The brain in your head isnt your only brain. Theres a second brain in your intestines that
contains 100,000 neurons. Gut bacteria are responsible for making over 30 neurotransmitters
including the happy molecule serotonin.

44. Some scientists believe zombies could be real and that its possible a mutated virus or parasites
could attack our brains and rapidly spread throughout large populations causing essentially a
zombie apocalypse.

45. A blood-brain barrier protects your brain from foreign substances. But it doesnt work perfectly.
The nicotine in smoke rushes into the brain in a mere 7 seconds. Alcohol, on the other hand, takes 6
minutes.

46. Prescription sleeping pills dont put you to sleep. They put your brain into a state similar to
being in a coma, essentially bypassing any restorative value of sleep.
47. Our brains crave mental stimulation. Men especially would rather receive electric shocks than sit
quietly in a room and think!

48. Over 140 proteins in the brain are negatively impacted by exposure to electromagnetic
frequencies the kind emitted by your cell phone and other electronic devices.

49. Although pain is processed in your brain, your brain has no pain receptors and feels no pain.
This explains how brain surgery can be performed while the patient is awake with no pain or
discomfort. (

50. Few facts about the brain are as weird as the story of Albert Einsteins brain. The pathologist who
performed Einsteins autopsy kept the brain in a jar in his basement for 40 years. Eventually he made
a cross-country trip with the brain in a Tupperware container to deliver it to Einsteins
granddaughter.

1.The speech skill is a wonder. To produce a phrase, about 100 muscles of the chest, neck, jaw,
tongue and lips must collaborate. Each muscle is a bundle made of hundreds or thousands of
fibers. For the coordination of these muscles much more neurons than necessary are required
for contracting the muscles from an athlete's feet. Just one motor neuron can trigger movement
in the 2,000 muscular fibers existent on a calf muscle. But the neurons controlling the vocal
cords or the larynx can be bound just one to two-three muscle cells.

2.Each spoken word or short phrase is accompanied by its own pattern of muscular movements.
All the information necessary for speaking a phrase like "How are you?" is stored in the brain,
in the speech area. But it's not about a fixed program. If you have a mouth wound impeding you
to pronounce the words like you usually do, the movements are modified, allowing you to utter
the words as closely as possible to normal.

3.A simple "Hallo" can transmit a lot of things. The voice's tone shows if the speaker is happy,
pleased, bored, hurried, angry, sad, scared, aggressive or dominant and the intensity of these
states; irony, affection, support or joke. The sense of a simple expression can be changed
according to the rapidity of the movements and the fractions of seconds depending on how
much the movement of different muscles lasts.

4.Humans can emit about 14 seconds per second, while isolated parts of the speech apparatus,
like tongue, lips, jaws and others cannot execute more than 2 movements per second.

5.Early humans could have had a rudimentary speech system of visual, tactile and auditive calls,
resembling animal communication. Speech appeared when we acquired the ability of
representing objects through symbols and communicate to another individual our own mental
creations. Our special brain enabled us to do this.

The first symbolic language emerged 2.5 million years ago, when Homo habilis started to
fabricate the first stone tools. This ability surely played a key role in the development of
symbolic communication. Articulating went perfecting till first Homo sapiens, 150,000 years
ago, emitting sounds similar to that spoken by modern humans.

The mouth, nose and larynx ended by transforming themselves into a refined apparatus, in
which the air was converted into vowels and consonants due to a better position of the tongue
and lips. Moreover, the acquisition of a grammar and syntax was the result of an evolutionary
process, while the writing ability was the consequence of the phonetic interpretation of the
primitive icons.

6.Is speech born or acquired? Famous cases of children lost in the jungle before the age of three
(when speech is largely acquired) and found several years later showed they had limited ability
to learn the human speech and learning the speech requires early interaction with the others.
The brain seems to have a period when it acquires speech and if this period is skipped over, the
individual won't gain later the speech skill. The speech can develop only inside a community
and at the age when the brain is growing.

7.The complex human speech has been linked to two brain nuclei controlling the language
(articulating control, data storing and integration of the grammar rules) located in the left
hemisphere of the cortex. What we want to say is initiated in an area of the left cortex called
"Wernicke zone". This communicates with "Broca zone", involved with grammatical rules.
Impulses go from these areas to the muscles involved in speech. These zones are connected with
the visual system (so we can read), auditory system (so we can hear what others say, understand
and answer) and also have a memory bank for recalling valuable phrases.

The same left hemisphere controls the movements of the right hand and 99 % of the humans
are right-handed. The left hemisphere is also the center of analytical thinking, linked to logical
abilities.

8. A sudden boost in the evolution of the speech was given by the emergence of the language
some 50,000 years ago.

The modern 6,000 languages are believed to have originated in a sole mother language, as
humans are believed to have formed just a small population of about 1,000 individuals 50,000
years ago. By now, three super-families of human languages exist.

9. Many ape individuals, of bonobo, chimps, gorillas or orangutans have been taught human
sign languages or to manage graphic or computer symbols. Some can learn up to 1,000 words
(up to 40 new words daily), but their temporal consciousness is null. Thus, in the end, it is all
about brain capacities...