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| Via ahermin |
The brain is one of the most important parts of our body, and yet we know so little about it. At times it may even sound ironic, knowing that it is through the brain that we perceive, react, and understand the world. Here we provide you with a list of interesting facts to bring light to such a somber subject.
- Long term drinking causes brain shrinkage.
- Modern life has reduced our cognitive skills and damaged our memory cells.
- The dopamine system in your brain may be hijacked by drugs.
- 10% use of brain is a myth
- Meditation can actually reshape your brain.
- It has been found in recent studies that heavy drinking for years causes the brain to shrink. It is one of the reasons why people believe that drinking may cause the loss of brain cells, when actually it is very unlikely. On the other hand, moderate amounts of red wine seem to have some kind of protective effect on the brain, especially as you are getting older.
- Walking through modern life we are constantly bombarded with a vast amount of information trying to get our attention. The result of this has turned into our inability to maintain sustained, deep attention.Offloading many of those things which require of our good memory into technology, has enabled all this incoming stimuli to have an easy access to our brains, making us an easy target to being distracted.
- In the past, it used to be believed that drug addiction surfaced from a weakness of character, yet in recent decades it has been found that most of these addictions rely increasingly on the chemistry of the brain. Addictive drugs flood the brain with dopamine and train us into expecting really high levels of it. With time, the person using these artificial stimulants will require more dopamine than what the brain can naturally produce, therefore making them dependent on such a drug.
- It may be true that IQ scores have increased a few points per decade, which shows that our environment might play a key determinant in fulfilling our whole potential in terms of intelligence. The notion of us using only 10% of our brains is pretty much untrue. If a person were to damage any part of their brain, it would translate into deficiencies of smooth functionality. Say, for instance, you damage your cerebellum. That would translate in you being unable to learn how to kick a ball right or a particular dance move. Every person needs 100% of their brains.
- Meditation could be confused with being a relaxed state of brain function, when actually it is completely the opposite. Research has found that long-term meditation may increase the gray matter in the orbitofrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the thalamus, therefore increasing the subjects capacity for attention and compassion.
If you know of other interesting facts about the brain, don't hesitate in sharing them with the rest of us.
