Your brain is by far one of the most important organs along with the lungs and heart.
While this is a site geared up for earning a living online (start here for that) – we plan to shift the subtle aspects of health and wealth for ultimate self-development and growth – so you can have your cake and eat it too, wisely and wavy 🙂
Below is a list of ten surprising things our brains do when and what you can lean from them:
1. Stress Can Change The Size Of Your Brain.
You probably didn't know that stress is the most common cause of change in terms of brain function. Multiple research studies have found that stress also can cause the brain to decrease in size as well.
One study used baby monkeys to test the effects of stress on the development of the brain and long-term mental health consequences. Half of the monkeys were cared for by the peers while the other half remained with their months for six months. After six months, monkeys were returned to their typical social groups for several months before the monkey’s brains were scanned.
The monkeys who had been removed from their mothers and cared for by peers had enlarged areas of the brain related to stress, even after being returned to normal social conditions.
2. Your Brain Does Creative Work More Efficiently When You’re Tried.
Here’s how it works:
You should work on analytic things depending on when you operate the most efficiently. For example if you’re a morning person, you’ll want to solve problems, answer questions, and make decisions during this time. If you’re a night owl, you’ll want to do this during the night hours.
However, if you’re trying to do creative work, you’ll operate much more quickly and efficiently if you work when you’re more tired. This may sound crazy, but it actually makes sense if you think about it. This is one of the many reasons that many great ideas happen while showering after a long day of work.
When you’re tried, your brain is not good at filtering out distractions and cannot focus on a particular task. Your brain is also a lot less efficient on remembering connections between your ideas or concepts. Both of these things are great for enhancing creativity because it requires the body to make new connections, be open to new concepts, and think in different ways.
A Scientific American article can explain exactly how distractions can be a good thing:
“Insight problems involve thinking outside the box. This is where susceptibility to “distraction” can be of benefit. At off-peak times we are less focused, and may consider a broader range of information. This wider scope gives us access to more alternatives and diverse interpretations, thus fostering innovation and insight.”
3. It Is Impossible For The Brain To Multitask.
Multitasking is something that’s been encouraged for years but research shows, multitasking is actually impossible. Instead of multitasking, the brain is just context switching. In other words, we’re switching back and forth between different tasks rather than actually doing them at the same time.
Brain Rules, a best selling book, explains that multitasking can increase your error rate up to 50 percent and it takes twice as long to do things.
The main problem is that when you multitask, you split up your brain’s resources. Instead of focusing on one task, you’re splitting your brain power to both tasks, which causes you perform both poorly.
When the brain focuses on a singular task, the prefrontal cortex part of the brain helps us achieve the goal faster and more efficiently. The prefrontal cortex focuses on a singular goal and talks to the rest of brain so that you achieve the goal faster and so your mind knows whether you have achieved your goal.
A study conducted in Paris found that when a second task was required, the brains of the participants split up, with each hemisphere working on a task. This caused the brain to overload and the second task could not be performed at full capacity.
4. Naps Do Actually Enhance The Performance Of Your Brain
It’s pretty clear how important sleep is for the brain but most people do not know how beneficial naps are. Numerous studies have found that these short bouts of sleep are actually very useful.
A recent study, participants were told to memorize illustrated cards to test their memory strength. After memorizing the set of cards participants were given a 40-minute break where one group napped while the other group was kept awake. After the break, both groups were tested on their memory of the cards, and these were the results:
“Much to the surprise of the researchers, the sleep group performed significantly better, retaining on average 85 percent of the patterns, compared to 60 percent for those who had remained awake.”
Also, apparently naps help our brain solidify memories as well:
Research indicates that when a memory is first recorded in the brain — in the hippocampus, to be specific — it’s still “fragile” and easily forgotten, especially if the brain is asked to memorize more things. Napping, it seems, pushes memories to the neocortex, the brain’s “more permanent storage,” preventing them from being “overwritten.”
What actually happens during a nap?
Recent research has found that the right side of the brain is much more active while napping than the left side, which stays somewhat dormant when we sleep. Even though 95 percent of the population is right-handed, with the left side being the dominant side of the brain, the right side is consistently more active while we sleep.
So essentially, the ride side of the brain handles “housekeeping” duties while we sleep. So while the left side of the brain takes time off during sleep, the right side is clearing out your temporary memories and moving them into long-term storage, thus solidifying your long-term memory.
5. Our Vision Trumps All Other Senses
Despite being one of five senses, research supports the theory that vision takes precedence over other memories.
“Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10 percent of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65 percent. Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.”
Still not convinced? Vision is so powerful that some of the best wine tasters in the world have been known to describe a dyed white wine as a red. Not only might this surprise you but you might be even more shocked to know this isn’t even good for us because:
“Our brain is doing all this guessing because it doesn’t know where things are. In a three-dimensional world, the light actually falls on our retina in a two-dimensional fashion. So our brain approximates viewable image.”
6. We Like People Who Make More Mistakes.
Research suggests that humans who make more mistakes are much more likable, due to something called the pratfall effect. The Buffer blog explains this perfectly:
“Those who never make mistakes are perceived as less likeable than those who commit the occasional faux pas. Messing up draws people closer to you, makes you more human. Perfection creates distance and an unattractive air of invincibility. Those of us with flaws win out every time.
This theory was tested by psychologist Elliot Aronson. In his test, he asked participants to listen to recordings of people answering a quiz. Select recordings included the sound of the person knocking over a cup of coffee. When participants were asked to rate the quizzers on likability, the coffee-spill group came out on top.”
7. Introversion And Extroversion Come From Different Wiring In The Brain.
Believe it or not, introversion and extroversion are not really related to how outgoing or shy we are but instead are related to how our brains recharge.
Research shows that there is a huge difference in the brains of extroverted and introverted people in terms of they process rewards and how genetic makeup differs. Extroverts respond more strongly when a gamble pays off compared to an introvert. Part of this is simply genetic, but it is also partly a difference in their dopamine system.
The nucleus accumbens is a major part of the dopamine system, which affects for humans learn and is generally regarded as the part of the brain responsible for motivating humans to search for rewards. The difference in the dopamine system in the extrovert’s brain leads them to push towards tasking risks, and engaging in surprising or unfamiliar situations.
More research has shown that the brain processes stimuli differently in extroverts and introverts. Essentially, the pathway for extroverts to process stimuli is much shorter. Stimuli run through an area where taste, touch, and visual sensory processing takes place. In introverts, the process is much longer and stimuli travel through a long, complicated pathway in areas that are associated with planning, solving, and remembering problems.
8. You Can Trick Your Brain Into Thinking Time Is Going Slowly
You’ve probably thought to yourself, “Where did the time go?” by now. This is actually a trick that relates to how the brain perceives time. Once you understand how it works, you can actually trick the brain into thinking time is moving more slowly.
Basically, our brain takes a massive amount of information from our five senses and organizes it in a way that makes sense to each of us individually, before we even perceive it. So what we think is our sense of time is really just our brain sending us information in a way presented to us based upon how the brain things it should be presented.
Also, time perception is not controlled by a single part of our brain. Instead, it is done by multiple areas of the brain, unlike our five senses, which have been pinpointed to a single, specific area.
Another thing worth mentioning: When our brain takes in a lot of information at once, it will take the brain longer to process it all. This causes us to feel like time is moving more slowly. This might be why you’ve felt like a college class has taken forever instead of its’ normally one hour period.
Finally, life-threatening situations cause us to remember time as longer because we record more of the experience. It doesn’t mean we suddenly gain perception but rather life-threatening experiences make us pay attention to what is happening.
9. Exercise Helps Reorganize The Brain And Can Boost Willpower.
We all know the benefits of exercise, but most people do not know the benefits of the brain. Apparently, there are numerous studies that have linked exercise and mental alertness, similar to the way happiness and exercise have been linked.
“A lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary. Exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, even so-called fluid-intelligence tasks.”
Once you begin to exercise, your brain recognizes you as in a state of stress. Once your heart pressure increases, your body begins to think you are either fighting an enemy or fleeing from it. To protect yourself and your brain, your body releases a protein called BDNF. BDNF protects the brain and acts as a reset button for the brain. This is why humans feel at ease and happy during and after exercising.
At the same time, your brain is also releasing endorphins to minimize the discomfort of exercise and to block the feeling of pain.
10. Mediation Rewires The Brain.
While it is widely known that meditation helps improve focus memory, it actually has a plethora of benefits – one of them being that it rewires the brain.
What happens without medication affects a section of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that processes information related to our experiences. When you experience something scary or upsetting, this part of the brain triggers a strong reaction making you feel scared or under attack.
With only twenty minutes of medication, this connection is weakened and we do not react as strongly as we normally would. This is why you’ve probably been told to “just breathe” when you’re panicking or very scared.
While we are weakening this connection we are also strengthening the connection known as our “assessment center.” This part of the brain controls our reasoning and controls our fear. Once this connection is strengthened, our reasoning kicks in and we look at experiences more rationally.
Another thing meditation can do is improve rapid memory recall. Essentially, research has found that people who meditate are able to adjust their brain wave that screens out distractions and that increases their productivity than those who do not meditate.
The ability to ignore distractions explains their ability to “rapidly remember new things and incorporate new facts.” This is very similar to the power of being exposed to new situations, which also dramatically improves our memory of things.
In addition to the things mentioned above, meditation has been linked to help improve compassion, decrease stress, increase the amount of grey matter in the brain and improving overall memory skills.
