11 Myths About The Brain That Completely Wrong
While we use our brain every minutes for every task, we surprisingly know little about our
brain characteristics.
Countless of scientfic studies is conducted to discover more about our brain.
Despite that, the world is filled with dozens of ideas about why we think the way we do.
So how is science actually explain every statement about our brain that existed a long-long time
ago?
In this video I'm going to reveal to you the most common myths about our brain that completely
wrong.
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update in the future guys!
Here are 11 of the most common brain myths and the surprising science to counter them.
1 - You only use a fraction of your brain
If this were true, we'd be able to remove a large portion of our noggins with nearly
no consequences!
Some scientists think the root of this myth may lie in the fact that you're not constantly
using 100% of your brain at once.
"It turns out though, that we use virtually every part of the brain, and that most of
the brain is active almost all the time," Barry Gordon, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine in Baltimore told Scientific American.
2 - It's all downhill once you hit your 20s
Surely, some skills like our ability to think quickly and recall information (also known
as fluid intelligence), follow the familiar pattern.
It's peaking at roughly age 18 and getting worse over the rest of our lives.
But recent research suggests that in addition to getting wiser with age, we may also actually
get smarter, at least in some ways.
Our ability to do basic math and use a larger vocabulary for example, likely continue to
improve until we turn 50.
And our prowess at reading others' emotions and recalling recent events doesn't start
declining until after age 30.
3 - Your personality is based on whether you're "right-brained" or "left-brained"
While either side of the hemisphere may be more engaged in specific tasks, neither one
is fully dominant in any one person, at least as far as we know.
And there's no evidence to support the idea that certain personality types are based on
dominant brain hemispheres.
The brain's left hemisphere for example, is generally dominant when it comes to language.
Both in terms of processing sound and helping assist with speech.
Interestingly, while this rule holds true for roughly 95% of people who are right-handed,
it's only the case for about 70% of people who are left-handed.
For the other 30% of lefties, either the right hemisphere dominates when it comes to language
or neither side does.
4 - Alcohol kills your brain cells
There may be some merit to wherever this idea originated, since pure alcohol does a great
job of killing cells (that's why we swear by it as a disinfectant!).
But the kind of booze you can get at a bar has very little effect on the number of neurons
in your brain.
A 1990s study of the brains of former alcoholics and non-alcoholic drinkers revealed that even
when done far too frequently, drinking has little to no effect on the overall number
or density of brain cells.
All that said, too much drinking can damage the links between neurons and the way the
brain processes information.
A recent study in the journal Neuroscience suggested that people who drank daily had
significantly less new cell development (a process called neurogenesis) in part of the
brain crucial for learning and memory.
5 - You're born with all the brain cells you'll ever have
A team of Swedish scientists showed in 1998 that the hippocampus, a region of the brain
that's critical for forming new memories, continues to make new neurons well into old
age.
And in a 2014 study, another team of researchers (also Swedes) found that new brain cells are
also produced in the striatum, which plays a role in motor control, motivation, and decision-making.
6 - Drugs create holes in your brain.
We know different drugs make us experience the world around us in very different ways,
and their after-effects are often nowhere near as pleasant as the immediate results
they produce.
Thankfully, while many substances can have significant effects on your brain's structure
and function, Swiss-cheese-esque holes are not one of them.
Drugs work by messing with our brain chemistry, not by drilling physical holes in its structure.
More specifically, substances like heroin alter the levels of neurotransmitters, chemical
messengers that ferry information and consequently help our nervous system run.
Heroin for example, which gets converted into morphine in the brain, hijacks our motivational
system by binding to special receptors that affect how we perceive pain and rewards.
7 - So-called 'aha!' moments are rare and random
A recent study pinpointed one likely location in the brain where "aha!" moments take
place.
The neuroscientists who led the study and have been studying creativity and insight
for a decade also emphasize that these so-called "Eureka" moments happen all the time,
and include moments like the time you got the punchline of a joke to the moment you
recalled the word on the tip of your tongue.
Plus, contrary to the popular idea that we come across these ideas suddenly, "aha!"
moments are most likely the result of the same creative process that leads to any new
idea or concept.
8 - Big brains equal smart creatures
If you need an obvious example of how untrue this myth is, think of a cow and chimpanzee.
Cows have bigger brains than chimps.
Are they smarter than chimps?
No.
"But what about the ratio of brain to body weight?"
An ardent fan of this myth might counter.
Nope, that line of reasoning doesn't work either.
While a human's brain-to-body-mass ratio is massive compared to that of a horse (about
1:50 and 1:600 respectively), it's just about the same as that of a mouse (1:40),
and inferior to the ratio you'd find in small ants or small birds.
9 - Male brains are more logical, female brains are more empathetic
There are minor anatomical differences between male and female brains.
The problem is they haven't been linked with any particular differences in ability.
Instead, most evidence suggests that these gender-based differences are the result of
cultural expectations.
For example, women tend to do better than men on tests of emotional intelligence and
empathy.
But as Laura Helmuth at Smithsonian points out, "They do — unless test subjects are
told that men are particularly good at the test, in which case men perform as well as
or better than women."
The same thing can happen in reverse.
A 1998 University of Waterloo study found that when women and men were given a tough
math test, the women, even those with extensive math experience did worse than the men.
But if the participants were told beforehand that men and women had performed equally on
the test in the past, they performed equally well.
10 - You're necessarily an "auditory" or a "visual" learner
Throughout middle school, I was told repeatedly that I was a "visual learner" like most
young adults, I loved splashy, colorful graphics and was drawn to photographs and videos.
But this consistently reinforced idea that some of us learn better by seeing, hearing,
or touching doesn't have much research to back it up.
There is evidence to suggest that many of us prefer to learn through a specific means.
Some of us would rather to listen to a lecture than read a book for example, but there's
no evidence to suggest that we do better when we are taught in our preferred method.
When psychologists have compared students' results on tests after they've been taught
using either their preferred method or another method for example, their results are the
same.
11 - You only have 5 senses
You've probably heard plenty about the first five including touch (tactioception), hearing
(audioception), sight (ophthalmoception), taste (gustaoception), and smell (olfacoception).
But what about the others?
These, which all include the Latin root 'cept' for take or receive, give us even more data
about the outside world:
Equilibrioception: A sense of balance, otherwise known as your internal GPS.
Tells you if you're sitting, standing, or lying down.
Located in the inner ear.
Proprioception: A sense of where your body parts are and what they're doing.
Nociception: A sense of pain.
Thermo(re)ception: A sense of temperature.
Chronoception: A sense of the passage of time.
Interoception: A sense of your internal needs, like hunger, thirst, needing to use the bathroom,
and more.
Well, that's the most common myths about our brain that you need to know the truth guys.
Really cool information isn't it?
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