With all the research and recent breakthroughs concerning the human brain, how are we to know fact from fiction?

 

For example, for at least a couple of generations most people accepted the following to be a fact – a human being only uses 10% of his or her brain. Today, most experts are saying that is Hogwash…we use much more than 10% of our brains. On the other hand, we do not use all our brain at once.

 

Some experts claim our brain consumes 20% of the oxygen and 20% of the calories burned by the human body. I suppose that can be estimated with some accuracy. As a small piece of proof, consider the thermal pictures showing lots of heat emanating from the head. Something is causing our heads to generate much more heat than the other parts of our bodies.

 

Since the brain consumes so much fuel…I wonder…what would happen if all of a sudden every neuron in our brain fired? Would there be enough blood flow to fire all our [give-or-take] 1000-trillion neurons? Would we pass out from lack of oxygen?

 

Over the last generation certain authors have tended to classify some people left-brained while classifying other people right-brained. I don’t believe that ever meant to imply people only use one side of their brains. It meant one side of the brain dominated. If the left-brain dominated then the person tended to be logical. If the right-brain dominated then the person tended to be empathetic and creative.

 

Recently, much texture has been added to these sorts of views. Brain tests such as SPECT [single photon emission computed tomography] and FMRI [functional magnetic resonance imaging] have confirmed neurons ‘fire’ in specific parts of the brain, depending on the stimulus. That doesn’t mean neurons only fire in one place at one time. It seems we use bits and pieces of our brain when we experience certain stimuli. And, the process is far from random.

 

Here is another aspect of our brains that is debated: when you get older you lose your memory. The blogosphere seems to favour – that’s fiction – we are not destined to lose memory as we age. On the other hand, it is a hard to ignore Alzheimer’s Disease.

 

Here is something I feel good about…Dr. Daniel Amen says our brain requires 3 things: oxygen, glucose, and stimuli. I like this because it is simple and because it provides us a way to think about improving the operation of our brains.

 

I especially like the last one – stimuli. If the brain needs stimuli to thrive then let’s choose as much of that stimuli as possible.

 

Whether 10% or 100% of the brain is used, whether we tend to be left-brained or right-brained or neither, whether we would pass out from using too much of our brain at one time or not, whether we will lose some memory with age or not…I like the idea – we can choose to provide stimuli to our brains.

 

We can choose stimuli. We can choose behaviour.

 

We can choose Good Habits.

 

And, our brain will respond positively.

 

It seems to me carefully-chosen behaviour and stimuli will help us use more of our brains…and carefully-chosen behaviour and stimuli will help us develop and improve the parts of our brains best suited to perform the chosen brain-work.