The brain is one of the most fascinating organs in your body. It controls your thoughts, actions and emotions. If you think about it, the brain is largely responsible for the person you are and the one you would become in the future!
In fact, it would be fair to say that the brain is crucial to ensure that our body functions like a well-oiled machine.
In your biology lessons, you may have studied how the master organ functions and what it is made of. On World Brain Day, here are six lesser-known facts that will leave you amazed!
A bigger brain doesn’t mean better intelligence.
In the movie Megamind, the evil genius has a really big head, which may have led us to believe that big brains means better intelligence.
But research suggests that’s not entirely true. Intelligence is determined by multiple factors such as density of neurons, their connections, genetics and also external factors like the environment the individual is raised in.
If bigger brains means better intelligence, elephants and sperm whales would be more intelligent compared to several other animal species including us relatively small-brained humans.
The entire brain chips in for creative and analytical tasks
A lot of you may believe that the left side of the brain is more analytical and the right side of the brain is responsible for your creative pursuits.
Well, scientists say that the division is just in the anatomy. When it actually comes to thinking, both areas of the brain work together. You are whole-brained! Besides, every task or problem that you encounter may require some degree of logical & creative thinking. This means that the whole brain is at work when you think.
Whether you embrace your intelligence or creativity, or both, rest assured that both areas of the brain are doing the work!
The human brain has over 6,000 thoughts in a day
Your brain does a lot of work. It has several thousand thoughts everyday and there is a transition between thoughts as well. A new study shows that an average human brain has around 6200 thoughts a day. The statistic comes from a team of psychology experts at Queen’s University in Canada who studied human thoughts through a million synapses.
Within a tiny brain, you have 6000 thoughts in a day
Multitasking is bad for the brain
If you are able to study and play a video game, while watching a cartoon, congratulations, you are multitasking! And sometimes, you may be encouraged to manage multiple tasks simultaneously.
However, you might want to pace yourself, because studies conducted by the University of Sussex, shows that multitasking reduces the IQ. It is not good for your brain. It lowers your capacity to pay attention and might also hamper your memory! That’s scary, isn’t it?
Switching from one task to another makes you prone to distractions. This creates mental blocks, which slow down your efficiency in the long run.
Prolonged multitasking affects your brain
Your brain’s storage is never full!
The human brain is similar to a hard disk with a really huge storage capacity! It can store 2.5 million gigabytes of data, according to the data collected by an experiment that scientists from Stanford University conducted. They measured millions of synapses to arrive at this number.
But here’s the thing – how much information you try to feed, the brain never gets full. The brain automatically pushes out old information as new information enters.
A part of the brain called the hippocampus is the search engine, the prefrontal cortex is the filter determining which memory is the most relevant. The irrelevant information is pushed out. And that’s why we forget!
Visual learning helps your brain remember things more effectively.
Here’s a tip that will make your brain enhance your learning outcomes. Learn visually!
Studies show that visual learning activates your long term memory. It helps you retrieve more than 85% of what you experience, whereas only 10-20 % of written or spoken information is retrieved.
How many of you have learnt visually and feel it is an effective way of learning. Share your inputs with us in the comments.
Aparna is a mom, singer and dreamer. At BYJU'S, she writes stories about learning for children. She believes in the power of music, especially ghazal, the magic of the universe and happy learners. When not writing or singing, you will find her intensely engaged in conversations about life and the power of words.
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