They say the mind is a terrible thing to waste.
And it’s not hard to see why that saying is so popular. Without our minds, the entire world as we know it would not be possible. Our brains are involved in every process of our daily lives. When we wake up and look around, everything we see gets filtered and manipulated through them! Still, despite it’s all-encompassing importance, exactly how the brain works is a mystery to us.
What’s known is that our brains don’t behave like we often expect them to.
Because our minds essentially create reality out of many different judgments and perceptions, understanding what reality is actually like to our brains can help us improve our lives.
Here are 11 incredible facts about the brain which show us that anything is possible.
1. The brain may not know the difference reality and imagination.
According to Tech Times, information moves through the brain in different directions when we’re imagining things vs. when we’re interacting with reality. Still, those two activities are not be so different—other studies have shown that mentally practicing basketball can help with actually playing basketball. Try it out sometime!
2. It only takes 2% dehydration to affect your memory and attention span.
You know how they say you should drink eight glasses of water a day? We usually think that’s for our body, but it’s also for our brains. In fact, studies have shown that even a little dehydration affects our abilities to function normally. So drink up!
3. Our brain doesn’t feel pain.
While our brains are involved in processing the sensation of pain, the brain itself can’t actually feel it. If you ever have a headache, its actually the stuff around your brain that has the pain sensors, not the actual brain. Still, no matter how much we may dislike it, being able to feel pain is actually a good thing.
4. You have a “second brain” in your gut.
Have you ever been accused of going with your gut or thinking with your stomach? There may be more truth to that after all. According to Psychology Today, our intestines have 100 million neurons that are intimately involved in our emotions and moods—including the production of serotonin. If you want to think and feel well, make sure your gut is healthy!
5. Our brain is never truly at rest—and we use a lot of it!
There’s a common myth that we use 10% of our brains, or that our brains are at rest while we’re asleep. Actually, our brains are firing all over the place all the time—even when we’re asleep.
6. We don’t truly remember anything—we recreate things.
Though we think of our memories as locked in, they are actually reconstructed from different fragments of information stored in our mind. They are also notoriously inaccurate. This can be useful if we’re too attached to a negative memory that happened to us—it may not even be as real as we think!
7. The brain generates 50,000 thoughts a day and up to 70% may be negative.
Throughout a given day, you have enormous number of thoughts and the majority can be negative. This is a real problem for those of us with depression or anxiety! Fortunately, there is hope: being more aware of one’s thoughts and moods can help us step out of them with practice.
8. Your brain’s storage can’t really get “used up.”
Our capacity for memory is virtually limitless! That’s because the brain has one billion neurons, each of which can make up to 1,000 connections to other neurons. What’s more is that each neuron can play a role in storing multiple memories at once—so don’t worry that your brain is going to “fill up” with unimportant information!
9. Though the brain starts to slow down at 24, different cognitive processes may get better or worse with age.
Although we may peak overall in our mid-20s for brain speed and activity, the truth is that our fluid intelligence may continue to change and peak in different areas way later in life. That means it’s never too late to start doing something we love, or to keep refining our skills as we get older.
10. Though we think of ourselves as conscious, up to 95% of our decisions might be unconscious!
It’s comforting to think that we are entirely in control of our lives. Unfortunately, the world is just too complex for us to run everything all by ourselves. That’s why our subconscious mind runs most of our life without us noticing—up to 95% of it, in fact.
11. Though it may be difficult, you can change your brain!
Though we have a lot of ideas about memory, intelligence and personality, the truth is that the brain is much more fluid and changeable than we think. Neuroplasticity and neurogenesis are the creation of new connections and new brain cells—and both are possible late in adult life!
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