Brain, stem and spinal cord (by Erica Scoggins/deviantArt)

While I do have a tendency to get overly excited about projects, writing this blog is hopefully an exception. The reason? It will require me to constantly research new topics, read even more books and just do what I really, really enjoy; understand stuff. Today I’d like to start with something I feel is somewhat (he he) relevant to my mission of gaining a deeper understanding of all that surrounds us, the human brain.

In regards to personal development much of what we’re trying to do is recondition ourselves which might mean to change a habit we’re not happy with. In order to reach the best result I think that having a basic understanding of how the brain function can greatly help in improving ones chances of achieving these goals. In a series of post I will go through basic building blocks of our wonderful and mysterious (so far) brain and how it relates to emotions, memory and other human traits.

From there and onwards I’m not quite sure what I’ll write about, but I will likely try and connect the various parts to how we can effectively and efficiently make strides in our personal development. I will study recent discoveries in neuroscience, and keeping up with developments in psychology and then share it with you and how i think we could make use of this new knowledge.

If you have a specific question you want to ask, please do and I’d be happy to research and attempt to give my answer to it.

History of the Head

While man have been aware of his head for many thousands of years, it would appear as if the Greek were the first to consider the brain the centre for regulating bodily functions and house our intellect. Pretty much every organ of the human body have been considered the source for various emotions and philosophers have for long considered the brain of minor importance. It’s true! Aristotles had this to say:

The brain is an organ of minor importance, perhaps necessary to cool the blood” (De Motu Animalum).

Such were the beliefs amongst philosophers, but in early medicine (Greek) the brain was considered of much higher importance than philosophers would have it be.

Hippocrates the Greek physician, considered by many ‘the father of medicine’, had this to say about our brain:

Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet, and what unsavoury; some we discriminate by habit, and some we perceive by their utility.

Our more recent understanding of the brain took shape around the end of the 18th century when Galvani showed that electricity exist as a force within our body. Unfortunately he did not have the necessary technology to measure the currents, but this was later confirmed by Du-Bois Reymond around mid 1850.

Let us now fast forward to the present time, where things actually start to get interesting. Am I boring you yet? :-)

Present

Through the help of neuroscience we’ve made huge leaps in our understanding of the human brain. One the most basic foundational units of the brain is a neuron, and there are plenty of them, around 100 billion (10^11). These are your brain messengers. They will transport messages (electrical current) between each other which will turn into a hand wave, fart or storing of a new memory. These associations between neurons form what we call neural networks. These neural networks, or associations between neurons, are part determined by genetics but mostly through learning. Associations are not static, but can be dynamically rewired should a neuron be damaged.

The reason of why these associations look the way they do, we just don’t know. Neuroscience has only scratched the surface of the complexity of the brain. Different parts of the brain process different types of signals. Then in an intricate pattern these logically separate networks are interconnected with each other to form one massive and dynamically generated neural network.

What we should get excited about is that these networks can be rearranged, which means there is nothing preventing anyone from achieving a particular goal or breaking a bad habit. These are only just associations between neurons and can be reprogrammed through creativity (not in the literal sense, or perhaps!).

I’ve decided to keep this post somewhat short, as to not overwhelm those that find details boring. But I do expect to dig much deeper into this as I go along. The next blogpost will cover the bigger basic building blocks such as thalamus, cerebellum and others. I hope you didn’t fall asleep while reading, see you soon!

/ Christoffer