The capabilities of the human brain have not yet been fully studied, although, according to biblical teaching, man is created in the image and likeness of God. In everyday life, people practically do not use the abilities that are genetically endowed in everyone.

How the brain works

Nature itself has tried to reliably protect the main human organ, without which life is impossible:

• the brain substance is hidden in a strong skull, the bones of which can withstand a fairly strong blow from a fist;
• the hairline reliably protects from cold and heat;
• saturation of blood vessels provides nutrition to the brain;
• the liquid layer protects the organ from vibrations during movement.

The human brain provides the ability to speak, hear, see, think, touch, and move. The human organ, unlike an animal, is capable of operating with logical, ethical, moral categories. Controls all muscles of the body consciously and unconsciously. The left side of the brain controls the movements of the right side of the body, and the right side controls the opposite side. The more developed left side of the brain gives a person a technical form of thinking. The right hemisphere corresponds to a humanitarian orientation. If you achieve simultaneous work of both hemispheres, the ability to remember information will increase many times.

The cerebral cortex occupies an area of ​​2000-2500 square meters. cm, if you count in a state straightened out from the convolutions. Each section of it is responsible for certain functions.

The volume of the brain is only 2% of the human body, but without its control the body will not be able to work and live.

How to train your memory

An ordinary person uses only 5-10% of the brain's capabilities as prescribed by nature. Like any other organ of the human body, the brain is equipped with a protective mechanism that allows it to use its capabilities exactly to the extent that is required at the moment. People who stop training their mental abilities after finishing school or college gradually degrade.

Poor memory is the first sign of brain fatigue.

Scientific experiments have proven that the brain functions better under constant mental stress:

• solving mathematical problems of increasing complexity;
• solving crossword puzzles;
• learning foreign languages;
• remembering a certain amount of information;
• Reading books;
• Computer games develop reaction speed and resourcefulness.

Regular exertion of mental abilities, even for half an hour a day, can prolong a person’s reasonable life until old age.

Training ensures comprehensive development of the brain:

• the mass of the organ increases;
• better capillary blood supply;
• the risk of brain damage due to age-related diseases is reduced.

The simplest exercises for training the brain are given at school:

• memorizing large chunks of prose text, preferably in a foreign language;
• repeated rewriting of homework or class assignments, ensuring that the text is formatted without errors or blots;
• oral counting out loud.

Such simple memory training forms the basis of a person’s intellectual education.

How to stimulate brain activity

The speed reading technique has a great effect on the brain:

• regular classes for 3-4 months in compliance with a certain emotional state;
• understanding the essence of the text read;
• expansion of the field of vision;
• autogenic memory training has a beneficial effect on the condition of the brain.

You can train your brain the same way you train your muscles, achieving good results at almost any age:

• reading books of any genre develops logical thinking and the study of life situations from different points of view;
• when playing sports, the hormone endorphin is produced, which helps stimulate brain activity;
• an hour's respite in the middle of the day, reserved for sleep, helps the brain relax for better assimilation of information;
• artificial stimulation of brain activity with drugs, alcohol, nicotine leads to the death of brain cells;
• The hormone estrogen, released in large quantities by the body during sex, helps cope with nervous overload and stress. This is especially true for women.

It is necessary to learn something new every day in order to eliminate the stagnation of brain activity, but in most cases, people practically do not use the capabilities of the brain, since it is much easier to live like everyone else.

How to develop superpowers

M. S. Norbekov built his health system on the principle that the brain can be “convinced” of the physical health of one or more organs. Then the body itself initiates a restorative “reconfiguration” of the entire body, like a computer program.

However, many people are simply too lazy to do regular, albeit simple, exercises every day.
The best time for perceiving and remembering information is considered to be childhood from 2 to 11 years. It is this period that should be used to lay the foundations of fundamental knowledge in the child’s brain.

The newest teaching method, suggestionology, involves memorizing a large amount of information in a short time. The student, being in a relaxed state, perceives the educational program to the sounds of music. There is no need to strain yourself trying to remember the material; the body itself puts what it hears into the corners of its memory. In this way, you can increase the amount of information by about 50% compared to conventional training programs.

Professional trainings are becoming increasingly widespread, helping to teach young professionals the mystery of mastery in the shortest possible time.

Increased attention is paid to the paranormal abilities of the brain. Clairvoyants, psychics, hypnotists, predictors of all stripes have filled the media pages with advertisements. You can develop intuition or other extrasensory abilities by combining hard work with imagination. However, it should be taken into account that not everyone will like such knowledge and opportunities.

Superpowers often manifest themselves during times of danger, stress, or under the influence of an accident: electric shock, fall from height, brain injury. Thus, the brain replaces the lost qualities with others. People who have lost their sight develop hearing and touch. People who have not come to terms with their position of eternal darkness are looking for unusual ways to navigate in space, which cannot be explained by today's science.

The placebo method or belief in miracles cannot be explained by modern scientists. Common cases of instant healing from dangerous diseases, including cancer, remain without an intelligible answer.

Man of the future

Scientists suggest that a person of the future with superpowers is currently being formed:

• the deteriorating environmental situation leads to mutation of genes, due to which previously unused channels open in the brain;
• the new person, feeling unity with the cosmic information base, will stop lying and value material wealth, new priorities will be revived;
• Through an effort of will, the future generation will learn to influence the body, helping to cleanse it and improve its health.

People need to learn to use the capabilities of their brains to bring love to their neighbors, compassion, wisdom, and mutual understanding into the world. When developing your talents, you must strive to expand the scope of your perception of the surrounding reality in order to correspond to the high title of Man.
The human brain, like a computer, can be given any program, the purpose of which should be creation, and not war with its own kind. If a person sincerely wants to change the world around him and himself for the better, he will definitely succeed.

A little history: in 1941, in the village of Kisegach, Chelyabinsk region, on the shore of a quiet lake, a military hospital for restorative medicine was opened. Soldiers who were wounded in the head were brought here, which in one way or another affected and damaged the structure of the brain. Both research and rehabilitation of wounded soldiers took place there, each of which became another mystery for doctors, requiring more and more knowledge about the brain.

Here is just one example. Lieutenant Zasetsky was wounded in the parieto-occipital region. After examining him, A. Luria was somewhat confused: the wounded young man was full of strength, but had difficulty finding the right words, forgot how to write and read, and the picture of the world that surrounded him crumbled before him into many separate, unrelated elements . But at the same time – absolute preservation of willpower, the desire to live and develop, experiencing feelings in all their fullness and expressiveness!

This and similar cases helped scientists to create the most complete picture of how the human mind works and functions, and to understand the inexpressibly extensive compensatory capabilities of the human brain.

However, perhaps the most important thing was the successful experience of recovering hundreds and hundreds of fighters and returning them to normal life.

Such a “boring” gray and white picture

Here in front of the doctors lies a human brain removed from the skull. What do they see? An almost dull gray-white picture due to its colorlessness - gray bark and gray-white subcortical formations. But once you learn just a few meager facts about this most amazing organ of the human body, it becomes clear that the brain, in its mystery and complexity, can easily compete with the cosmos.

Judge for yourself:

• The human brain consists of one and a half billion nerve cells;
• If any part of the brain is destroyed, another brain structure can take over its functions;
• The patterns of brain development allow us to draw a conclusion about which functions in a person develop more successfully than others, and which ones lag behind the concept of “norm” in their development.

Tip 1

You can't improve something you don't understand. Read about how the brain works, try to understand the principles of its operation. Determine for yourself important areas for the development of your cognitive abilities and study the patterns of their development.

With Vikium you can organize the process of training cognitive abilities according to an individual program

Three main services of the brain

If we combine everything that our brain diligently does for us, we get 3 main fields of activity:

1. maintaining energy tone– regulation of metabolism, the functioning of the endocrine glands, ensuring growth and development;
2. reception, processing and storage of information, coming from the outside world;
3. programming, regulation and control human activity.

All this is very much reminiscent of the operation of a complex computer. Indeed, the human brain, its features and capabilities reproduce all the patterns of complex management of information flows. Or are computers created in the image and likeness of the brain?

Take, for example, an energy block. Strictly speaking, it doesn’t even resemble the brain structure very much - it’s loose, even liquid, located somewhere very deep inside. But in general, this is perhaps the most ancient part of the brain, localized in the hypothalamus.

Without it, the brain is deprived of its energy supply, and the tone of all brain processes is reduced to an ineffective level.

A number of causes of poor brain function are thus associated with what are called differently in different contexts, for example:

• metabolic disorders in the body;
• fat metabolism disorders;
• dysfunction of the pituitary gland,
• diseases of the endocrine glands.

Everyone has heard the phrase “adrenaline rush” - this is precisely the case when the hormone known as adrenaline is released into the bloodstream by the adrenal glands, which produce it. The result is a powerful emotional outburst, actually an explosion of emotions! This is how the energy block of the brain reacts to hormonal changes.

Tip 2

So, the quality of the first service of our brain is directly related to the health of our body. So helping your brain means, among other things, monitor your metabolism and the functioning of the endocrine glands, ensuring and maintaining the healthy functioning of the relevant organs.

The brain puts together puzzles

Do you know under what conditions the brain “goes to sleep”? This happens when the flow of external signals sharply decreases. The energy block, as it were, integrates the metabolism in the body and the external signals entering it. And if there are no signals, then there is no tone.

But the brain receives signals about objects around. The brain picks up:

• color,
• shape,
• distance,
• size,

but so far only as unclear blurry images. To recognize them, it is necessary to pass these signals to a fundamentally different level, or otherwise, from the “primary visual cortex” they must enter the “secondary visual cortex”.

An electrode touching the primary cortex will only cause flashes of images in a person - sparks, lines, circles, lightning... And touching the secondary cortex, it will give rise to completely recognizable pictures - faces, objects and even entire scenes.

Not all images recorded by the primary cortex are processed by a person to a level at which they can be recognized. Isn’t the phenomenon of intuition connected with this? We cannot clearly explain our premonitions and vague predictions, but at the same time we are aware that they carry some important information for us.

Tip 3

Develop imaginative thinking! Learn to operate with image-pictures, which in psychology are called “representations.” Help your brain make full use of the hidden resources of the secondary visual cortex.

I mainly work related to

• recognition of the picture of the world,
• naming objects (and, therefore, with speech),
• synthesis of a holistic model from individual disparate “puzzles”

performed by the “tertiary visual cortex”. It is her merit that our brain builds for us a holistic image of the world around us, where we

• we see how different objects are placed and connected to each other,
• we can track their movements,
• We determine their location and compare them with each other.

And most importantly, we can give names to objects and, thus, broadcast to each other our personal pictures of the world. By separating a word from the object it denotes, we form abstract words, words-concepts.

We hear the word “apple”, and each of us understands what object we are talking about. But, if we look into the models of the world of different people, we will find that everyone saw “their own” apple:

• more or less,
• green or red,
• “Antonovka” or “Ranet”...

The stronger the word is tied to the image, the lower the level of conceptual thinking, alas, and the more difficult abstract judgments are. Such as solving complex mathematical equations.

Tip 4

Develop your conceptual apparatus and train your abstract thinking! You now know that this is a function of a completely different area of ​​the brain. The secondary and tertiary cortex each carry their own load, so the development of one does not at all guarantee the successful development of the other.

A person needs speech not only to exchange information with other people. Talking, listening, receiving new information from others, expressing one’s position ourselves is only a visible part of what our speech provides us with.

The tertiary cortex and two important brain centers - Broca's motor speech center and Wernicke's sensory speech center - do much more important work for us. They help us think! It is words that organize our inner world. It is with them that we describe in the brain everything that we perceive. The outer world is material and independent of our worldview, but we build the inner world for ourselves. And the more means for this we have at our disposal, the more accurate, more detailed, more detailed, the model of the world created by our brain will be.

You don’t want to endlessly repeat the favorite phrase of not very successful students, “I’m like a dog: I understand everything, but I can’t say it”?

Then pay attention to the following feature of the brain structure: Different brain centers are responsible for speech perception and pronunciation. They are even separated from each other at some distance: the motor zone is in the occipital zone, and the sensory zone (perceiving speech) is in the temporal zone.

By reading, listening and listening, you load and therefore train only the speech perception center. And it’s far from a fact that you can then easily reproduce what you read and heard. Reasoning like “If I found out this, then I can tell you about it” is nothing more than a common illusion. The motor center of speech, unused all this time, will not wake up like this, out of the blue, and will not help you vividly and colorfully retell what you know.

Tip 5

Do you want to easily reproduce material that is new to you, replete with unfamiliar scientific terms and expressions that are difficult for you? Make it a practice to retell what you read and hear!

If this third brain block did not exist, we would only be able to react to the environment and our needs:

• hungry - looking for food,
• it's cold - we wrap ourselves up,
• scary - we take to our heels.

But man is an active being. And this is thanks to the brain structures located in the anterior sections of the cerebral cortex, which are responsible for programming and controlling our actions.

Two facts speak about the importance for a person of active voluntary activity, its programming, organization and self-control:

• areas of the brain responsible for the active organization of activity are formed much later in life than any others;
• 1/3 of the total mass of the brain is responsible for these three functions alone.

So, such possibilities of the brain open up before a person that make him the master of his destiny in the broadest sense of the word.

By the way, the safety of these particular areas allowed Lieutenant Zasetsky to subsequently re-master all the cognitive functions that he had lost due to injury. This is where he had his persistent desire to recover and his thirst to discover the world anew.

Weak will and laziness, life in a reactive mode, behavior of a reactive type - all these are just the results of personal qualities. The brain has nothing to do with it if there are no functional disorders or damage to its frontal lobes. Training voluntary attention, purposeful behavior, perseverance and perseverance are powerful helpers for your brain, the creative and controlling organ.

Tip 6

Train your perseverance, develop an active attitude towards life, try not to lose your curiosity, inquisitiveness, love of discovery and willingness to learn new knowledge over the years!

Registration of electrical potentials of the brain revealed the following pattern: each mental activity leads to the fact that many synchronously working areas in the frontal lobes become excited at once. Habitual work that does not contain any new intellectual challenges is a poor assistant in maintaining effective brain activity throughout a person’s life.

Tip 7

If you want to “stir up” your brain, find a mental challenge for it. By solving a crossword puzzle, planning your actions, comparing and making informed choices, you develop the ability of the human brain to cope with mental work faster and better.

And finally, another important fact: all three blocks of the brain work in close cooperation. They can be separated from each other either artificially, doing this for scientific purposes, and for this purpose creating conditional descriptive models of the functioning of each block, or this can occur due to deep functional disorders. In the life of a healthy and normally developing person, all the work of the brain is a single synchronized work of many brain structures simultaneously. Training the abilities of your brain and in this way becoming smarter, more reasonable, more attentive than many others is a very real and productive path for every person.

Tip 8

Take advantage of the training capabilities of the Vikium website. The exercises are structured in accordance with the patterns of our brain functioning described above.

The human brain is a very mysterious organ of our body, thanks to which every person is special. This is a huge repository, which is surrounded by many secrets and mysteries, and it is impossible to count how many myths there are about this organ. Even the most brilliant minds of our time cannot fully figure out what our brain is capable of. !.jpg) However, listening to the myths confirmed by science, We can conclude that **brain abilities** are beyond what has been studied. And only one fact, proven scientifically, does not cause any controversy or doubt - the human brain is used only 1-4% of its abilities. Why is this happening there? It's really simple. Scientists believe that nature at birth endows each person with a truly unique gift - intelligence, but also protection that prevents the brain from being overloaded. 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How does our brain work and what happens in it? On what basis does a person make decisions and what determines them? Vyacheslav Demin, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Scientific Secretary of the Kurchatov Complex of NBICS Technologies of the National Research Center Kurchatov Institute, spoke about this in a lecture held at the Sirius Educational Center. Lenta.ru publishes excerpts from his speech.

Breaking through the gap

The brain consists of approximately one hundred billion neurons, that is, nerve cells that, using electrical and chemical signals through processes (dendrites and axons), receive and transmit information to each other. When neurons come into contact, they create neural networks. The point of contact is called a synapse. There are about a quadrillion synapses in the brain (a quadrillion is a number followed by 15 zeros, that is, a million billion). This means that each neuron has about 10 thousand connections - a very indicative illustration of how diverse and multifaceted the connections of just one nerve cell can be. The substance that helps transmit information is called a neurotransmitter. Science knows several hundred such substances.

The scientific community approaches the issue of studying the brain from different positions. There are neurophysiologists who consider specific processes at the neural level; they can conditionally be called “materialists.” On the other hand, there are neuropsychologists, they can conditionally be called “idealists”, their focus is on the world of ideas, the space of higher cognitive functions of a person responsible for memory and thinking, consciousness and subconsciousness, emotions and decision-making, attitude towards oneself and other people . There is a fundamental “explanatory gap” between the first approach and the second. It is studied by cognitive science, a scientific field that has emerged relatively recently at the intersection of neurophysiology and neuropsychology. Apparently, it is cognitive science that will primarily be able to lead to a breakthrough in the field of creating artificial intelligence.

Finding the optimal solution

What is thinking? This is a constant search for the optimal solution to the problems facing us. As a rule, when making even the smallest decision, a person has several options, before each step he finds himself at a fork in the road, and the outcome is not predetermined. A person must make the best move. That is, every second each of us builds a “tree of possibilities” in our heads, and sometimes this tree is incredibly branchy.

How to choose the right option, especially if the search algorithm is unknown? Intelligence resorts to the help of so-called heuristics. To illustrate, we can give an example from chess. It is possible to have such an arrangement of pieces on the board when White, for example, has only the king and pawns left, but the pawns are placed in such a way that they do not allow Black to pass. A person immediately understands that under such conditions the most favorable and most likely outcome of the game for White is a draw.

But the computer program Deep Thought, which later beat world champion Garry Kasparov, looked at situations exclusively from a mathematical point of view. She saw that the white pawn could take the black rook, and this would lead to a noticeable weakening of the enemy and an improvement in the points position. The computer did not understand that with this move it was opening a hole in its defense. As a result, he could no longer count on a draw, received a checkmate and lost the game.

Photo: Carina Johansen / NTB Scanpix / Reuters

Subsequently, programmers entered into the computer an algorithm for actions in such situations, and the machine no longer made such mistakes. Natural intelligence, unlike artificial intelligence, is able to independently draw conclusions, analyze mistakes and not repeat them.

Knowledge representation

The second aspect of thinking is the representation of knowledge. We all look at the world through the prism of perception and form a model of some process or object in our heads. These ideas are individual. And when we think, we operate with models, and not with real objective data.

There is a famous joke about a glass half filled with water. An optimist believes that it is half full, a pessimist believes that it is half empty. But there may be other ideas. For example, the programmer will say that the capacity is twice as large as needed. The initial objective data are the same, but the models that people operate on their basis are different. As a result, if a certain problem is associated with a glass, then the solutions may differ from each other. It is important to choose a suitable representation in which there is an algorithm that solves the problem. In another, unsuccessful, presentation, the problem may turn out to be extremely difficult or completely unsolvable.

Therefore, thinking must be combined with learning, that is, the accumulation of information with subsequent generalization. You can watch the grandmaster endlessly, record and memorize his moves, and then reproduce them. But this will not teach you how to play chess. On the contrary, trying to understand the system or tactics of the game itself, which provides ideas about the grandmaster's overall view of chess problems, will eventually yield positive results with time and practice. This is training.

Types of thinking

How does human thinking develop? In childhood - through a visually effective representation: “I saw - I did an action.” Gradually, visual-figurative thinking is formed: “saw - remembered or imagined related objects or options for action - performed an action.” Individual objects are replaced by categories, representations, and individual connections between them are modeled. The next stage is completely abstract verbal-logical thinking, when for the thinking process itself there is no longer a need to perform any actions, everything happens in the imagination.

In the mid-20th century, German psychologist Wolfgang Keller conducted an experiment. He placed a banana next to the monkeys' cage and gave the animals a stick. They almost immediately figured out how to reach the banana with a stick and move it towards the cage. This happened due to visual-effective thinking: the monkeys took a stick and experimented, quickly finding a solution.

Then the task was complicated: the banana was placed further, and the monkeys were given two sticks from which they could assemble one long one. This puzzle turned out to be overwhelming for the vast majority. The monkeys were furious, but could not figure out what to do; they jumped around the cage and hit the bars with a stick.

The smartest ones sat down, thought about it, and after a while they understood what needed to be done. This moment of transition to visual-figurative thinking is called “gestalt switching”: the monkey stopped active, but chaotic and ineffective actions and thought. In other words, thought is a “collapsed action,” that is, an action transferred to the imagination.

This is how universal thinking arises: if the chosen algorithm is not suitable, the brain looks for a new idea and new possible connections, traveling along the “tree of possibilities” until it finds a suitable option. The found solution then influences the external environment (the banana is yours) and goes (perhaps together with the new representation found) to the knowledge base, adding to personal experience.

Emotions play an important role in universal thinking. They modulate the goal, modify it. Imagine a robot going to complete a task. Suddenly everything ahead starts to explode. The machine does not feel fear, so neither the goal nor the line of behavior changes. Explosion - the robot is destroyed. And a person in his place would try to save his life in order to then complete the original task.

Where is the information processed?

The first task of the brain is pattern recognition. What happens if you see, say, a person's face? Information enters the pupil and is projected on the retina. The signal is transmitted to the primary visual cortex. It is located closer to the back of the head and is responsible for recognizing only the simplest geometric objects, such as, for example, lines with different angles of inclination. The information is filtered and transmitted to the secondary visual cortex, where more complex patterns, for example, semicircles, are recognized.

Next, the processed information is transmitted to the temporal region of the cerebral cortex (this is the so-called ventral pathway for processing visual information), where such simple elements as the nose, eye, and ear are recognized. How does this happen? There are neurons that respond only to the nose, there are neurons that respond only to the eye, and so on. At the same time, there are neurons without any special specialization, and they can respond to both the nose and the eye.

As a result, the activity of the entire set of these cells is transmitted to the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain in the frontal lobes. There the picture comes together, and you recognize the entire face. As it progresses, the information is compressed, each time encoded by fewer and fewer neurons - it is as if it is being archived. In the anterior lobes of the brain, a warehouse of various high-level images is encoded, with which a person ultimately operates.

The brain is not independent in its actions. It is controlled by the thalamus, a paired organ that ends the midbrain, coming from the spinal cord. The thalamus has strings attached to each part of the cortex. By pulling them, he activates certain areas that are currently responsible for the optimal solution to the current problem.

But even the conductor is not independent. The thalamus is controlled by the so-called basal ganglia. Key neurons in these nuclei have a strong dependence on dopamine, a neurotransmitter that causes acute pleasure in humans.

We are all dopamine addicts, no matter how sad it is to admit it - the basal ganglia want a lot of dopamine all the time. But it is released in response to the subjective value of a particular decision, for which a certain area of ​​the cortex is responsible.

If the activation value of a cortical area is high, that is, this solution is supposedly optimal for us in the current situation, then more dopamine will be released and we will experience joy. What determines value? Firstly, our experience. A small child has minimal experience, and he is happy with almost everything in the world, any cube. Showing curiosity, a person tries different options, consolidates those that bring subjective benefits and, accordingly, dopamine releases, and avoids those that, on the contrary, cause unpleasant or painful sensations. As you grow older and gain experience, the value bar rises.

Secondly, value is determined by emotions (and not only positive ones): the brighter they are, the higher the value. This leads to another neurophysiological regulator - the areas of the brain responsible for emotions (amygdala, hippocampus, anterior and temporal lobes of the cortex, and others).

It turns out that the brain, in the process of searching for the optimal solution to the problem facing it, works as a self-regulating system. On the one hand, he uses knowledge from experience (that is, from the corresponding areas of the cortex), on the other hand, he weighs these decisions through the system of experiencing emotions (including the same and other areas of the cortex and organs of the limbic system of the brain). All this is collected by the basal ganglia, and through the thalamus the go-ahead is given to activate the area of ​​the cortex that brings the greatest reward to dopamine neurons of the basal and other brain structures.

Cerebellum

The cerebellum plays an extremely important role. It is believed to be responsible for coordination of movements, a sense of balance and equilibrium. But it is known that in the cerebellum, which accounts for only about 10 percent of the brain’s volume, for some reason there are about twice as many neurons as in the rest of the brain - 70 billion versus 30. Are so many nerve cells really needed just to coordinate movements?

Scientists have only recently begun to understand that the cerebellum is responsible not only for movements, but in general for all automatisms, including “collapsed actions” - patterns of mental responses from the knowledge base. For example, it will not be difficult for a trained athlete to perform a backflip with a 360-degree spin. He will do this without thinking, because his cerebellum will retrieve information from storage at the right moment, the brain will receive the necessary commands, and the body will perform this acrobatic element automatically. The athlete practically does not think, his subconscious works.

The same thing seems to be true for other automatisms, such as speech. A person thinks in higher images, and the cerebellum itself decides how best to translate this into a means of communication. In this case, of course, long-established and reliably established speech processing centers in the cerebral cortex are involved, but in close connection with the cerebellum, which continuously offers ready-made, automatic solutions and/or corrects inevitably occurring errors in accordance with them.

The biggest mystery for scientists is not the vastness of space or the formation of the Earth, but the human brain. Its capabilities exceed those of any modern computer. Thinking, forecasting and planning, emotions and feelings, and finally, consciousness - all these processes inherent in humans, one way or another, take place within a small space of the cranium. The work of the human brain and its study are much more closely related than any other objects and methods of research. In this case they are almost identical. The human brain is studied using the human brain. The ability to understand the processes occurring in the head actually depends on the ability of the “thinking machine” to know itself.

Structure

Today, quite a lot is known about the structure of the brain. It consists of two hemispheres resembling halves of a walnut, covered with a thin gray shell. This is the cerebral cortex. Each of the halves is conventionally divided into several shares. The most ancient parts of the brain in evolutionary terms, the limbic system and brainstem, are located under the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres.

The human brain is made up of several types of cells. Most of them are glial cells. They perform the function of connecting other elements into a single whole, and also take part in amplifying and synchronizing electrical activity. About a tenth of brain cells are neurons of various shapes. They transmit and receive electrical impulses using processes: long axons, which transmit information from the neuron body further, and short dendrites, which receive signals from other cells. Contacting axons and dendrites form synapses, places where information is transmitted. The long process releases a neurotransmitter, a chemical substance that affects the functioning of the cell, into the synapse cavity; it enters the dendrite and leads to inhibition or excitation of the neuron. The signal is transmitted throughout all connected cells. As a result, the work of a large number of neurons is very quickly excited or inhibited.

Some development features

The human brain, like any other organ of the body, goes through certain stages of its formation. A child is born, so to speak, not in full combat readiness: the process of brain development does not end there. Its most active departments during this period are located in the ancient structures responsible for reflexes and instincts. The cortex functions less well because it consists of a large number of immature neurons. With age, the human brain loses some of these cells, but acquires many strong and orderly connections between the remaining ones. “Extra” neurons that have not found a place in the resulting structures die. How much the human brain works appears to depend on the quality of connections rather than the number of cells.

Common Myth

Understanding the features of brain development helps to determine the discrepancy between the reality of some common ideas about the work of this organ. There is an opinion that the human brain works 90-95 percent less than it can, that is, about a tenth of it is used, and the rest mysteriously sleeps. If you re-read the above, it becomes clear that neurons that are not used cannot exist for long - they die. Most likely, such an error is the result of ideas that existed some time ago that only those neurons that transmit an impulse work. However, per unit of time, only a few cells are in such a state, associated with the actions necessary for a person now: movement, speech, thinking. After a few minutes or hours, they are replaced by others who were previously “silent”.

Thus, over a certain period of time, the entire brain participates in the work of the body, first with some of its parts, then with others. The simultaneous activation of all neurons, which implies 100% brain function so desired by many, can lead to a kind of short circuit: a person will hallucinate, experience pain and all possible sensations, and shudder throughout the body.

Connections

It turns out that we cannot say that some part of the brain does not work. However, the abilities of the human brain are indeed not fully used. The point, however, is not in “sleeping” neurons, but in the quantity and quality of connections between cells. Any repeated action, sensation or thought is fixed at the neuronal level. The more repetitions, the stronger the connection. Accordingly, using the brain more fully involves building new connections. This is what training is built on. The child’s brain does not yet have stable connections; they are formed and strengthened in the process of the child’s acquaintance with the world. With age, it becomes more and more difficult to make changes to the existing structure, so children learn more easily. However, if you want, you can develop the abilities of the human brain at any age.

Unbelievable but true

The ability to form new connections and relearn produces amazing results. There are cases when she overcame all the limits of the possible. The human brain is a nonlinear structure. With all certainty, it is impossible to identify zones that perform one specific function and no more. Moreover, if necessary, parts of the brain can take over the “responsibilities” of the injured areas.

This is what happened to Howard Rocket, who was doomed to a wheelchair as a result of a stroke. He did not want to give up and, using a series of exercises, tried to develop his paralyzed arm and leg. As a result of everyday hard work, after 12 years he was able not only to walk normally, but also to dance. His brain very slowly and gradually rewired itself so that the unaffected parts of it could perform the functions necessary for normal movement.

Paranormal abilities

The plasticity of the brain is not the only feature that amazes scientists. Neuroscientists do not ignore such phenomena as telepathy or clairvoyance. Experiments are carried out in laboratories to prove or disprove the possibility of such abilities. Research by American and English scientists provides interesting results suggesting that their existence is not a myth. However, neuroscientists have not yet made a final decision: for official science there are still certain boundaries of what is possible, and the human brain, as it is believed, cannot cross them.

Work on yourself

In childhood, as neurons that have not found a “place” die off, the ability to remember everything at once disappears. The so-called eidetic memory occurs quite often in children, but in adults it is an extremely rare phenomenon. However, the human brain is an organ and, like any other part of the body, it can be trained. This means that you can improve your memory, improve your intelligence, and develop creative thinking. It is only important to remember that the development of the human brain is not a matter of one day. Training should be regular, regardless of your goals.

Unusual

New connections are formed at the moment when a person does something differently than usual. The simplest example: there are several ways to get to work, but out of habit we always choose the same one. The task is to choose a new path every day. This elementary action will bear fruit: the brain will be forced not only to determine the path, but also to register new visual signals coming from previously unknown streets and houses.

Such training also includes using the left hand where the right hand is accustomed (and vice versa, for left-handed people). Writing, typing, holding a mouse is so inconvenient, but, as experiments show, after a month of such training, creative thinking and imagination will significantly increase.

Reading

We have been told about the benefits of books since childhood. And these are not empty words: reading increases brain activity, as opposed to watching TV. Books help develop imagination. Crossword puzzles, puzzles, logic games, and chess match them. They stimulate thinking and force us to use those brain capabilities that are usually not in demand.

Physical exercise

How much the human brain works, at full capacity or not, also depends on the load on the whole body. It has been proven that physical training by enriching the blood with oxygen has a positive effect on brain activity. In addition, the pleasure that the body receives during regular exercise improves overall health and mood.

There are many ways to increase brain activity. Among them there are both specially designed and extremely simple ones, which we, without knowing it, resort to every day. The main thing is consistency and regularity. If you do each exercise once, there will be no significant effect. The feeling of discomfort that occurs at first is not a reason to quit, but a signal that this exercise makes the brain work.