Capabilities of the brain: what to do to achieve perfection. The Human Brain: An Unknown Biological Computer

The brain is a complex biological device, an organ consisting of many interconnected cells and processes. If we imagine all the connections in the brain as a single line, then it would be 7-8 times longer than the distance from the Earth to the Moon. And at the same time, this is a very small organ - in a modern person, it weighs from 1020 to 1970 grams.

Two fateful breakthroughs

The secrets and possibilities of the human brain have long been a sore point for researchers. Until recently, they could only build theories about its work, and the organ itself could only be observed during an autopsy. The first big breakthrough came when doctors were able to implant electrodes directly into the brain. Around the same time, it became clear how a neuron works and how it happens along the nerves and from one neuron to another.

The second big step forward happened when the methods of electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, positron emission and functional magnetic resonance imaging appeared. They made it possible to "look" inside a living, working brain. With the help of these tools, doctors and researchers are able to "see" which parts of the brain are active during sleep, conversation, thinking, it became possible to distinguish the normal functioning of the organ from its pathology, detect violations and make more accurate diagnoses.

The human brain: features and capabilities

This relatively small organ, which occupies only 2% of the total body weight, nevertheless consumes about 20% of all oxygen that enters the body. From birth to death, he never, even for a minute, stops his activity.

The human brain, whose capabilities and capabilities are still superior to the most modern computers, is able to remember 5 times more information than is contained in the Encyclopædia Britannica. According to some estimates, he can accommodate from 3 to 1000 terabytes. This is not even close to what currently exists in technology: by the end of 2015, it is planned to reach a capacity of only 20 terabytes.

Previously, it was believed that in an adult this organ is static - neural tissues remain unchanged and can only die, but the body is not able to grow new ones. However, by the end of the 20th century, thanks to the research of Elizabeth Goode, it became clear that new neurons and nervous tissue continue to grow throughout the life of the body.

However, the possibilities are not limited to new neurons. There was an opinion that this organ is not able to recover from injuries and injuries. Scientists from Karolinska University and Lund University conducted a study whose results could turn modern ideas on its head. According to their study, in places affected by a stroke, the body can “grow” new neurons to replace damaged ones.

Ability to process information

The ability to process information and adapt to circumstances is another property possessed by this body. Moreover, such adaptability makes one suspect the hidden possibilities of the human brain in many "ordinary" people. The ability to perceive and store an unlimited amount of information in Kim Peak or sonar vision in people like Daniel Kish and Ben Underwood are just two examples of such mysteries.

Daniel Kish and human echolocation

Is it possible to believe that a person is able to navigate by ear, like a bat? That a completely blind person would be able to walk without a guide, without a cane, without modern technical know-how? And not just walking - running, playing games, playing sports, mountain biking? The human brain, features and capabilities of Daniel Kish allow him to do this - he is one of those who have mastered sonar vision, or human echolocation.

Daniel lost the ability to see at a very young age, shortly after he was one year old. To navigate in space, he began to use sounds - clicks of the tongue, the echo of which returned to him and allowed him to "see" the environment. Gradually, he improved his ability to such an extent that he could do everything that ordinary children do - play games, ride a bicycle and, of course, walk without a guide.

Due to the lack of sight, many blind people have highly developed hearing. However, this is not just an excellent rumor - Daniel Kish, if I may say so, developed a new feeling out of it, which managed to replace one of the five missing ones. With the help of clicks of the tongue, he, as it were, sends sound into space and, according to the echo received in response, he is able to “see” the relief, the distance to objects, their shape and other details. However, Daniel Kish did not stop there - he created the organization World Access for the Blind and actively teaches sonar vision to other blind children and adults.

One of his most talented students is Ben Underwood, who had both eyes removed due to cancer at the age of three. In addition to him, other Kish students, Lucas Murray and Brian Bushway, also show incredible results. This clearly shows that the human brain is far from being fully understood, its features and capabilities go far beyond the limits of those skills that most people have enough for everyday life.

According to scientists, the echolocation process involves those parts of the brain that, in sighted people, are responsible for converting eye signals. In the case of the blind, they simply "repurposed". There is also a theory that sonar vision is not something unique - about 5% of people have such abilities, just completely undeveloped. And it is quite possible to teach them to both the blind and the sighted.

superpower competition

With the exception of professional waiters and mnemonics, few people can remember twenty unrelated words in a row. How about a few hundred words in 15 minutes? The seemingly incredible possibilities of the human brain are a common thing for participants in the World Memory Championship, which gathers several dozen people every year.

Participants in such competitions use mnemonics - a set of various memorization techniques and techniques that allows you to develop the usual capabilities of the human brain and store information of any type and almost any size in memory.

These people compete in memorizing a large number of faces and names, numbers, abstract pictures, maps, random words in a limited time: for example, you need to remember the sequence in which abstract pictures went for 15 minutes. Or as many random numbers as possible within an hour. Among the champions of this unusual sport are Dominic O'Brien, Simon Reinhard, Johannes Mallow and Jonas von Essen.

Most champions have gained these abilities through regular training - according to Ben Pridman, a three-time world champion in this discipline, anyone can achieve this. However, such superpowers of the human brain are also innate - for example, the mnemonist S. V. Shereshevsky and the American Kim Peak.

Kim Peak and Solomon Shereshevsky

Solomon Shereshevsky came under the supervision of psychologist A. Lurie when he was a fairly young man - and his memory was phenomenal without any training. His way of "storing" information is similar to the techniques of mnemonics known today. It seemed that the amount of his memory is not limited by anything. His only problem was learning to forget.

This man had what is called synesthesia. In all other respects, S. V. Shereshevsky remained quite ordinary. The situation is not the same with Kim Peak - he was born with certain disorders, which, however, by themselves should not have made him either a genius or a patient. However, already at 16 months the child learned to read, by the age of three he had mastered the newspapers, and by seven he had learned the Bible by heart. The book describes the capabilities of the human brain quite well (which, like Kim Peak, is a "savant", but is much more social and, unlike others, can explain exactly how it does the calculations).

Kim Peak kept maps of American cities in his head, hundreds of pieces of classical music, remembered several thousand books he had read. All this was not just "dead weight" - he understood the information in his memory, he could interpret and use it.

In 2002, he began playing the piano, voicing many works from memory. It was he who inspired the film "Rain Man", which became famous.

Phenomena of Science

Throughout human history, many things have happened that are difficult to explain to science. Moreover, there are cases that literally make scientists feel that the capabilities of the human brain are by no means limited to modern ideas about it.

Man with half a brain

At the age of 14, Carlos Rodriguez was in a car accident: the car he was driving crashed into a pole, and he himself flew out through the windshield and “landed” on his head. As a result, after the operation, he lost about 60% of his brain. The most amazing thing is that Rodriguez is still alive. Now he is more than a quarter of a century old, and he continues to live a normal life.

Although medicine has come a long way since Phineas Gage's time, such injuries are still considered very serious. In addition, it is believed that without the brain, all its parts, a person cannot live or lives like a "vegetable".

Rodriguez, Gage and many other survivors of severe trauma and loss of part of the brain prove that current views and theories are still wrong.

Phineas Gage: "a man with a hole in his head"

In the middle of the 19th century, an incident occurred that scientists and doctors have still not been able to explain: the builder Phineas Gage survived, having received a serious wound and having lost part of his brain, after a metal crowbar pierced his head. At that time, Gage was 25 years old.

The pin entered below the left eye and exited the body, flying a few more meters, leaving the young builder without a good part of his brain. However, he did not die. Moreover, he soon regained consciousness, and he was taken to the doctor at the nearest hospital. The doctor applied a bandage and cleaned the wound of splinters - that was all that medicine of that time could offer. People were sure that Phineas Gage would die.

After a while, a bacterial infection developed, and mold also grew. Nevertheless, after about 10 weeks, the patient recovered - he retained his memory, clear consciousness and his professional skills. Phineas Gage died in 1860, and this amazing case has not found an unequivocal explanation.

Tsiperovich phenomenon

However, the cases mentioned are not the most surprising. There is a phenomenon that demonstrates even more amazing capabilities of the human brain - the Tseperovich phenomenon. Yakov Tseperovich - a man who has not slept for more than thirty years, eats little and completely Time seems to have stopped for him - he still looks the same as in photographs of the 70s.

The story of this man began in 1979 - after severe poisoning, he was in a state and then fell into a coma. Coming out of it a week later, Yakov found that he could not sleep - he could not even lie horizontally. Doctors could neither explain nor change this state - only a few years later, having taken up yoga and meditation, Tseperovich learned to briefly take a horizontal position, but not for sleep, but for half-sleep.

Before that incident, Yakov was an ordinary person - he loved to fight, drink, worked as an electrician. After he began to be interested in oriental practices, he developed his own system of exercises. Recently lives in Germany.

Is it possible to learn superpowers

Not only scientists, doctors and "ordinary" people are also interested in the capabilities of the human brain - a documentary from the BBC, Discovery, stories from other TV channels and film crews invariably find viewers.

All sorts of trainings aimed at developing the personality or some of its aspects are also becoming more and more popular. Not an exception and rather unconventional and unauthorized by official science training materials from Vyacheslav Bronnikov or Mirzakarim Norbekov.

A variety of methods from the patrimony of practical psychology are very popular. For example, a project that also develops the capabilities of the human brain is “5 spheres”. Here, in contrast to, for example, Bronnikov's method, we are talking about quite traditional advice that fits into the theory of modern psychology.

It is quite possible that further research by scientists will prove the reality of alternative vision, and the ability to cure one's own diseases without modern medical technologies, by a simple effort of will, and other possibilities that are still considered supernatural. One thing is clear - many interesting discoveries await us in the future.

The human brain is capable of doing amazing things. A simple example: we can perceive light that is reflected from various objects around us. Light enters our eyes and our optic nerves convert it into electrochemical impulses. Impulses are the "language" of the brain that it uses to communicate. The electricity travels through the neural network and reaches the hippocampus, the area of ​​the brain responsible for analyzing these impulses. It is the hippocampus that distributes the received impulses to different areas of the brain. And now the impulse directed to the visual area of ​​the cerebral cortex suddenly turns into a road sign, seeing which we understand where to direct the car.

And even the most ordinary brain surgeries can be amazing cases. As a result of surgery, injury, or illness, the human brain can begin to do amazing, and in some cases, terrible things.

1. Pam Reynolds and her afterlife experience

Apparently, Pam Reynolds, a blues performer from Atlanta, Georgia, was a normal person before she underwent surgery to remove brain aneurysms. During the operation, doctors drained all the blood from her brain, so it was inactive for 45 minutes. All processes were interrupted in it, starting from receiving signals about the feeling of hunger from the stomach and ending with the transmission of visual and sound information.

Despite this, after waking up, the singer was able to describe in great detail everything that the doctors did to her. Her example is considered the most striking example of a post-mortem experience. However, Reynolds' experience is far from unique. In one hospital in the Netherlands, a study was conducted on cardiac patients. And the study found that out of 344 near-death patients, 18% reported experiencing "life after death" experiences.

And most of all in the history of the singer, the fact that experienced doctors were engaged in the “temporary shutdown” of her brain was impressive. However, she was able to reproduce all the details of the operation, from the description of the instruments used by the doctors to the topics of their conversations during the operation.

2. Henry Molaison and his inability to form new memories

Henry Molaison is a patient, one of a kind. Because only he had a chance to survive the operation to remove the medial temporal lobe of the brain. This was done in order to save him from debilitating attacks. When the doctor who performed the procedure found out what happened to Henry's memory, he categorically refused to perform such operations on anyone else, and also began to oppose other doctors performing such procedures.

The removal of the medial temporal lobe, located above the ear, led to the fact that Molaison began to suffer from a very rare disorder known as anterograde amnesia. With this disorder, the patient's brain cannot form new memories, but the patient remembers everything that happened to him in the past. That is, Henry remembered everything that happened to him before the operation, everything that happened to him in 27 years of his life. He still had the ability to form procedural memories, in other words, habits. But his brain was unable to capture new declarative memories, and he could not remember his friend with whom he had just had lunch, could not remember the name of the current president, and so on.

In this state, Henry lived for 55 years, and he died in 2008, when he was 82 years old. Because of his uniqueness, Henry has been the subject of a number of studies and is now known in neurological circles as the "HM" patient.

3. Robin Jenks Vanderlip and her Russian accent

Robin Jenks Vanderlip has never been to Russia. Robin is a resident of McLean, Virginia and has spent her entire life on the East Coast of the United States. But a couple of days after she fell down the stairs and hit her head, she woke up and found herself unable to talk. Over time, Robin's speech recovered, and then she noticed that she was speaking in her native English with a Russian accent.

Robin is one of 60 patients in the world who have been diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome by doctors. This is a very rare disease that is always associated with brain damage, either as a result of physical trauma or as a result of a stroke.

This may sound like a foreign accent, but patients don't "train" it on purpose, it's just that their speech center changes the way patients form words. And the most amazing thing about this syndrome is that the words are formed in a predictable way, and it all starts to resemble some existing accent, even if the person has never encountered it before.

4. Howard Engel can write but can't read

When Canadian writer Howard Engel suffered a stroke in 2001, he thought, "Well, I'm done with writing." This was indeed the case, because after a while he realized that one of the consequences of the stroke was the inability to recognize printed text. Instead, it seemed to Howard that he saw a text in front of him, written in a foreign language unfamiliar to him. He could not read individual words. He couldn't even pronounce the names of the letters.

What is surprising here is that Engel soon continued to write, and he did this despite the fact that he did not understand the meaning of the words. The ability to write from visual memory passed into motor memory. Engel defines words in a special way, he deduced letters over and over again, using only motor memory to write them. And he found that he was able to read as long as he wrote the text. Since the ability to write was not lost, the writer began to actively fight for a normal life. As a result, he was able to achieve serious results in the fight against his illness, but he could not fully regain the ability to read.

5. A girl from Germany sees perfectly with only one hemisphere of the brain.

The excellent vision of a 10-year-old girl from Germany baffled doctors, as she was born with only one, the left hemisphere of the brain. And for good vision, both hemispheres are needed, since visual information coming from the optic nerves is fed to opposite hemispheres of the brain for processing and storage. Therefore, with one hemisphere, only one eye should see, in the case of a girl, only the right.

However, the girl's vision is excellent and she has normal binocular vision. In 2010, doctors performed a brain scan on her in an attempt to find out the cause of this phenomenon. It turned out that the optic nerve of the girl's left eye "migrated" to the left hemisphere, that is, the left hemisphere of the girl's brain can perceive information coming from both eyes. In the visual cortex of her left hemisphere, special areas have formed that are designed only for processing visual information from the left eye. This helps to avoid confusion.

6 Almost Melted Baby Brain

The Australian girl now known in medical literature as "Baby Z" was born in 2008 and began to suffer from seizures. They were caused by a rare genetic defect known as "molybdenum cofactor deficiency". Because of it, the brain cannot produce enzymes that create a cofactor, a special non-protein component that the body needs in order for other substances in the body to perform their functions. As a result, a huge amount of sulfite accumulated in the child's brain. Sulfite is toxic, and it literally melts the brain, resulting in the death of the patient.

In the process of "melting", the child experienced severe pain and seizures, and tissue damage occurred in the brain, followed by loss of swallowing and movement functions.

"Baby Z" is the first time that the above disorder has been successfully treated. An experimental treatment developed in Germany was brought to Australia, and after permission was obtained for its use, doctors began treating the baby. Three days later, the seizures and twitching stopped. A few weeks later, the girl made a full recovery, by now she is alive and well, and her brain processes sulfites like any other.

Source 7The Pittsburgh Woman Who Seemed All Her Friends Like Strangers

In 1996, a 22-year-old American woman suffered a head injury as a result of a car accident. Two years passed, and she began to suffer from seizures. In 2004, she was taken to the psychiatric ward of a Pittsburgh hospital, because the woman kept talking about being surrounded by strangers, although these "strangers" were her friends and members of her family. The woman told the doctors that one of the roommates was her boyfriend, that the nurse who worked with her was her own sister, and that one of the hospital doctors was her mother.

Doctors diagnosed the woman with a rare disease called Fregoli syndrome. It is named so in honor of an actor from Italy, who was famous for the very fast change of costumes during the performance, and the very fast change of roles. Patients suffering from this syndrome often claim that the people around them are the same person, or they are several persons who are potentially dangerous to the patient.

After a month of treatment, the woman's condition was stabilized, while she did not remember anything that she had experienced.

8. Orlando Serrel and his incredible memory

Orlando Serrel is an incredibly gifted man. But he did not receive his gift naturally, but after being hit with a baseball bat. At the age of 10, the boy received a blow during the game, after which his head hurt for several days. And after some time, Orlando found that he was able to remember what was happening on any day, starting on August 17, 1979 (it was on this day that he was hit on the head).

In most cases, he can even remember the weather on a given day, and similar minor details of his life. He himself says that his amazing ability is the result of the fact that he sees a calendar in front of his "mind's eye", while he does not perform any special memory training exercises.

9. Michael Cork and his inability to sleep

Until 1990, the world record for being awake - 11.5 days (276 hours) - belonged to a man from Finland named Toymi Soini. After that, no one else appeared in the Guinness Book of Records, since the organization refused to enter records into it that tell about behavior that is extremely dangerous to health.

Because we all need to sleep, and those who do not sleep at all will not live very long. It was because of the lack of sleep that a Chicago music teacher named Michael Cork died. His brain literally turned out to be "blocked", and did not allow the person to fall asleep. Cork suffered from a rare disease called fatal familial insomnia, in which a particular gene stops coding for certain proteins, causing toxins to accumulate in the thalamus. This part of the brain is responsible for sleep, and because it begins to work incorrectly, the body and mind are constantly awake.

A few months later, Cork showed signs of dementia. In an attempt to somehow regulate the functioning of his brain, doctors tried to put him into a state of artificial coma with the help of drugs, but even in this state, the brain still remained active. Cork died in 1992, six months after his first sleepless night.

10. Sam Escubel and his foot in the brain

After another ultrasound, Sam Exubel's mother was shocked by the news that a tumor was developing in her son's brain. Three days after giving birth, Sam underwent brain surgery, during which the tumor was removed.

When the surgeons finally got to the tumor, they were surprised to realize that a small human foot was growing in the child's brain. Doctors put forward two possible diagnoses: either it is a teratoma, or it is the so-called "fetus in the fetus." A teratoma is a rare type of tumor that can grow hair, teeth, nails, or skin inside. "Fetus in fetus" is another very rare disorder where one of the twins, while in the womb, absorbs the other.

After careful research, the surgeons found that they really had a case of a “fetus in a fetus”, because in addition to the foot, they also found an arm, thigh and intestines. The surgeons also successfully removed all these tumors, and now the child is alive and well.

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What is the highest center of regulation? Part of the human body, a complex and mysterious organ. Knowledge about him is often mythical. What does he hide in the depths? Is it possible to trust the "facts" from the Internet about the miraculous manifestations of unusual abilities in people who have undergone brain injuries? How far do the hidden possibilities of this beautiful device, given to us by nature itself, extend? Why aren't all people born geniuses? What is the secret of the outstanding achievements of individuals? How to expand your intellectual horizons? How to use superpowers? To what extent is one nation “smarter” than another? Is it true that blondes are more intelligent than brunettes? Why develop mental abilities? Each of us once worried at least one of these questions. Let's compare the facts and figure out how far the possibilities of the human brain extend?

Scientists have learned to diagnose changes in brain structures and have identified a relationship with a number of diseases, in particular, cancer, diseases of internal organs, such as the heart, and mental disorders. Studies of human behavior and the reaction of individual sections in the head helped to establish patterns in the interaction of the main coordinator, the center of activity and its divisions.

It became clear that there were more questions than answers. It is still not clear why, under the same conditions, the result in different patients is disproportionately different? Why, with the same mental loads, the development of children takes place with a huge gap? For example, it seems that everything is given to geniuses without effort, and the exhausting intellectual training of children with an average level almost does not give a result? Parents are offended, unequal opportunities give rise to envy, laziness, unwillingness to make efforts. There are methods for educating geniuses that develop curricula. Mental Health Tips for the Elderly. What's wrong? Why does the question of developing additional skills remain problematic? How, after all, to develop the ability of the brain?

How to develop your potential?

People are very eager to get results without effort. You can steal someone else's valuable thing, appropriate someone else's labor, take possession of someone else's wallet, rob a bank, illegally withdraw money from an account. Other people's organs can also be "sewn on". Here is the mind of someone else to "set" until they learned! Only by his own efforts throughout his life a person is able to develop his potential. Personal regular activities. Provided that deep feelings are involved. Without the development of the emotional sphere, soul, morality, spirituality, human qualities, the ability to empathize, without interaction with the world of nature and people, he will not reveal himself. That's how wonderful the human body is!

For those who have not given up, who strive to rise an order of magnitude higher than themselves, are ready to overcome difficulties, overcoming their laziness, who are sure that the depths of our brain know no boundaries, if they are not blocked by thoughts of their own impotence, simple tricks will help. Read aloud! Go in for sports! Love life! Don't be lazy and learn a foreign language! Learn useful activities that you don't normally do, like playing a musical instrument, chess, knitting, car repairs, whatever, as long as you don't feel like you can do it. Here is the foundation, the push, the signal to the control center of all body systems: “I can’t do this!” It is efforts in this direction that can change you and your life for the better. As they say, "through thorns to the stars"! This way you can expand the capabilities of the human brain.

You know the expression: “All diseases are from nerves”? Can't be nervous? How about no nerves? It would be more correct to say "due to negative thoughts." Who cares? Thoughts backed by emotions are like an electric current. Like alternating and direct current, positively or negatively charged neurons transmit impulses of different wavelengths, of different quality, having creative or destructive properties. Positive thoughts, driven by creative feelings, replenish damaged nerve fibers, negative ones “tear” them, disrupting complex connections in the body, up to the occurrence of somatic diseases. The connection is direct. Moreover, we are nervous because of others, but we hurt ourselves! Remember this! As one cartoon character says, “You can’t think a bad thought for a long time ...” The human brain is complex, so that no function of it is disturbed, you need to maintain a positive attitude.

What role do feelings play in the development of intelligence?

Why, knowing all this, people do not take care of each other? They take care of things, they don't remember about themselves. Why don't they worry about the abilities of the brain, how unintelligent, undeveloped? Lazy, finally! Not overly concerned that they lack kindness, empathy, love? Do they worry, do they love, do others value them, how generous are others to them? How grateful are they? Blasphemy.

The world of material values ​​has supplanted everything human, living in people. We are robots, slaves of things, cash machines, ATMs, computing devices. Anything we, but not people, alas! Our main center is wiser than us. More rational, maybe even smarter. Having blocked, hidden from his owners, modern subhumans, his hidden abilities and talents, how do you know what monstrous deeds he protects from? Psychologists say that if something cannot be invented, then the time has simply not come? Indeed, why do discoveries in the world of science occur after centuries of unsuccessful searches up to a certain time period?

Maybe humanity is obliged to earn a blessing from above? suffer? Begging? Or is the discovery time just a consequence of a painstakingly verified search in each field of knowledge, a natural result of efforts, a mathematical solution? Be that as it may, due to human genius, modern society enjoys the fruits of scientific achievements. Life is filled with highly intelligent technical devices. Only the quality of the world of the living, the living spiritually, has turned into hell! Devices hear, speak, fly, walk, dance, cry, heal, even write music. People do not hear, do not speak, do not feel, yes, and do not think. After all, they think, count, write programs, devices, robots for them. Only gadgets like themselves cannot be created. They don't know how to love. Replace people... how can they?! They are not given to completely copy, repeat the abilities of the human brain!

Good to know: Male and female brain: the unity of opposites

Why should we develop the capabilities of the brain? To stay human. To not stop feeling joy and pain? Don't forget to cry and laugh. Enjoy sunrise and sunset. Smile at the first rays of the sun and the spring rain. Hear the birds singing, admire the flowering garden, fall asleep to the sound of the surf, listen to the roar of the waves. To be people in the full sense of the word, with a capital letter.

The greatness of a person is not in his unlimited possibilities, not in his superiority over others, not in his abilities, achievements, talents and IQ level. No, not in this! In the ability to compassion, in his creative activity in relation to other people. In disinterestedness, love, the level of caring. Only if the direction of the individual's lifestyle has a long-term, life-affirming goal, will his intellect reveal itself to its full potential. Because the Creator of life on earth, the Great Designer, arranged us in this way.

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