Amazing Brain-Facts!

1. You have a finite amount of will power each day because to exercise will power you need energy
in the form of oxygen and glucose That’s why it’s harder to say ‘no’ when you are tired or not feeling
yourself.
2. A thought is a physical pathway in the brain. The more you have that thought the more you groove
that path and the easier it is to have it again. That’s why having negative thoughts are never a great
idea.
3. Speaking of which, you have approximately 70,000 thoughts per day, although many will be the
same ones looping round and round on your grooved cranial highway.
4. Even if you consider yourself a left-brained person, your brain will still switch over to the right side
every 90 to 120 minutes and then back again. That’s why even left-brained people can have times of
the day when they are more creative and right-brained people can sometimes get their taxes in
order.
5. Reading out loud to kids accelerates their brain development.
6. Reframing negative events in a positive light literally rewires your brain and can make you a
happier person, as can regular meditation.
7. The brain is approximately 75% water, but you should never drink it.
8. Your brain only weighs about 3lbs yet uses between 20% and 25% of your energy supplies each
day.
9. There are approximately 10 to the power of 60 atoms in the universe. Your brain laughs in the
face of that figure however, as it has 10 to the power of 1,000,000 different ways it can wire itself up.
That’s the number 10 followed up with 1 million zeroes, which is to all intents and purposes (for
anybody not called Stephen Hawking or Rob Collins), an infinite amount of ways.
10. Speaking of large numbers, there are approximately 1.1 trillion cells and 100 billion neurons in
the average human brain.
11. The slowest speed information passes around your brain is approximately 260 mph
12. Your brain was disproportionately large compared to other organs when you were born.
That’s why babies look a bit like aliens. Not yours of course, yours are cute, just other peoples
babies.
13. If you lose blood flow to your brain you will last about 10 second before you pass out.
14. Your brain has no pain receptors which is why if I managed to remove the top of your skull
without you noticing I could poke around all day without you feeling a thing. The skull removal may
hurt a bit though.
15. Even though we say the amygdala regulates danger, the cerebellum motor control, and the
limbic system emotions etc, this is somewhat misleading as no part operates independently and all
need other parts of the brain to get their job done.
16. Your peripheral vision improves at night which is why pilots are taught to use their peripheral
vision when looking for traffic.
17. Leaving aside degenerative brain disease, your brain never loses the ability to learn and change
because it’s effectively plastic and constantly rewiring itself.
18. It ‘s a self development urban myth that we only use 10% of our brain. We use it all and if you
don’t believe me cut a bit out and see what happens.
19. If you were to measure your brainwave activity you wouldn’t see any drop off when you’re
asleep. You may be napping, but your brain is still working hard pumping your heart, digesting your
food, maintaining your blood pressure and much more to make sure you don’t wake up dead.
20. Research has shown that the hippocampus which deals with visual-spatial awareness, is larger
in London Taxi drivers than normal people. London ‘cabbies’ have to spend months, sometimes
years, learning literally every street in the Capital before they are allowed a license. This process is
known as ‘The Knowledge’ and it literally enlarges that part of their brain. Unfortunately, it doesn’t
help them with anger management issues when cyclists get in their way.
21. Until relatively recently scientists thought that the brain was the only area of the human body that
didn’t generate new cells. We now know that’s not true and the brain does reproduce shiny new cells
for you to use
22. You have something in your brain called mirror neurons. If you see somebody stub their toe for
example, the same pain area will light up in your own brain causing you to flinch.
Mirror neurons weren’t even known to exist prior to the early 1990’s, but now there is a growing
belief in the scientific community they are responsible for us feeling empathy toward others.
23. When somebody takes cocaine their pleasure center (nucleus accumbens) lights up and
dopamine and serotonin are released. Giving to charity or helping people in need also activates the
nucleus accumbens. What a win/win that is!
24. Multi-tasking is a self development urban myth. You simply cannot do it efficiently no matter what
manufacturers of smart phones want you to believe. According to the University of Utah, there are a
few people (about 2.5% of the population) who can do two things consciously* at once without
seeing any degradation in performance. They are called super-taskers. However, for most people all
the brain is doing is going backwards and forwards very quickly and giving the illusion of multi-
tasking. The reality is performance is inhibited by this approach not improved.
25. Your brain is constantly lying to you when you have your eyes open. Because it cannot deal with
every single detail that you’re looking at, the occipital lobe is joining the dots with what it presumes is
there.
26. Similarly, your brain doesn’t record memories like video as it would be easy to assume. It takes
snapshots of the more important bits and then when you recall the event it guesses what happened
in between based on prior experience.
27. Your brain finds it very easy to create false memories largely because of the above and the fact
that it spends so much time guessing what’s happening.
When scientists exposed people to Photoshopped images of themselves at various event years prior
they were soon able to explain what they were doing and recall the event with clarity even though
they were never there.
There will be events you swear blind happened the way you remember, but never actually did. A
sobering thought.
28. Your brain is fairly crap at distinguishing between what’s really happening and what you are
merely imagining. Which is why horror films scare people.
29. The brain is very poor at concentrating for long periods of time and needs to clear it’s head so to
speak about every 90 minutes or so. Which is why if you’re delivering training and you want to
maximize results, you should allow people to take lots of mini breaks rather than one long break for
lunch.

(The above points are a compilation and not written by Swami Swatmananda)