Imagup General Magazine 2024
The human brain is an absolutely amazing thing. Science is still learning every day about this astonishing part of your body. While the research continues, we are amazed by new annual findings that push our understanding of what this body part is truly capable of. Always be careful of what thoughts and stimuli you introduce into your mind as the effects of new information can cause all sorts of deep-rooted reactions. Here is a glimpse into the inner working of our brains, and what astonishing things the mind is capable of.
Be Careful What You Wish For
It has been shown that just through the act of thinking, we are actually sculpting both our brains and our bodies. When we have deep and directed thoughts, our brain sends out neurotransmitters, which act as messages to communicate across our body and nervous system. These neurotransmitters control all of your body’s functions, like stress levels, mood, digestion, and hormones.
You have more power over your brain and body than ever thought possible. Your mindset has been proven to have control over your performance in every avenue from sports to your career and more. What you think about daily is forming a constant feedback loop to your subconscious and your body. So much about the inner workings of the subconscious are still unknown, and this is where phrases like “we only use 10% of our brain power” comes from, because there is a lot of processing happening on the subconscious level. The rapidly growing field of epigenetics studies the incredible power of our brain’s neurotransmitters and what they can do to our body and chemistry. This field suggests that through our experiences and thoughts, we are literally turning certain hereditary genes on and off, actually shaping ourselves through our brain’s actions. This is incredible and directly contradicts Darwin’s theory of evolution, that states genes change over many generations, and how you were born is the immutable fate that was dealt to you.
Have you ever heard of the placebo effect? Through various studies, we have realized that through suggestion alone, your brain can trick your body into reducing pain, or change your body in numerous other ways. Through the act of taking useless sugar pills but telling a patient it is medicine for his underlying illness, the patient could potentially recover from his issues just from suggestion alone. A similar phenomenon has been known to occur in people that are perpetually telling themselves they are sick. This strange occurrence has caused numerous cases of not only illness, but hysterical blindness, false pregnancies, phantom injuries and more. Our mind acts in mysterious ways, and the full potential of these effects are still unknown.
How Activities Can Shape Your Brain
There are a variety of activities that can help your brain create new neurological pathways to enhance your thought processes. Learning new skills influences this process and encourages growth. Games like poker have been shown scientifically to stimulate the brain and enhance the mind, as well as reduce stress overall. Professional players have reported that playing poker increases mental focus as well as helps them expand their capacity for reasoning and pattern recognition. In another example, when you train in martial arts or any physical skill, your brain is creating new neurological pathways that form what we know as “muscle memory.”
There are numerous ways you can train your brain for success and open a lot of new abilities and potential you never knew you had.
Meditation is another activity that has a magnitude of long term effects on your brain, many of which are stunning and not fully understood. The act of meditation has been shown on EEG and MRI scans to activate certain sectors of your brain, and the implications could be massive. While you are in a meditative state, your frontal lobe seems to “go offline.” This is the section of your brain responsible for self-conscious reasoning, awareness and planning. Your brain goes into a mode where it stops processing new information and is instead looking inward at pre-gathered data. Meditation has shown to increase compassion, gratitude, creativity, memory and most significantly, grey matter. The substance in your brain known as grey matter is used in controlling several things from your motor functions, to balance, precision and coordination.
Brain preparing is extremely popular nowadays, frequently promoted as an approach to hone your psyche and even lift knowledge. While numerous psychological researchers propose that the cases encompassing mind preparing are both overstated and deluding, there is a wealth of exploration recommending that particular kinds of exercises can be useful for your cerebrum’s wellbeing.
Our brains are wondrous and powerful things that control us on both conscious and subconscious levels. The feedback loop that we create with our thoughts can control our bodies in ways we never would have thought possible just some decades ago. With science progressing rapidly every year, there is no telling what discoveries we will make in the near future that will further our understanding of our own bodies and chemistry.
