Brain

BRAIN -Sitting on top of the spinal cord, not all that unlike the ball on top of flagpole, the grayish- pink brain – a mucky mass of neurons, ridges and grooves- makeup man’s control center, his most important coping tool.

The human brain is still the most mysterious, magnificent and marvelous organ in the body and most complex thing on earth. The three-pound (1.36 Kg.) globe of intertwining cells and neurons is about the only major organ that has still baffled scientists and researchers.

The home of the mind, the soul, the home of life itself refuses to unravel its magical mystique except to the most dogged explorer and even then, like the universe, not enough can be ever known about this little lump of cells that makes mankind human. It is wonder of the world an electrochemical; metaphysical entity so elaborate and sophisticated that the most difficult task it can undertake is to understand itself. A goal it pursues with the distinct feeling that it may well be beyond its own comprehension. From the every day miracles of sight and movement speech and memory, to the dazzling glories of reason, emotion and creativity. The functions of the human brain establish it as the dominant organ in existence. Without it, the human body is just an over designed eating machine.

For starters, consider this every human brain consists of about 10 billion nerve cells, which are so densely packed that they almost resemble a solid wall. Every day our brain records more than 86 million bits of information, which even the fastest computer cannot reveal. Every brain can conveniently hold up to 100 trillion (12 Zeros) bits of information for a lifetime. If brain’s metabolism were converted into energy, it could power a 20 watts bulb. Each second about 100,000 different chemical reactions occur in the brain. It takes one five hundredth of a second for the brain recognized an object after light from the object first enter the eyes. Every attempt at exploring the mysteries that is more baffling. And the brain is the only organ known whose power increases, the more it is used conversely, it’s power dull from Non-use.

It is an enigma, all right. And armies of scientists now working across the globe are trying to crack it. It is tough, and the result surprises even the most dogged expert. Let us take a peep into the throne of the intellect and what scientists are doing to just understand it.

To start with let us skip the parts of the brain and thus avoid its jargon. Let the Scientists worry about that. We shall instead explore its wonders, limits frontiers, mysteries and magic, which are more interesting and readable.

The core of the brain’s magic is done by a microscopic, seemingly simple chemical-containing entity called the "Neuron.” These are tiny cells with a central core from which long tail and “dendrites” emerge. There are up to 100 billion of such neurons that inter links with each other. The cross-connections average one quadrillion (15 Zeros), which even the most advanced super computer by 2025 AD, will not match. Says brain scientist Dr. William shoemaker of the Salk Institute in California. “The average neuron is as complex as an entire small computer.”

It is so complex and yet seems so simple that hordes of scientists are specializing in just neuron research alone. Neurons finally emerge to form “Nerve” that crisscrosses our body, giving us sensation, pain, pleasure etc. Neuron work on a combination of electricity and chemistry. When a message reaches them from a nerve ending, they fire a chemical called "Neurotransmitter.” This travels across a gap, called “Synapse” to receptors on the next cell, which respect the process till a million neurons have been activated. It takes to neurotransmitters that carry bits of information between each other, to remember 200 to think bard on something and 400 to feel continuous pain.

The brain is divided into two halves. The right side, which controls, all the body’s intelligence- music, art, intuition ESP etc. The left side of the brain (which controls the body’s right side affairs) is supposedly the seat of logic, mathematics, motor, functions, learned skills abilities, etc. In the US some Scientists are making money teaching how one can use both sides of the brain to maximum advantages.

After all the myth is we use only 10 % of our brain capabilities even if doubled it, we would all be geniuses, and what if we quadrupled it? But why is it a myth? Because there is no proof yet on what percentage of the brain’s capacity is used, how it can be increased why only some percentage of the brain’s capacity is used and how it can be increased? Why only some percentage is used? And so on.

But some empirical evidence does exist to show that the brain allows for excess capacity. One, every day we lose about 10,000 neurons through ware and tear. Yet much of memory is never lost and long-term memory, rarely ever. Soon before the neurons die, they transfer their information database to other neurons, or to special cells that just store information.

And to the brain has remarkable powers to heal it. In minor brain strokes, new neuron connections are formed that had been lost. In amnesia (loss of memory) cases, scientists are just finding out that memory is not lost, only clouded. And in aggressive hypnotism, patients have been able to remember the smallest and most insignificant details of their earlier wonder, how the brain can store so much data so long.

But the billion-dollar question that should interest all of us is,

·         What makes a genius?

·         What makes an intelligent mind?

·         Why Shakuntla Devi’s brain unlike ours?

·         What made Einstein do what billions of human can never do-think

      In super abstract terms?

·         How come a three old Mozart can remember and play full works

·         By just looking at the compositions once?

·         Can genius be produced?

Shankutla Devi is almost a freak of nature, like Einstein, or Picasso. But what if all humans could engineer their brains to levels that naturally persist in the brain of people like Shankuntla Devi? If it is feasible?

Einstein was a below average student in his school days. Later he became great physicist who proved mathematically that the velocity of light was the only constant factor in the Universe. When he was asked by Jamna Lal Bajaj’s son-in Law R Narayan the secret of his success, Einstein showed his meditation room where he practiced Patanjali’s system of Yoga and meditation and followed celibacy for four years. Einstein reached across the ages to the Rishis who declared there is no reality- only Maya exist. The Laws of gravitation and electricity have been discovered by what they actually are, no one knows. Scientists are now admitting that atomic energy is just mind stuff. Our Shastras had proclaimed this long back- that the physical world operates under one fundamental law of Maya- the principle cause and effect, action and reaction. To surmount Maya and uncover the secret of creation was the task assigned to the human race? Any amount of intellectual analysis cannot penetrate through this Maya because Maya is ignorance. The fabric of creation is Maya. A saint looks beyond Maya and merges his consciousness with the supreme soul.

Adolf Hitler thought so and asked Aryans to selectively produce the best humans. But scientists think so too, Professor Jean Rostand writes, “There is no prior reason why we should not succeed in simulating the working of the brain, just as we do with other, less exalted vital parts.” Some drugs exist which dispel tiredness; increases concentration and lead to increased memory ability. Thus by addition tiny amounts of these drugs with nutritional diets, can the brain be made to function better?

Cajole couldn’t have been more correct. The brain is still the single biggest mystery facing us today. With 100 billion neuron that forms one quadrillion (one followed by 15 zeroes) interconnections. It is a marvel of engineering that man cannot duplicate or fully understand at least for next 50 years.

The latest theory in psycho-neurology is this. The brain is divided into two halves, the left side, and the right side each connected with some form of intelligence. Almost 80% human use the left side, which is not the seat of “real” intelligence, so now tap your right side.

Is it as easy as it is sounds? No, but a slew of books on how to make it happen, and a clutch of “experts” teaching you how to do it with maximum results have just formed a mini-industry. The biggest buyer is big business and the biggest market is of course the U.S. The takers are the top slot Companies.

·         Central Data Corp.

·         General Electric.

·         International Business Machines Corp.

·         Good Year Tire Co.

·         Polaroid Corp.

·         General Foods Inc.

·         Shell Petroleum

·         Ford Motor Company and others.

The potential? Hundreds of millions of dollars now billions if science offers some “Proof” that such activity is “scientific.”  

Let us look at the basics. The two halves of the brain are joined together by a cluster of fibers and neurons called the Corpus Callous. The right side of the brain controls almost all the functions of the left side of the body. The left side of the brain controls on right side functions.

The left side is more verbal more logical, Mathematical, organized, meticulous and deduction. That’s why most humans are more agile doing tasks with their right hands, even writing with it (according to researchers, the speech of 95 % of right hander’s and 70 % of the left hander’s is controlled by the left side.)

On the other hand, the right side of the brain is the silent partner, the sublime one, where intuition takes place; thinking is done graphically (verbally in the left) the seat of random access memory (logical memory in the left). The muted side that, thinks inductionally. (Deduction logic is when a=b and b=c than a=c. Induction is when a=b, then a could be equal to c, even when the relation of A and C is not specified.)

According to Discover Magazine. The first string of research into the right side came by accident in 1960 at the California Institution Technology. Nobel Prize psychologist Dr. Roger Sperry and his team were studying patients whom have undergone highly experimental brain surgery for epilepsy. Surgeons had out the Corpus Callous, an arching bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and the right halves of the cerebrum the largest and most sophisticated part of the brain. The results astonished, Dr. Sperry wrote, “Each disconnection hemisphere appears to have a mind of its own.         

Further research lead to another finding are, most people show their brain sides. “Either they’re logical, verbal and analytical. Left brain types who became Lawyers, Accountants, Supervisors or Engineers or else they are the right brain’s that rely for guidance on leaps of institution and gut feeling, the poet’s dreamers, sales-man and entrepreneurs.