Computer vs. Brain (CvB.net) comes up with a "simplistic" calculation to say that the brain has about 100 million MIPS (Million computer Instructions Per Second) while today's most powerful supercomputer only has a few million MIPS worth in processor speed; and there's still the matter about the memory to deal with...

Everyday, scientists continue to discover something new about this extremely complex and fascinating 1,200 lbs. of mushy, yucky mass that pumps up about 3 cans of soda every minute.

Stay with us as we continue this exploration of the brain....everyday!

 

Ever wonder why you seldom have recollections of the moments when you are driving from home to your office or school? These are the times when your brain goes into autopilot. Yale researchers say this is the time (when you are driving on a familiar route) that striatum, the area of your brain that records cues and landmarks, takes over --- and you travel on autopilot. One prevailing view is that the striatum is involved in mapping context to action.

This explains why you forget to drop off the dry cleaning because you are not paying attention. Your mind wanders somewhere else, perhaps thinking about your shopping list, or about that meeting with an important client...you simply sail on by.

When you are driving on unfamiliar route, on the other hand, your brain activates another area called the hippocampus---this is involved in a more flexible system called spatial learning. Christopher J. Pittenger, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale, reported their experiment on mice, where they disrupted the striatum, impaired their capability to complete landmark navigation tasks. This also improved the mice's spatial learning ability.

Pittenger says this findings could lead to a better understanding of certain mental illnesses where patients "have destructive, habit-like patterns of behavior or thought. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, and drug addiction involve abnormal function of the striatum and may also involve disruption of the interactions between the two learning systems, which may make habits stronger and less flexible."

Pittenger adds that this is part of cognitive-behavioral therapy they do to teach patients recognize destructive habits, and learn or retrain themselves to do things differently.

Professor Changiz Geula at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Northwestern's Feinberg School in Illinois said that their research has shown that, we accumulate these tangles as we grow older. These protein tangles are associated with memory loss. People with Alzheimer's disease have more of these tangles compared to those without.

What makes this more interesting is the result of their study on the brains of "super aged" people who have died---they have much fewer or zero tangles! "Super aged" people are the elderly whose memories stay razor-sharp and performed way better than regular dudes their age.

It would be cool then if these geeks in white could find a way to "untangle" these tangles in the brain, right?

 

Scientists today are ganging up against the practice of multitasking. Neuroscientist Earl Miller at MIT says "People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves. The brain is very good at deluding itself." When you think that you are really paying attention to all the things around you at the same time, you are not. What you do is you switch between tasks very rapidly and no matter how good you think you are with multitasking, you are more prone to suffer misses than when you concentrate on a single task from start to finish.

Npr.com's October 30 issue reports on the different levels of a person's multitasking skills based on his age. It says a child is more focused and could literally ignore everything that goes on around him when doing a task--meaning, he could only do one task at a time. University of Michigan psychology professor Cindy Lustig tells us that as the child grows, his multitasking skills develop and reaches its peak between ages 20 and 30. "Beyond that, the brain experiences ‘internal chatter' and has to work a lot harder to suppress distractions and maintain focus."

This explains why a student can do a research on the internet while watching tv, and talk to a friend on the phone at the same time. You will be amazed to discover that she's also constantly switching on iTunes, Twitter, and is on IM with another classmate the whole time.

However, as you grow older, "internal chatter," as Lustig points out, cause you to diminish your ability to focus. Jon Hamilton, in a post about multitasking, wrote, "Brain Overload, Something's Gotta Give." David Meyer at the University of Michigan says, "multitasking causes a kind of brownout in the brain, a dimming of lights there's just isn't enough power." When you get back to a task after another, the "connecting" thought process you did for that task must be re-created and connections re-established again. This is where your lapses could happen.

Having episodes of reading on "auto-pilot"? Do you end up re-reading a single paragraph over and over again without getting what it says? Volition Thought House says this frustration is caused by the unfocused and low performance brain state. You are not "in the zone." By listening to iMusic IvyFocus, "you'll experience amazingly high levels of focus, stamina and mental acuity that will deliver" positive results in minutes.

And the boss in the office? He's back on the intercom: "Hey, John! My Blackberry won't charge. Can you come in here and find out what's wrong? Where's my coffee? .....John?.....John?....Hello?"

Poor John.

 

While we feel our heart somersault and go thumpity-thump-thump when we see the love of our life, it is actually our brain that is in action here. Scientific American cite findings, from scientists at the University College London, that the area right behind our cerebral cortex - our "thinking" part of the brain-is what accounts for feelings of love.

Stop the press! Revision is needed.  We ought to rewrite all those romantic lines to "I love you with all of my brain!"

Curiously enough, putamen and insula (the regions where brain scans showed activity when experiment volunteers were shown pictures of a loved one) are also the regions identified with aggression and disgust. No wonder love and hate seem to be treading on a thin line!

More curious yet, is a discovery by Professor Semir Zeki, team leader; that a large part of the cerebral cortex ("thinking" part of the brain-remember?) deactivates (meaning, the person becomes less judgmental) when shown a picture of a loved one.

Now you have it ! If your best friend falls in love with a guy less comely than Quasimodo, don't ask her, "What were you thinking?" because she isn't.

You know Concentration, that game (also known as Memory or Pairs) where you try to figure out which cards, laid face down on the table, are paired? Research for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have found out that games like these could power up your intelligence a level or two higher.

You see, that "smartness" you use for reasoning and solving new problems without relying on memory is called fluid intelligence. So when you do some mental calisthenics by playing memory games (supposed to improve memory), you are actually also improving your fluid intelligence. This fluid intelligence is considered to be your prime arsenal for academic and professional success.

So now, if you want to while away your time by playing Tetris or Snake on your cellphone, why not play Pairs, instead?