Sharp Brains: Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Nov 25, 2007

Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together

By: Alvaro Fernandez

Who has not heard “Use It or Lose It”. Now, what is “It”? Last week I gave a talk at the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cisco, and one of the areas atten­dants seemed to enjoy the most was learn­ing what our brains are and how they work, peak­ing into the “black box” of our minds. With­out under­stand­ing at least the basics, how can we make good deci­sions about our own brain health and fitness?

Let’s review at a glance:

The brain is com­posed of 3 “brains” or main sub-systems, each named after the evo­lu­tion­ary moment in which the sub-system is believed to have appeared.

Theropod A) Neo­cor­tex, or Human Brain, is the most recent area, where we per­form high-level think­ing and com­plex inte­gra­tive tasks. Other mam­mals do have this part too, but in smaller pro­por­tion of the whole brain vol­ume. This is where we have our right and left hemi­spheres.
B) Lim­bic Sys­tem, or Mam­malian Brain, crit­i­cal for emo­tions and for memory,

C) Cere­bel­lum and Stem, or Rep­til­ian Brain, that reg­u­lates basic vital vari­ables such as breath­ing, heart­beat and motor coor­di­na­tion (Credit for pic: Arnold Key­ser­ling and R.C.L.)
Theropod B) Lim­bic sys­tem: emo­tions are gen­er­ated here, as well as the appetites and urges that help us sur­vive. For instance, the amyg­dala gets trig­gered to pre­pare us to deal with a threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion, result­ing in our feel­ing of fear. The hip­pocam­pus is key in the for­ma­tion of mem­ory. (Credit: Sand­hills College)
Theropod A) The Neo­cor­tex is com­posed of

-Frontal Lobes: or the CEO of the Brain, for sophis­ti­cated brain func­tions such as plan­ning and conceptualizing.

-Pari­etal lobes: deal­ing with move­ment, the senses, and some forms of recog­ni­tion

-Tem­po­ral lobes: audi­tory processes and language

-Occip­i­tal: visual pro­cess­ing cen­ter (credit: Morphonix)
In action When we exer­cise our brains, we put our Neu­rons and con­nec­tions between neu­rons in action. Given the diver­sity of func­tions out­lined above, it is clear that dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties are going to acti­vate dif­fer­ent brain areas, which sci­en­tists now know thanks to neu­roimag­ing tech­niques. There is no one magic bul­let that is best (either cross­words puz­zles, or computer-based pro­grams, or phys­i­cal exer­cise): we do need a vari­ety of men­tal stim­u­la­tion or “brain exercises”.

“Cells that fire together wire together” means that synapses-unions between neu­rons– get solid­i­fied the more often the respec­tive neu­rons “talk” to each other. (Credit: Peter Furstenberg)
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Categories: Cognitive Neuroscience, Education & Lifelong Learning

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10 Responses

  1. Wilson Teh says:
    November 28, 2007 at 5:30

    This is a infor­ma­tive site for brain related knowl­edge. Great job !

    Wil­son Teh

  2. Alvaro says:
    November 28, 2007 at 4:46

    Glad you enjoy it, Wilson!

  3. » Brain Fitness: November Monthly Digest   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:
    November 30, 2007 at 3:01

    […] Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together: I spoke at the Ital­ian Con­sulate in San Fran­cisco, where we explored some of the basic con­cepts we should all know about how our brains and mind work. […]

  4. 148th Carnival of Education | So You Want To Teach? says:
    December 5, 2007 at 12:02

    […] Use It or Lose It, and Cells that Fire together Wire together (Alvaro Fernandez) […]

  5. Around the Blogs | The Molecular Biology Blog says:
    December 7, 2007 at 4:32

    […] Use It or lose It, and cells that fire together wire together — Neu­ronal con­nec­tions take work. […]

  6. » Travel and Engagement as Good Brain Exercise   « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains      says:
    December 15, 2007 at 9:12

    […] Try pic­tur­ing in your mind, as you read this, all her dif­fer­ent brain areas that are get­ting needed stim­u­la­tion through her Namibia experience. […]

  7. Alvaro Fernandez: 10 Habits of Highly Effective Brains « Developing Me says:
    December 21, 2007 at 4:11

    […] 21 Decem­ber, 2007 by Lars 1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic under­stand­ing will serve you well to appre­ci­ate your brain’s beauty as a liv­ing and constantly-developing dense for­est with bil­lions of neu­rons and synapses. […]

  8. Monologster says:
    December 23, 2007 at 5:36

    […] 1. Learn what is the “It” in “Use It or Lose It”. A basic under­stand­ing will serve you well to appre­ci­ate your brain’s beauty as a liv­ing and constantly-developing dense for­est with bil­lions of neu­rons and synapses. […]

  9. 提高大脑效率的十个好习惯 - 褪墨 says:
    January 26, 2008 at 9:15

    […] 基础认知将更好的使你拥有一个健康发达的大脑，这个拥有成千上万的神经元和神经键连接起来的密集“森林”。 […]

  10. ” Read this Book! “Spiritual Evolution” by George Vaillant " on Positive Psychology News Daily says:
    June 3, 2008 at 2:09

    […] There are many details about how the lim­bic sys­tem (one of the three main areas of the brain) con­tributes to health and heal­ing through pos­i­tive emo­tions: Vaillant’s brain-based exam­ples include oxy­tocin for Love, endor­phins for Com­pas­sion, parasym­pa­thetic ner­vous sys­tem for low­ered car­diac risk for For­give­ness, and others. […]

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