I Have More Than 1 Brain In My Head?
The brain is a complex organ that weighs about 1.5 kg or about 2% of body weight. With glucose and oxygen as fuel, it will be used to control our thoughts, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and every process that regulates our body. Together, the brain and spinal cord that extends from it make up the central nervous system.
Human is born with about 100,000,000,000 (100 billions) active brain cells and is supported with about 900,000,000,000 (900 billions) other supporting brain cells. In total, there are about 1 trillion brain cells. Woww!!
As human advances in his neuroscience research, many new things are discovered about this 1.5 kg matters.
3 brain systems in my head?
Triune Brain is first proposed by American Physician and neuroscientist Paul D. Maclean. In human brain model, there are 3 different kinds of brain; namely:
1. Reptilian Brain
- Consists of the brainstem.
- Coping with stress via fight or flight
2. Mammalian Brain, and
- Consists of the limbic system
- Coping with emotion
3. Rational Neo Cortex Brain
- Consists of Neo Cortex.
- Coping with cognition and learning.
When our Reptilian Brain is active, we are not able to “think.” What is available is our instinct OR think and act based as a result of trainings. Our Reptile Brain is activated when we are stress, angry, fearful, lack of sleep, threatened, or when our body and minds are tired.
Our Mammalian Brain gives meaning to emotions and any events that we encounter. It has roles to control our body immune system, hormones, and long term memory. And most importantly, it plays a very crucial role in our learning process because limbic system has a very close relationship with our emotion and long term memory.
Limbic System in our Mammalian Brain acts as a switch that decides which brain is activated; Reptilian Brain OR Neo Cortex Brain. When we are in a stressful, tense, fearful or angry situation, all the information will be processed by our Reptilian Brain.
But when we are in a happy, relaxed, and peaceful situation, our Rational Neo Cortex will be activated and can be used for thinking and processed information. This explains when are we tense during an examination, our mind will be “blank” and we are not able to recall what we have learnt.
The Neo Cortex Brain that enveloped our Reptilian and Mammalian Brains is called Thinking Brain. It covers about 80% of human brain.
4 lobes in my head?
At our Neo Cortex Brain, there are 4 lobes with their respective functions.
1. Frontal Lobes
- It is located just right behind our forehead.
- Its primary functions are to make judgements, creativity, thinking, planning and problem solving.
- This lobes will mature around the age of 35. How often we use this part will have big impacts when it reaches a level of maturity.
2. Parietal Lobes
- It is located on top of the head near the back of our brain.
- Its primary functions are to process sensation and language.
3. Temporal Lobes
- Right and left of the head is where we can find Temporal Lobes.
- This lobe is responsible to process hearing, memory, meanings, and language.
4. Occipital Lobes
- This lobe that is located at the back of head is responsible for sight.
- That’s why when someone falls down and the back of the head is hit, he will see “stars” flying around.
- This is because the optic nerves experience a shock.
2 hemispheres in my head?
Other than the 3 parts of the brain, namely Reptilian Brain, Mammalian Brain, and the Neo Cortex , human brain is divided into 2 hemispheres; Right and Left Hemispheres.
Each hemisphere has different functions but supportive to each other. This theory came to light in the 1960s, thanks to research of Psychobiologist and Nobel Prize winner Roger W. Sperry.
These 2 hemispheres are connected with 1 communicative bridge called Corpus Callosum. In general, we learnt that each hemisphere control 50% of each part of our bodies.
Left Hemisphere controls the right part of the body, and Right Hemisphere controls the left part of the body. According to Sperry’s research, the left brain helps you with:
- logic
- linear thinking
- mathematics
- sequencing
- facts
- thinking in words
The right brain is more visual and intuitive. It has a more creative and less organized way of thinking. Sperry’s dated research suggests the right brain helps people with:
- imagination
- visualization
- holistic thinking
- intuition
- arts
- rhythm
- nonverbal cues
- feelings
- daydreaming
To add more information to Sperry’s research, Left Brain processes small amount of information by understanding the information one by one at low speed; while Right Brain processes large amount of information by automatic processing of the entire information at high speed.
So, which hemispheres are more important?
Yes, you are right! Both hemispheres are important as they perform different functions that supportive of each other.
and since under 3 years old, Right Brain is more dominant and has no mental barriers, it is very crucial for us to stimulate our children as early as possible.
Once this period is over, it will be more difficult to develop our Right Brain! Hence, the YOUNGER your child starts, the FASTER he/she will be able to master his/her abilities.
START YOUNG!
