The truth is that nearly anything that can be said about your brain in an absolute sense is not true. This statement is true, not because we don't know a lot about the brain, we do; and more is being learned about it every day. The statement is true because the brain is such a vast, intricate and interconnected system of systems and processes that anything we can say about must be qualified by, "...as far as we know today..." or "In one sense, it can be said..."
Your brain is composed of somewhere between 100 and 200 billion neurons! Any single neuron can have as many as 100 thousand connections! The number of permutation possible in the brain exceeds our best estimate for the number of elementary particles in the Universe! Everything you sense, the totality of your experience of the world and each other, all of the ways you discern and label one thing as distinguished from another, all of your assessments and judgments, our ideas, our concepts and beliefs, all of our emotionally infused signification of your relations, all of your inspirations and aspirations are the experience of the neurological activity within this specialized 3 to 4 pounds of tissue, floating within a sac of fluid in your head. Can you see why I think it is so amazing?
And yet most of the time, just like all of the mysterious miracles we are by which we are continuously surrounded and confronted, we are completely oblivious to what's going on within our head that allows me, for instance, to be thinking about all this, typing it into the computer, editing as I go along, intermittently noticing the sunlight changing color as the breeze blows through the trees outside the window, wondering what I'll be preparing for dinner.
It has often been said that your brain is actually three brains in one. Deep within your brain is the more primitive, "reptilian," brain that automatically orients us toward the five Fs, feeding, fornicating, fleeing, fighting and freezing. This brain is pretty much hard-wired and functional at birth. It is nested within your second, "mammalian," brain which is more relational and emotional. The functioning of this limbic brain is developed in the physical, face-to-face relationship with your primary care taker, usually, this is the child's mother. We each learn how to read other's emotions and intentions from very subtle cues in their voice tones and facial expressions.
The third brain covers and wraps around the lymbic brain and is called the neo-cortex. This brain allows you to recognize patterns, to create music and art and ideas, to speak and understand language, to reason, to reflect and, it seems, to be conscious of your consciousness. This brain is in development until a person is in their early twenties!
Posted in: Your Amazing Brain - Brain Training Therapy
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