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A question posted by Teddy, a science graduate of UC Santa Barbara asked this question:

…Is it known how many calories human thinking takes?  I see in your archives that the brain uses 10% of the body’s energy, and I’ve heard that our brains draw 25% of our blood flow, and that 25% of the heat radiated from our bodies is radiated from our heads, but is this true for all mammals?  For all primates?  How many calories are consumed by the “higher functions” of the brain that are special to humans, and how many by the parts that are found in other mammals?

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Alex Goddard, Grad student, Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School answers…

Hi Teddy,

That’s a good question! I think the short answer is that it’s less energy than you might expect. I’ve tried to explain why I think so below.

First, I’d say that the basic energy expenditure per unit area of brain is probably the same between different types of animals. A human brain uses more total energy than a rat brain because it’s bigger and more complex. This idea probably applies to heat generation, blood flow and caloric requirement as well.

I saw somewhere that the brain uses 20% of your caloric input for the day. I don’t think that number is absolute, but it seems reasonable. So, assuming you eat 2000 calories per day, your brain uses about 400 calories per day. Then, we need to ask, how much is spent on ‘thinking’ or cognitive abilities? (I’m leaving the idea of consciousness out of this, because it has no definition that has been agreed upon)

To start out, we need to realize that the energy expenditure of the brain at rest is really quite high. This is because maintaining a neuron’s baseline is very metabolically “expensive;” before neurons can transmit information, they have to be properly connected and maintained. A neuron’s ability to use electricity to transfer information comes at the cost of a large amount of energy; it needs to constantly pump different ions into and out of the cell (ions carry the electric charge). Maintaining the long nerves that may extend a meter (such as the ones from your brain to your spinal cord) is also metabolically taxing as new proteins have to be made constantly and shipped down the nerve. All these processes require energy, and we haven’t even sent any information down axons yet! I would contend that the amount of energy spent maintaining the cell is far more than is actually spent on sending an electrical impulse down an axon.

Ok, so cell maintenance requires a lot of energy. One could then ask the question, “What about the cognitive functions? How much energy do they require?” I think the best way to answer this would be to first ask, ‘How much of the brain is devoted to cognitive function?” If we could say that 50% of the brain was devoted to cognitive function, then we could say 50% of the energy is devoted towards maintaining cognitive function.

The answer to that question is a hard one to pin down. Most of the brain is involved in non-cognitive processing. The brain must recreate visual space from a bunch of pixels in your eye. It computes the location of a sound based on when the sound hits your right ear versus your left ear (within 2 degrees, I think). It maintains your balance, triggers fight-or-flight responses, and decides how your fingers must move to type on a keyboard. Lots of non-cognitive processes are going on.

Furthermore, cognitive abilities are distributed all over the brain. (For those not familiar with brain anatomy, take a peek here for reference for the following descriptions: http://normandy.sandhills.cc.nc.us/psy150/outerbr.gif )

For instance, a brain scan (functional MRI) of people doing arithmetic showed activity in frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and occipital lobe (although activation of the occipital lobe, the site of vision processing, may have had to do with the subjects seeing the math problem). Language processing and generation is located mainly in the temporal lobe and frontal lobe. Decision-making and determining the consequences of actions is thought to occur in the frontal lobe. Generally, the frontal lobe is thought to be a hot seat of ‘cognitive ability,’ but it is not a pure ‘cognitive center.’ It is thought to be involved in non-cognitive decision making (i.e. determining unconscious preference and value). So to ask how much of the human brain is solely dedicated to cognitive tasks, I’d have to hazard a very hand-waving guess of 5%. And that’s a pretty liberal guess. And most of the energy used is spent on maintaining the cells and connections in these areas, not the actual cognitive processing itself.

How does that relate to other animals, primate and non-primate? Primates have a very similar level of cognitive power. They do appear to have a simple form of language, and may even be able to read! ( http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/chimps.htm ). They can make complicated decisions. Non-primate animals definitely have cognitive abilities as well, such as decision making, risk assessment, and memory formation, though the degree to which these decisions are ‘conscious’ as in humans is quite debatable. I don’t know if I could put a number on how much more brain space and energy is spent on cognition by humans, because it could be the type and amount of connectivity between cells that is more important than the percentage of cells in the brain.

Lastly, I’ll just briefly mention one interesting tidbit of info. The process of being aware of your surroundings apparently requires a lot of energy, which is not surprising. The basic idea is that as you transmit information, it uses some energy. According to one report, “The high resting brain activity is proposed to include the global interactions constituting the subjective aspects of consciousness. Anesthesia by lowering the total firing rates correlates with the loss of consciousness.” That is to say, low conciousness = lower firing rates = less total energy consumed. fMRI really uses a measure of metabolism to determine firing rates:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12806834&query_hl=4

I hope that provides some insights. I don’t know if we know enough to calculate an absolute number. If you have more questions, please do submit them!

-Alex G

from What are the energy requirements of thought?

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Can anyone translate that answer for the scientifically-challenged folks like myself?

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One of the difficult aspects of understanding mental illness, is separating the real causes of the illness from what might be secondary or tertiary consequences of having the illness.  If you think about a car whose engine is not running normally, there may be many observable things going wrong (pinging sound, stalling, smoke, vibration, overheating, loss of power, etc.) – but, what is the real cause of the problem?  What should be done to fix the car? – a faulty sparkplug or timing belt perhaps?  Such is often the problem in medicine, where a fundamental problem can lead to a complex, hard-to-disentangle, etiology of symptoms.  Ideally, you would fix the core problem and then expect the secondary and tertiary consequences to normalize.

This inherent difficulty, particularly in mental illness, is one of the reasons that genetic research is of such interest.  Presumably, the genetic risk factors are deeper and more fundamentally involved in the root causes of the illness – and hence – are preferable targets for treatment.  The recent paper, “Widespread Reductions of Cortical Thickness in Schizophrenia and Spectrum Disorders and Evidence of Heritability” [Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2009;66(5):467-477] seeks to ascertain whether one aspect of schizophrenia – a widespread and well-documented thinning of the neocortex – is due to genetic risk (hence something that is closer to a primary cause) or – rather – if cortical thinning is not due to genetics, and so more of a secondary consequence of things that go wrong earlier in the development of the illness.

To explore this idea, the team of Goldman et al., did something novel.  Rather than examine the differences in cortical thickness between patients and control subjects, the team evaluated the cortical thickness of 59 patients and 72 unaffected siblings as well as 196 unrelated, matched control participants.  If the cortical thickness of the siblings (who share 50% of their genetic variation) was more similar to the patients, then it would suggest that the cortical thinning of the patients was under genetic control and hence – perhaps – a biological trait that is more of a primary cause.  On the other hand, if the cortical thickness of the siblings (who share 0% of their genetic variation) was more similar to that of the healthy control participants, then it would suggest that cortical thinning was – perhaps more of a secondary consequence of some earlier deficit.

The high-resolution structural neuroimaging allowed the team to carefully assess cortical thickness - which is normally between a mere 2 and 4 millimeters – across different areas of the cortex.  The team reports that, for the most part, the cortical thickness measures of the siblings were more similar to the unrelated controls – thus suggesting that cortical thickness may not be a direct component of the genetic risk architecture for schizophrenia.  Still, the paper discusses several candidate mechanisms which could lead to cortical thinning in the illness – some of which might be assessed in the future using other imaging modalities in the context of their patient/sibling/control experimental design.

I am completely in love with the artwork of Tosca Hidalg y Teran of Nanopod Hybrid Studio. This Toronto artist makes jewelry and sculpture based on items normally found in science fiction novels and anatomy textbooks, and the results are stunning. All of her work is strange and beautiful, like it comes from some alien landscape or a biology lab of the future. You can check out her work at her Etsy shop, or you can visit her website at http://www.nanopod.tv.

Check out the new wallpaper at VisualParadox.com

Found here.

Sea Turtle

And my personal favorite wallpaper of a neuron…

Neuron

The sea turtle and  neuron wallpaper is in the “top 10″ section on this page…

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I’ll keep looking for unique wallpaper so stay tuned…

The Past:

The phone rang, then the cell phone, a texts came in, there is a conversation happening on Facebook, Ping – something from twitter, a co-worker just IM’d me, the emails keep popping up in the corner of the screen, and then someone walked into my office.

Now –

I work from home. I can control my environment! Yet much of what interrupted me still exists. Writing takes focus as does researching. So as an exercise in procrastination I thought I would research the science around interruptions. The way most of us handle interruptions is to swear that we are multitasking. We aren’t.

The Myth of Multitasking

Most of us now know that we don’t really multitask – what our brain does is switch between tasks very fasts. So fast in fact that it looks like we are doing two things at the same time. Like all human traits – some of us do this switching better than others. However, it isn’t optimal behavior and on some level we all know this.

But there is hope – a recent study published in the journal Neuron states that we can train our brain to get better at multitasking. But we are still simply learning to switch between tasks quicker – we are not developing dual core processing.

So we can get better but then there is the problem that too much multitasking causes breakdowns in our decision making.

Our lives are full of interruptions and processing interruptions can become difficult. That too is a task and one that we have to process quickly. Research is showing that the more people use tools of interruption (CrackBerry’s make it high on the list although all you iPhone lovers your there too) the more trouble they have deciding when to focus on an interruption or let it go.

Does that mean that interruptions are addictive? That the constant change in direction is somehow stimulating something in the brain?

A fascinating study published in 2006 exploring the “Social Implication of Ubiquitous Wireless Email Devices” looked at a small company that provided BlackBerrys for nearly 90% of their staff since 1999. What they saw was a burling of the lines between business and home, and expectation to be “always-available”, at the same time as partners in the firm found it a way to get more done, achieve more transparency in their business dealings and have more control. Yet the BlackBerrys became a device of constant interruption, effecting meetings, vacations, and general business life.

We don’t have to react to everything – but often we try to.

That stream of emails, tweets, texts, and IMs that come into us – how many are actually time sensitive and project related as opposed to all those other pieces of information that clutter our lives. Yes – the cute pictures of animals doing funny things with witty captions is a nice way to bring a smile to our day but how much time did we just lose? And did you go back to what you were doing or did you decide to read some more emails, send a text, tweet something, or surf the web?

The general rule of thumb is that once interrupted it takes between 20 to 40 minutes to get back to the level of concentration that you were at when the interruption occurred. (Different studies have different time factors – personally I think it has to do with the complexity of the core task.) The interesting thing is – how many of us go through our work lives these days able to commit 20 minutes to a specific task. An article in Newsweek puts the amount of time the average High Tech worker focuses on a project before being interrupted at 11 minutes. Worse off, IT workers are switching direction every 3 minutes. The research done with the company full of BlackBerry addicts had people checking their BlackBerrys every “every seven or eight minutes”.   

Who closes the office door, puts the phone on silent or do-not-disturb, closed down Outlook and works?

I tried – and it backfired on me. Within one week I was getting feedback that I was “unreachable” and “not in the office” because I wasn’t seen and being seen. But I was getting lots of work done… but no one noticed because in our environment face time was used to measure productivity and cooperation. “Drop everything and help me!” was not an uncommon cry. But I’m uncertain of the productivity value it brought – it may have build a can-do lets dig in and get it done atmosphere – but it also led to very long days for those who had highly complicated projects. They could only get them done early in the morning or late at night.

So then work-life balance goes out the window. Wasn’t this what we thought being connected anywhere any time help us with. We wouldn’t have to make the choice between family and work – we could do both. But in doing both we are engaging in neither. Several of the studies and articles I read discussed a sense of “partial-participation” in life. We never sink down to a level of true focus, we are multitasking so fast that we don’t focus or take time to connect with others, we use the buffer of the iPhone, Facebook, or Twitter to find some strange place between closeness and distance.

It will take us time to figure out how to deal with this – the overwhelming amount of information flowing under our fingertips, the blurring of lines between work and home, and adapting to a world where we are interrupted every 8 minutes.

Personally I love the access to information, the feeling of having my finger on the pulse. But I also like to ponder things. That takes time, silence and a closed door. I’m not sure where we are going with all of this and I am sure that we are not thinking much about the social and physiological consequences of it. All the new toys are just too much fun!

~ Tess

The human brain is a truly astonishing apparatus.

With up to 33 billion neurons (depending on your gender and age), 10,000 synapses per neuron, and 200 decisions per interneuronal connection per second, your brain is theoretically capable of somewhere on the order of 66 million billion calculations, insights, and decisions every second.

When you touch a hot stove, the brain and nervous system carry that information at speeds of up to 268 miles per hour – from your fingers to your brain and back again, allowing you to remove your hand within milliseconds. If you have a brain like Einstein’s, you can map the universe on the back of an envelope; if your brain is like Shakespeare’s, you can string together words that speak to the fundamentals of human nature, regardless of culture, experience or epoch.

In other words, the human brain is capable of extraordinary things. So it would seem to take a great deal of hubris on the part of any individual or company to attempt to imitate it. But as we said in our last post, we are not so presumptuous as to think we can replicate the brain in all its glory. That’s not necessary. It is often the modest attempt, built off correct principles, that yields the most successful results. The airplane took only a few basic principles from its equivalent in nature – wings, tail, and the physics responsible for lift – and it successfully applied them to create the basic result that we sought: safe, comfortable, soaring flight – and the ability to get from New York to London in 7 hours instead of 7 days. Our goal in imitating the human brain is similarly modest – and similarly revolutionary: it has to do with lower-order thinking versus higher-order thinking.

Our brain performs billions of subconscious decisions every day: it keeps our heart beating, our lungs breathing, our liver and kidneys functioning, and a million other complex operations that we are not even aware of. At the same time, our brain is capable of conscious, but lower-order decisions, such as reciting the alphabet or describing a book we’ve just read or getting into a car and remembering the route to work and how to drive. These acts are conscious, but they are rote and often so familiar that we are barely aware of them. And then our brain is capable of higher-order thinking. This is the act of executing a complex mathematical formula, composing a sonnet, or learning to play an instrument.

In our analogy of a technology-enabled organizational brain, databases and the enterprise software they support offer organizations increasingly efficient and effective means of performing ‘lower-order’ operational functions that keep the organization going: payroll, supply chain, etc. They do an excellent job at sending billions of pieces of information flying around the corporate body, keeping it stable and in working order, and this is essential to all organizations, regardless of industry.

But what is missing from the myriad of enterprise software solutions on the market today is a capability equivalent to higher-order thinking – organizational creation, creativity, consciousness. Think of how important this capability is to knowledge-intensive organizations. Even the meanest of organizational intellects engage in lower-order thinking, but for knowledge-intensive industries such as Pharma, upstream Oil & Gas exploration, and others, higher-order thinking is crucial to their existence.

They are the Einsteins and Shakespeares of the organizational world – individuals who are defined not by their ability to drive to work, but by their ability to create these new and extraordinary gifts for mankind. So it is with knowledge-intensive industries that their raison d’être is defined not by their ability to crunch finance numbers or execute a Six-Sigma black-belt in Supply Chain, but by their ability to make complex, often intuitive, strategic decisions, and ultimately to create knowledge and products that did not exist in the world before. This is higher-order thinking.

Thus, our primary goal in creating a technology that mimics the human brain is to imitate specifically the organic, creative thought-center of the brain, the cortex, and in doing so enable ‘higher-order’ thinking and organizational consciousness.

Stay tuned for the next post where we tell you how…

An idm style music track made with the Hartmann Neuron and the Elektron Machinedrum from testheld youtube channel.

A video from the taylor12k youtube channel.
I’ve used the little vst version Neuron Nuke and I can say it’s an amazing synth…

We have the technology:

Researchers at the University of Tel Aviv have attached an artificial hand to the stump of a severed arm. This is simply Incredible. See the news here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091104132708.htm

If you compare the left panel to the right panel, you’ll see a dendrite (grey) with dendritic spines (green) on the left-side and then, on the right-side, these spines enveloped by the membrane of an astrocyte (white).  These images were obtained from synapse-web.org who use a method known as 3D reconstruction of serial section electron microscopy – or something like that – to better understand what types of structural factors underlie normal and abnormal synaptic function.  What is so amazing to me are the delicate ruffles of the astrocyte membrane that seem to want to ensheath each spine.  Was any organelle so gently and well cared for?  Perhaps not.  These are dendritic spines afterall – the very structures that form synaptic contacts and process the neural signals – that allow us to think and function.

It turns out that astrocytes not only seem to care for dendritic spines, but also provide the essential signal that initiates the sprouting of neuronal spines in the first place.  As covered in their recent paper, “Gabapentin Receptor α2δ-1 Is a Neuronal Thrombospondin Receptor Responsible for Excitatory CNS Synaptogenesis” [doi:10.1016/j.cell.2009.09.025] Eroglu and colleagues report the discovery – in mice – of CACNA2D1 the alpha-2/delta-1 subunit of the voltage-dependent calcium channel complex encodes a protein that binds to thrombospondins (humans have THBS1 and THBS2) which are adhesive glycoproteins that mediate cell-to-cell and cell-to-matrix interactions – and are required for the formation of new dendritic spines.  When neurons are cultured in the absence of thrombospondins, they fail to produce new spines and mice that do not make thrombospondins do not make very many excitatory synaptic spines.

The interesting twist to me is that thrombospondins are secreted solely by astrocytes! The newly identified CACNA2D1 receptor – as revealed by Eroglu et al., – binds to the EGF-repeats of thrombospondin and initiates a signalling cascade that results in the sprouting of new – silent – dendritic spines.  Gabapentin, a drug that is prescribed for seizures, pain, methamphetamine addiction and many other mental health conditions appears to bind to CACNA2D1 and interfere with the binding of thrombospondin and also inhibits the formation of new spines in vitro as well during the development of somatotopic maps in the mouse whisker barrel cortex.

This seems to be an important discovery in the understanding of how cognitive development unfolds since much of the expression of thrombospondin and its effects on synaptogenesis occur in the early postnatal stages of development.  I will follow this thread in the months to come.

Have you ever had a “brain cramp,” you know … something on the tip of your tongue you wanted to say, but your mind just seemed to shut down and refused to let it out?  Have you had to introduce someone you know and then all of a sudden their name was just gone from your mind? I suspect that most of us know this situation all too well.  

Perhaps you’ve had this experience – you’re having lunch with a friend and a subject comes up, something you know … but right then you can’t remember all the details. However, as you’re driving home what happens? Yes, then it shows up in your mind. Why? That’s always the question. The information is in there, why can’t I get at it at will?

An explanation that seems consistent with what I’ve learned about the brain is that when we’re young we have all kinds of shortcuts in our brains to information, but … there’s always a “but,” as we get older we lose many of these shortcut connections. The result is that sometimes our minds have to follow a route with lots of detours to finally retrieve the information.

With that as a prelude, I want to share an experience I had with one of my sons not too long ago. This boy has “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder” (ADHD or ADD), a condition that can be diagnosed and help provided for the symptoms, but for which there is no cure. His challenge is the attention deficit end of the malady. He really can’t concentrate for very long … so, prioritizing, completing, and successfully fulfilling the normal requirements of daily life can be quite challenging. The only real help has come from a prescription amphetamine that does significantly improve his concentration ability. This has been a blessing, but as with all drugs there be downsides such as the potential of unwanted side effects and the cost.

Approximately a year ago he called me and revealed that he had gone off his medication. Normally, this would have been a cause of great concern. However, he had initiated an interesting replacement that I accidentally had some involvement in. In my prior post I mentioned my passion for nutritional supplements and natural remedies. Well, a while back I found an online/catalog store whose products have a great deal of advanced science behind them and, fortunately for us, are as inexpensive as purchasing competing products from the warehouse stores.

I have a membership and helped my son get one. He had seen some literature on a product that listed concentration as one of its benefits. So, being young and not worried about a little risk taking, he stopped the amphetamine and began taking this supplement. By the time he called me several days had passed. His comment was, “Dad, I can concentrate every bit as well on the supplement as I could on the medication.”

Wow! This really came as a surprise. The supporting literature is targeted at gray-haired folks who might be losing a bit of their cognitive ability, such as memory or concentration. I decided to do some research on the supplement’s components and found that each one was the focus of significant scientific study and my son’s response was consistent with the findings. Another surprising connection was that these natural remedies, which are effective for ADHD, are the same ones that can provide substantial help for age-related cognitive ability issues – all the way from forgetfulness to Alzheimer’s Disease.  

Here is the list of remedy ingredients in the supplement:

Antioxidants – this includes vitamins A, C, and E, as well as other significant molecules.

Phosphatidylserine – a vital component of all cell membranes in the body and found in high concentration in the brain.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids – the best source for these “essential fats” is cold water fish and their oils.

Ginkgo Biloba – the largest selling herb in this country.

Well, when I finished my study review I decided there was real science at play, so I started taking the supplement. By the way, I do not have ADHD, but I do have a few miles on me.  The net effect of a number of months of use has come in two ways: (1) greater mental energy and (2) my recall is significantly better. This information is valuable for any age – so important that I put together a seminar and newsletter on brain health that I have presented at a number of senior activity centers and for two caregiver classes through the board of health of one of our local counties. A number of people have tried the supplement, experiencing significant results – validating the scientific study information and making the whole project very fulfilling for me.

If you’d like some additional information on my findings, including the newsletter and other information I’ve collected, just send an email to michaelpurles@msn.com  or leave a reply with this post, providing your email address, and I’ll forward what I’ve found. It just might be valuable for you too, a real Soulcookie.

Have you ever heard about neuro-economics? Even though you never heard about it, you probably heard about economics!

What is Economics? Economics is based on many theories to explain economic effects around us. It was useful  for many companies and government to manage their organization and make their policy for many decades. But as you can easily understand, the traditional economics doesn’t look like it works well in these days. Then, why is this happened?

As you know, Economics has many assumptions based on theories and there is one biggest assumption in this academic area. That is “Human makes their decision to maximize their profit”. But do you think human really think and act in that way?

Let’s assume that you are a person who smokes every single day studying Economics. You will go to a convenient store to buy a pack of cigarette. Every time when you try to buy it, you continuously see a warning sign written on the box. You do know that smoking can kill you and do acknowledge that cigarette is very harmful for you. And probably you will have to spend most of your money to cure yourself after you got a cancer because of smoking, but still you are smoking. You are major in economics but that doesn’t change anything to you. You just think that smoking is your habit and you want it because you like it.

In traditional Economics point of view, you cannot explain what is going on here. You are major in economics and you are a person who want to maximize your profit because you are rational and well-educated person. However, you will never quick smoking just because of the reason that you are a person who are an expert in economics.

The basic problem is that we human are not a person who is always rational and try to maximize profit. We are not a machine which is for making money. We all know this fact, but the classical economics doesn’t accept this. In the principle assumption of economics, we, human, are rational and those who try to maximize profit. This is why neoclassical economists start concentrating on neuroeconomics.

What is neuro-economics? Neuroeconomics is a combined word from neuro(n) and economics. Neuron is one type of basic unit in biological cells and neuroeconomics means that neo-classical economics which consider human factors in their theory in economics. Then what is the biggest difference between economics and neuroeconomics?

Neuroeconomists claim that we, human, are not rational and don’t always try to maximize their profit. They also claim that people try to maximize their utility, but that is not totally corresponded to their financial profit, which can be personal pleasure, political belief, self-esteem and so on. With this kind of the concept, they claim that they can explain more about the economical events which cannot be explained with classical economics.

In next time, I will show you basic theories with fun examples in neuroeconomics. This will help you to understand more about economical events what you couldn’t understand with the traditional economics. In the later articles in this series, I will show you how can this can be applied to the financial policy and government level policy making.

…bine,asta e veche.

dar ce e nou si uimitor -iar si iar -e statutul de vedeta pe care il are acest monument al naturii, mindru  posesor de neuron singuratic si depresiv..

cintareatza de mare angajament siiimooonaaa seeeensual.

atentie costel busuioc!!!

Ravi dan rekannya beradu tatap, kemudian menuliskan kode di atas kertas putih dan menyerahkan kepada pria di pinggir panggung. Pria itu menggeser bidak catur di papan besar sesuai langkah yang diinginkan bocah belasan tahun tersebut. Ravi dan rekannya tidak bsa melihat papan bidak itu.

Mereka bermain dengan pikiran, membayangkan, mengingat langkah sebelumnya, memperkirakan langkah lawan, sekaligus memikirkan langkah bidak sendiri guna mengunci lawan. Permainan sebagai pembuka acara diskusi “ Optimalisasi Otak untik Meningkatkan Sumber Daya Manusia “  yang diselenggarakan PfizerPressCircke itu selesai setelah 12 langkah.

Permainan “catur buta” itu bagi Ravi, yang master catur pada usia belia, tidaklah terlampau sulit. Aksi bocah itu sekaligus menggambarkan betapa menakjubkannya kerja otak.

Otak dan kecerdasan

Salah satu pembicara diskusi, Ketua Pusat Intelegensia Departemen Kesehatan Adre Mayza mengungkapkan, intelegensia hanyalah satu kemampuan kapasitas otak. Fungsi dasar otak antara lain melihat, merasa, meraba, bergerak, keseimbangan, mendengar, dan pengaturan fungsi organ tubuh. Adapun fungsi luhur otak adalah seputar intelektual kognitif, ingatan, perilaku, dan emosi.

Otak memiliki sekitar 100 miliar sel dengan kecepatan berkembang neuron atau sel otak 50,000 – 100.000 per detik. Sebagiannya akan matu. Sel-sel mengatur diri menjadi kluster. Kluster yang rapat disebut modul, sedangkan kluster yang menjalin hubungan komunikasi dengan modul-modul lain disebut sirkuit.

Pembentukan intelegensia  terjadi ketika sirkuit-sirkuit membentuk hubungan-hubungan spesifik guna memproses informasi yang masuk ke otak, membentuk sistem. Setiap sistem berhubungan dengan sistem lain membentuk daerah spesifik di korteks yang membentuk sistem pembelajaran otak.

Begitu mengagumkan sekaligus misteriusnya otak. Tak mengherankan, berbagai mitos seputar otak dan kecerdasan bermunculan. Satu per satu, berbagai penelitian mematahkan mitos-mitos itu.

Mitos 1, otak berhenti berkembang pada usia tertentu

Berbagai penelitian membuktikan, otak menumbuhkan sel-sel baru. Sel-sel otak tidak tetap seperti ketika lahir, tetapi bertumbuh. Usia dini merupakan golden age guna mengoptimalkan potensi kecerdasan sebagai persiapan pembelajaran tingkat selanjutnya. Adre Mayza mengungkapkan, perkembangan kognitif anak usia 17 tahun merupakan akumulasi perkembangan anak usia 4 tahun sebesar 50 persen, 4 – 8 tahun sebesar 30 persen, dan 9 – 17 tahun sebesar 20 persen. Selbaru tetap tumbuh di otak manusia dewasa.

Mitos 2, kecerdasan sepenuhnya keturunan

Menurut Adre Mayza, kecerdasan yang dibawa sejak lahir hanya merupakan potensi atau sebagai bahan bangunan otak. Lingkungan pada akhirnya lebih menentukan. “ Sel baru lahir dan cabang dendrit beranak pinak. Kecerdasan manusia terletak pada hubungan di antara sel-sel otak, “ ujar Adre.

Mitos 3, makin tua, otak rusak

Penuaan mengakibatkan penurunan fungsi, termasuk otak. Kadar cairan otak berkurang, kelenturan berkurang, dan kecepatan reaksi otak pun melambat. Sel sukar membelah diri lagi. Hanya saja, yang menentukan kecerdasan bukan jumlah sel neuron, melainkan kekuatan koneksi dan arus informasi di antara mereka. Percabangannya tetap tumbuh pada usia lanjut. “ Pembelajaran pada usia tua untuk merangsang tumbuhnya percabangan antara sel otak, “ ujar Adre.

Mitos 4, hanya 10 persen

Banyak orang berpendapat, otak digunakan hanya sekitar 10 persen. Pada kenyataannya, manusia menggunakan seluruh fungsi otaknya, tergantung dari cara memelihara, mengembangkan, dan mengoptimalkannya.

Pelihara baik-baik

Pemeliharaan kesehatan secara keseluruhan, mulai dari suplai oksigen dan darah yang cukup dengan berolahraga, nutrisi seimbang, hingga pencegahan penyakit penyebab gangguan otak, menjadi syarat agar otak tetap sehat. Pemeliharaan struktur otak saja tidak cukup. Fungsi dasar dan luhur otak perlu dikembangkan.

“ Banyak membaca dan mempelajari hal-hal baru, misalnya, akan membentuk cabang-cabang baru. Peningkatan kemampuan yang spesifik, seperti kemampuan, perhatian, menggambar, dan mendongeng, pelatihan emosi, serta pendalaman spiritual, sangat baik untuk orang lanjut usia, “ ujarnya.

Pembicara lain, cendekiawan Islam, Jalaluddin Rachmat mengatakan, penggunaan otak dengan mencova mengingat sesuatu setiap hari, belajar memvisualkan, dan mengobservasi lingkungan sekitar sangat berguna, “ ujarnya.

Jangan biarkan sel-sel otak anda menganggur …

Sumber  :

Otak : Berbagai Mistos soal Kecerdasan | Indira Permanasari
Kompas, 01.10.2009
Grafik : Bestari

The theory of brain creating an image of universe and project the image within perceptual bubble (you can look at my blog entry “Why is the moon huge on the horizon?” on Henry Makram’s talk) reminded me an article I have read on NTV Bilim(A Turkish popular science magazine) about the mirrror neurons.

Giving the same example from the article, how does your partner understand that you want to add more salt to your soup after your first taste although you haven’t commented on its salt and he doesn’t even eat the soup but he gives it you just in the time you were going to reach it? How is that possible?

He would think that he does not use his conscious when he gives you the salt, he would says “it felt like that”  but in fact he does use his conscious. The author says “he looks at you, he perceives your facial expression, he thinks on its meaning, he notices your vague body movements towards to the salt and he understands that you need the salt”.

The history of mirror neurons is not far. In the beginning of 90’s, a groups of scientist realize that a group of neurons of a monkey is fired every time he watches someone at the lab eating. Moreover these were the same neurons that helped to the one to reach to the food.  Next time, they examined that when a monkey reaches and holds a fruit another monkey watching would have just the same group of neurons fired. The result was astonishing because whatever action that a monkey observes he would have the same group of neurons working as if it was the one who was performing. The neuroscientist called this group of neuron mirror neurons.

So these mirror neurons help us to share the same reality. Interesting huh?

It says in the article that the discovery of mirror neurons is equally important as the discovery of DNA.

Candansayar, Selcuk. “Zihnin Dili: Ayna Noronlar.” NTV Bilim July 2009: 49-53. Print.