CHAPTER 1 How Your BRAIN WORKS Have you ever wondered why you have trouble remembering things when you feel scared or sleepy Do you notice times when your mind feels clearer and you are able to focus There are specific reasons why we feel these ways We process certain types of information in different ways depending on the situations in which we find ourselves It all comes back to our body’s most incredible organ the brain 4
This book is designed to teach you about how your brain works and to give you tips tools and strategies that will allow you to better harness your mind and learning potential both in and out of school You can improve your skills and learning abilities by training your brain Read on to find out more Your brain has an amazing ability to make changes and reorganize itself throughout your lifetime It creates connections which allow you to develop new skills and respond well to different environments The goal is to encourage you to make conscious and proactive decisions so you can be the most incredible you possible 5
Take your hands and make fists Then put your fists together You’re looking at a pretty good representation of your brain in terms of its size as well as the two hemispheres But if you look deep within the structure of the brain you’ll find tiny little nerve cells called neurons These are what make learning possible Neurons Neurons are made up of three main parts the cell body the axon which sends signals to other nerve cells and the branch-like dendrites which receive messages from other neurons For a better idea of what neurons look like turn to page 42 Your brain has somewhere between 86 and 100 billion neurons That’s a lot Each one of those neurons has the ability to form connections called synapses with other neurons These synapses are important because your brain is using them to make connections using the knowledge and experience you accumulate every single day synapse Synapses The connections between the neurons in your body are known as synapses These are important because when you learn about something and actually work hard to understand and comprehend it your brain forms new synaptic connections But what are synapses exactly They’re actually tiny gaps between neighboring neurons Electrical signals are fired across the synapses from one neuron to another You’ve got even more synapses than you do neurons anywhere from 100 trillion to 1,000 trillion All of these connections enable parts of your brain to communicate with other parts of your body allowing you to learn and remember Learning is happening all the time It might be when you read this book when you’re playing the drums building a model or even having a conversation on the phone with a friend 6 6
FIND THE NERVE Move closer to or farther away from the symbols above At one point you’re likely to see the black circle vanish This is known as your blind spot But what is it exactly Inside your eye are specialized receptors that sense light Your eye is full of them except in one spot that’s the optic nerve which is where the information goes from your eye to your brain and back again When you see that spot disappear it’s because you’ve hit the blind spot taken up by your optic nerve Take Care of Your Neurons Your body is great at healing itself If you cut your finger your body will repair the broken blood vessels and seal the cut sometimes with a scar But if you damage an area of your brain you won’t regrow old neurons At least not to repair that damaged area But your brain can make new neurons in some parts such as in your hippocampus the area for learning and memory This is known as neurogenesis Exercising Your Brain into Shape There is evidence that aerobic exercise such as running or jumping jacks if you’re up to it right now might actually help with neurogenesis at least in some of our furry friends In a study published in 2016 researchers at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland studied rats that were put on running regimens for 6 to 8 weeks What they found was that rats that were good at running long distances were also the ones with the most new hippocampal neurons The rats that tended to get on the running wheel got 2 to 3 times more new neurons than the rats that didn’t This was similar to earlier studies in mice blind spot Some scientists estimate there might be 250,000 neurons produced each minute during the time of peak human development in the womb 7 7
