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
Hanging out in the Hippocampus If the neurons and synaptic connections in your brain are the connections that help you to learn then in what part of your brain does learning take place Around 75 or three-quarters of all of your neural connections are in your brain’s cerebrum This large section of your brain includes the outer layer and many of the inner parts of your brain such as the hippocampus But if you’re looking to boost your learning and memory the other structure to explore is the hippocampus This is the structure involved with neurogenesis The larger the hippocampus the better people tend to be at remembering things As you get older it’s the first part of the brain that gets smaller but it can also grow and form connections even into adulthood The hippocampus is made up of two small seahorse-shaped structures 8 8
brain lab MEMORY GAME Want to work on boosting your mind and form new neural connections Try some memory games every day As you’ll see from examples coming up such as the amazing development of the hippocampi of London cab drivers memorization exercises are linked to increased matter in the hippocampus Look at this list of words for around 10 seconds then look away and try to remember the words HAT BIT PIN COT BET Now check out this list for around 20 seconds NUT SAP LOB NIT RAD TOP MAP LIP INK MAT Use It or Lose It When your neurons aren’t firing and maintaining their connections these connections can start to shrink away This type of shrinking is known as disuse atrophy But the good news is that you have it in you to maintain those connections and even form new ones Turn the page to find out more Hippocampus and Exercise Can exercise alone make a hippocampus grow In 2009 a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh decided to put it to the test The study involved 120 adults from 60 to 80 years old who were still mentally sound but not physically fit These participants were put into groups of those who stretched and those who walked three times a week for 40 minutes When the study concluded a year later MRI imaging revealed that the hippocampus in the group that had been walking instead of stretching had grown by around 2 That may not seem like much but when aging the hippocampus tends to shrink by around half a percent each year 9
