Gymnastics for the Grey Cells

Many brain researchers believe that most people use only a limited percentage of their brain: a person is considered a genius if he exhausts more than ten per cent of mind potential. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way—because there are ways to bring those ‘little grey cells’ up to speed.

Each person has about three pounds of brain matter. The grey cells, also called the cerebral cortex, form only a small part of this. Spread out, they would cover the surface of a tablecloth a few millimetres thick, albeit a tablecloth with truly magical properties.

As an embryo grows within the womb, 250,000 neurons or brain cells develop every minute. An adult may have 100 billion brain cells; that’s 90 billion white and ten billion grey. However, it’s not the neurons themselves that are important, but the number of connections that are forged between them i.e. the neural pathways. Ten billion grey cells can form over one thousand trillion (1015) direct connections amongst each another. That’s a ten with 15 zeros after it! If a computer were to count one neural pathway per second, it would spend almost 32 million years making its calculations.

And that sums up the brain’s vast mental potential. Whenever something makes an impression on us, a stimulus triggered in the brain forms a new brain connection i.e. a new neural pathway. If something ‘blows our mind’, so to speak, we will remember it for a very long time, but if something leaves us cold, we will soon forget it.

For this reason, a weak stimulus must often be repeated before a new neural pathway is built and the event is captured in the memory. The more strongly we are struck by an event or piece of information, the more quickly the ‘dirt track’ in the brain becomes a well-built ‘road’. ‘Highways’ in the brain allow for lightning-quick connections; on ‘dirt tracks’ the wheels of our grey cells turn more slowly and arduously.

We all know from experience that the strongest stimuli are always triggered when they are linked to intense feelings. Emotional moments remain enduringly in our memory, even when there is no repetition. They are like radiant (or shockingly dark) paintings hanging on the wall of our consciousness, releasing similar emotions whenever we view them in our mind.

Swimming Against the Current

A rolling stone gathers no moss, as they say. This well-known dictum can equally be applied to the brain—the more neural pathways we build, the faster it goes. In other words: the more frequently we learn, the easier learning becomes—regardless of what it is.

Our brain is possibly the most flexible organ in the body. The most fascinating thing about it, however, is that it can dissolve old neural pathways and replace these with new ones!

The German researcher Alexander von Humboldt once said: “It is perhaps bolder to doubt the Known than to explore the Unknown.” How true. We must sometimes be brave enough to throw out long-established and treasured ideas in order to adorn the walls of our consciousness with new pictures. This mental flexibility, however, seems almost impossible for some people. The phrase ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ would seem to hit the nail on the head here.

According to Vera F. Birkenbihl, it is precisely at this point that we decide whether or not we are prepared to actually use our brain rather than simply possess it. Many people, according to top German trainers, think exclusively along the neural pathways that were laid down overthe first twenty years of their life, moving along the well-trodden paths of the past and unable to open up to new things—forgetting what “Auntie Mame” tells us in Jerry ­Herman’s Broadway musical Mame (1966): “Open a new window, open a new door, travel a new highway that’s never been tried before...”

We often say, for example: ‘I can’t, it’s too difficult; I don’t have the talent for it.’ And as we do so, we build neural pathways in our brain that immediately trigger these feelings of aversion and failure whenever we are confronted with an unpleasant situation.

This is called negative learning, or self-fulfilling prophesy. We must therefore consciously ‘relearn’ by removing old neural pathways (thought patterns) and replacing them with new ones.

In other words, we should keep learning our whole life long. This will keep our ‘brain muscle’ fit, whose cells, incidentally, thicken just like a trained bicep.