HOW TO IMPROVE THE BRAIN - critical summary review

We Are What We Think

What makes pain exist is paying attention to it. That is what neuroscience tells us. Only when we observe pain do the brain circuits activate electrically. If you shift your attention to something else, those brain circuits are literally switched off, and the pain goes away.

But if those circuits fire repeatedly, they grow stronger.

When we pay attention to pain all the time, we program ourselves to develop a sharper awareness of it, because we are enriching those brain circuits. This effect shows how your personal attention has a direct impact on you.

This applies to pain, to memories, and to anything else that defines who we are.

You are what you think. Whatever you focus your attention on repeatedly is what you become from a neurological point of view.

Neuroscience has discovered that it is possible to sculpt the structure of your brain by repeatedly focusing on different things. What you do and what you think about yourself define who you are.

The senses write the story of who we are

Reading this microbook is an achievement that owes itself to the interactions you have had throughout your life. Many people have taught you things and changed the way your brain works.

If you consider that your brain changes a little every single day, you will understand how the people who have passed through your life contributed to shaping who you are.

The senses write the story of who we are, through diverse experiences, on the slate of the mind. Our role is to conduct the orchestra of mind and brain.

When you learn to play a musical instrument, for example, you need to pull your brain out of its resting state and bring it to conscious awareness.

The energy level of the brain is sustained in the domain of that skill until its structure changes. This goes from picking up a guitar for the first time to the moment when the first chords come out.

It is as if you were adjusting the brightness of a light inside your neurology, making it shine more intensely.

Mental rehearsal shapes circuits

Learning to play an instrument causes you to increase the level of consciousness, blood flow, and electrical activity in specific areas of the brain. You need to prevent your mind from wandering to other places, which consumes energy.

A simple chord engages millions of brain cells.

But if you close your eyes and simply imagine yourself playing the instrument you learned, without even moving your hands, you will fire the same group of nerve cells. It is as if the brain does not know the difference between imagining and doing.

This shows that mental rehearsal is a powerful tool for cultivating and shaping brain circuits.

This is why we can change the brain just by thinking. We need to take care of our thoughts.

Consciously or unconsciously, you are reaffirming your neurological self all the time. Whatever you dedicate your time thinking about is what you will become.

The most complex organ in the body

The electrochemical processes of the brain and body have been with us since early life. Simple actions like waking up, getting out of bed, and brushing your teeth depend on the processing of sensory and environmental information.

An area called the visual cortex assimilates your path to the bathroom. Your habits and your memory of other mornings help your neurons anticipate the next steps.

You do not need to think to make your body function. We do not plan to breathe or to make our hearts beat.

The complexity increases at breakfast. When you eat toast with butter and drink coffee, neurotransmitters become the main characters. They are responsible for triggering effects in the body, like increasing blood glucose or starting digestion.

While you plan the activities for the week, more areas of the brain activate. These are the areas responsible for reasoning, decision-making, and anticipating the future.

The structure of the brain

A piece of brain the size of a grain of sand already contains one hundred thousand neurons. The brain has one hundred billion of these cells. Their electrical signals travel at four hundred kilometers per hour.

Although they are numerous, they compress themselves to increase the available space inside the skull. Their extension reaches the rest of the body and is called the nervous system.

This interconnected network reveals everything. It is what makes you feel pain, heat, or even the urge to go to the bathroom. It also regulates your heartbeat, breathing, and digestion.

Proportionally, the human brain is larger than that of other mammals relative to body size.

Its evolution is reflected in its structure, in parts such as the cerebellum, or reptilian brain, the most basic part of the brain where the nervous system resides. Then the limbic system, or mammalian brain, where emotions, fight or flight impulses, and desires are housed. And finally the neocortex, or rational brain, where choices, consciousness, and the ability to project into the future are located.

You are your frontal lobe

The part of the brain that designates the sense of self is the frontal lobe. Without it, you cease to be you.

It is the last part of the brain to come to life and sits behind the forehead and above the eyes. This is where your self-image resides. What keeps you there shows how you interact with the world and understand it.

The frontal lobe is the throne of consciousness, a gift of evolution to humanity. It is the most adaptable part, a means through which we develop our actions and thoughts. It is also our advantage over other species. Thanks to it, we reached our level of evolution.

We came to possess an advanced biotechnology that allows us to learn from our mistakes and change our behavior so we can thrive in life.

Even though much of human behavior has genetic origins, we are not condemned by genetics.

Chronic stress weakens the body

We have passed the halfway point of this microbook, and the author describes how the science of molecular biology is beginning to explore a new field of study and raising the hypothesis that genes may be as changeable as brain cells.

Perhaps by using one to generate an effect on the other. In other words, using the right pattern of thoughts to lead the body into a state of change.

One disease trigger that could be changed is stress. Stress is a primitive survival state. When we live in a state of chronic stress, we hinder our own evolution, because we become more animalistic.

The chemical substances it provokes alter our body and lead us to a kind of cellular collapse. But it is chronic stress, not acute stress, that weakens the body the most.

We cannot always distance ourselves from the emotional whirlwind. The chemistry it produces makes us aggressive, unhappy, and even depressed.

Still, even though people want to change, they do not always manage to change their habits and conditions. The reason is an addiction to the emotional state and to the chemical substances that those behaviors produce.

What we choose is different from why we choose it

Many people remain in situations that bring unhappiness. Others choose to stay in circumstances where they develop this kind of troubled mental state.

But what we choose is different from why we choose it. We choose stress partly because of genetics. But that is only part of the answer.

The other part is due to a portion of ourselves that has become addicted to suffering, programmed by our thoughts and actions.

It is as if we were hostages on a hijacked plane, heading to a destination we did not choose. This is cerebral. There are people who are only happy when they are unhappy.

But modern neuroscience has shown that change is possible. Change is a powerful word and a viable path. It is the only universal component that exists.

Evolution is change, in essence. All species that evolved, in reality, adapted to their environment.

The fight and flight system

You have probably heard of names like dopamine and serotonin. These are examples of neurotransmitters, the substances that carry and bring information within the brain.

They conduct the neurological symphony that is your perception of the world. There are two main types... excitatory and inhibitory.

The excitatory ones make signals travel quickly between neurons, while the inhibitory ones slow them down.

These brain switches that turn the transmission of information on and off also exist in the nervous system.

In the sympathetic nervous system, fight and flight responses are activated. This happens when we feel fear, our heartbeat accelerates, and our pupils dilate.

In the parasympathetic nervous system, the action is the opposite. It activates to calm things down, like when we doze off or digest a meal. Here, the heart rate is slow. It is that drowsiness that comes after a big lunch.

In modern life, tensions can indefinitely awaken the fight and flight system. This is the case with anxious people.

Making the brain grow

The brain is not a static organ. It changes and evolves, adapting to use. This is called neuroplasticity.

Jugglers, for example, have larger areas related to visual tracking, spatial awareness, coordination, and balance than non-jugglers.

Tennis players have equally larger areas linked to motor planning, while programmers have a privileged capacity for pattern recognition.

This does not apply only to healthy brains. Doctors are beginning to demand more from stroke patients during recovery, so that their brains work to replace damaged neural networks.

Your habits and recurring thoughts physically change your brain.

Meditation, for example, alters the structure of the parasympathetic nervous system, causing the brain to become accustomed to silencing stress.

Our most complex organ thrives on effort. When you make the effort to learn a language, practice an instrument, or commit to a sport, you are stimulating the brain to grow.

Change is an act of will

To evolve is to adapt to the environment. As human beings, this involves social status, the home, work, interactions with family, and the era we live in.

When we change something in life, the idea is to make it different. It means not being what you were before. We change the way we think, act, and exist.

Change is an act of will. It shows that something made us uncomfortable enough to want to act differently.

This is evolution. It means overcoming the conditions of life by changing yourself. We can sophisticate the brain so that it does not react in habitual and repetitive ways.

It is possible to fight against genetic and psychological inheritance. To be neuroplastic is to transform the mind, the self, and the perception of the world.

To do this, we have to change the habitual functioning of the brain. Even though we are guided by the invisible hand of genetics, the force of will needs to triumph over circumstances.

Feed your brain with good things

Right now, your brain is organizing the information you are gathering and comparing it with what it already knows. What goes into memory is what the brain judges to be important.

This means that if you are engaging with this content out of curiosity, you are already changing your brain.

The brain's efficiency means it spends little energy on familiar tasks. A taxi driver who already knows the city can drive for kilometers and barely remember the route.

The brain uses experiences to project the future. You are a self-aware being. Your choices shape the brain the way you want.

Choose to evolve it. Begin, even if it is uncomfortable.

Replace the dopamine from social media and fast food with better things, like meditation and exercise. Accustom your brain to what is good for it.

Sharpen your cognitive capacity by learning new and useful things.

Final Notes

This microbook explores ideas from neuroscience to encourage readers to change their habits. To do so, it uses the concept of neuroplasticity, the process by which the brain restructures itself to accommodate the associations and connections that occur most frequently.

12min Tip!

We can work on our brains and our mental abilities to achieve excellence. But this goes far beyond what we conventionally think about intelligence. Daniel Goleman shows this in Emotional Intelligence, available on twelve min.