the human brain is one of the most complex organs in the human body as well as the most
poorly understood while we've come a long way in decoding its largely mysterious workings in the
past few years thanks to unprecedented advances in fields like neuroscience there's a lot we
still don't know about it from consciousness to memory to disorders that shouldn't exist
some of our brain's most basic and everyday functions are still baffling mysteries to science
10. nature versus nurture the debate around whether we're entirely products of our environment
or if biology and genetics ultimately decide everything about our lives or nature versus
nurture has been going on for a while the general consensus has traditionally fallen somewhere in
the middle i.e both nature and nurture play an equally important role and that it's impossible to
separate the impact of one from the other mountain research over the last few years though suggests
that nature may have much more of an impact on how our brain functions than environmental factors
one study found that genetic differences account for as much as 49 of all traits
including intelligence mental illness health and personality environmental factors play a crucial
role too as they account for the other half though their effect was found to be largely random
9. brain freeze technically known as cold stimulus headache a brain freeze is something we've all
experienced at least once it's usually harmless and short in duration often occurring immediately
after you eat something really really cold if we delve into its biological or evolutionary roots
however it's not clear why it happens at all no one knows what happens inside the brain during
a brain freeze even if it was quite painful and real for that one moment one theory says that it's
due to the sudden rise in blood flow to the brain caused by eating something cold as the increased
blood flow it creates pressure it's interpreted as a kind of pain by the brain causing what we know
as brain freeze while that may explain how the mechanism works it doesn't explain why the brain
sees that as pain at all instead of something else number eight visual hallucinations charbonnet
syndrome or cbs is named after the swiss clinician that first studied it in 1760 and it is one of
the most fascinating and mysterious parts of how our brain functions colloquially known as visual
hallucinations or phantom visions the condition is fairly rare only affecting a small percentage of
people that have lost their vision due to specific eye conditions like cataracts glaucoma or diabetes
it's exactly how it sounds blind people visually hallucinating after losing their eyesight even
if that sounds impossible to most of us it's not just basic hallucinations either cbs patients have
reported seeing complex unusual visuals of a wide variety of things such as distorted faces unclear
figures wearing exotic colorful dresses and miniature soldiers marching while it's definitely
one of the most fascinating as well as debilitating ways the brain can malfunction
we still don't know what causes it there doesn't seem to be any common factor among those that
experience it except for the fact that all of them lost their eyesight at some point in their
lives instead of being born blind 7. perception perception is our ability to interpret the world
around us based on the stimuli that we receive from all of our senses it's how the brain makes
a coherent sensible image of the world around us which is consistently modified and updated
in real time based on new clues and signals while it doesn't sound like a rare ability the fact that
we can do it at all is quite fascinating think about it we're bombarded with countless incoherent
pieces of information from a variety of sources every day yet the brain has no problem processing
all of that information day in day out it is after all one of neuroscience's biggest mysteries
we don't even know exactly how the brain receives all these different types of stimuli let alone how
it makes sense of them moreover we don't know if perception is entirely subconscious or if we have
some control over it 6. neural coding whenever we do anything get up to walk use our phone drive etc
our brain reaches for the necessary information that it has on that activity based on what it
knows it then sends signals to the relevant muscles and parts of the body to complete the task
it knows how to do that because of an underlying set of rules that regulate how neurons behave
the neural code as of now we know very little about how or even where neurons encode that
information though we know that it's not one place more and more studies are proving that even for
simple seemingly linear tasks like picking up an object multiple parts of the brain are involved
as an example the broca's area of the brain is responsible for speech though when we speak many
other parts of the brain that should be unrelated to the broker's area have been found to be active
too in fact there seems to be no discernible pattern to how and where information is stored in
the brain at all 5. memory in the past few decades we've come a long way in our understanding of
how the brain forms memories we now know that it's less like a hard drive which is how most
of us imagine it and more like a collection of synapses or junctions between the various
nerve cells in the brain's neural network simply speaking memory is a product of the connections
between the nerve cells and has little to do with the nerve cells themselves that's why they tend
to get distorted and less accurate with time as those connections keep getting weaker and less
accurate while we understand how it works we've still not been able to physically map the memory
formation and retrieval process inside the brain and there are still huge gaps in our understanding
of the mechanisms involved moreover while memory formation is now much better understood than
even a few years ago memory retrieval is still entirely mysterious to science we simply
do not know how the brain reaches out to its various parts whenever it has to recollect a
memory or exactly which parts are even involved in the process 4. dreams almost everyone knows
what dreams are even if their frequency in context depends on a lot of factors like age stress sleep
timings etc what no one knows though is what happens inside the brain when we dream as they
remain one of the most mysterious and commonly experienced brain phenomena that we know of
according to one study many parts of the brain are involved in dreaming instead of just one like
the parts responsible for memory emotions and rewards though it doesn't exactly explain how
they come together to make dreams moreover it's not clear when we dream either it was believed
that we only dreamed during the rem state of the sleep cycle though some recent researchers found
that we can dream during non-rem sleep too 3. neurodegeneration neurodegeneration refers to
the specific kind of deterioration of nerve cells seen in diseases like alzheimer's and parkinson's
there are hundreds of neurodegenerative diseases that we know of though only a few of them like
alzheimer's parkinson's and huntington's have ever been studied there are still many questions
around exactly what causes neurodegenerative diseases the only criteria seems to be old
age and that's about it other than age patients of neurodegenerative disorders seem to have no
discernible connection at all that makes it almost impossible to predict and hence effectively treat
some of the most debilitating mental disorders known to medicine we're not sure what happens
in the brain once these diseases take hold and progress either or exactly how they attack and
kill neurons over time number two tracking time our brain is almost always keeping track of time
and it's quite good at it too you may have already heard about the circadian clock that helps various
organs regulate their functions in tune with the time of the day though it goes way beyond that
time tracking is required even the most mundane of everyday tasks like driving speaking and listening
to music while we know that the brain is capable of doing this we're not sure how unlike spatial
awareness the regions of the brain responsible for keeping time remain elusive we've traditionally
believed that a master clock dictates all the time keeping processes of the body
though a growing number of scientists now believe that multiple regions of the brain may have their
own unique time monitors utilizing different parts of the brain at different times depending
on their function timekeeping while retrieving a memory as an example would require a completely
different set of processes in the brain than tracking the time to catch a ball 1. consciousness
the question of consciousness is the question of the meaning of life itself many experts
throughout history from ancient philosophers to modern day neuroscientists have tried to
understand the connection between the physical bits and pieces that make up the brain and the
subjective unique experiences that we have because of them though to little success consciousness is
one of sciences as well as philosophy's greatest mysteries and one that could solve some of
our longest standing medical problems like the previously mentioned neurodegenerative disorders
we still don't know exactly which regions of the brain are responsible for consciousness or
even if there's a physical aspect to it we know of patients with severe spinal cord damage that
have lost almost all of their senses and brain activity though they're still conscious and
experience the world in some form so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please
do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching