Brainy Stuff

The prefrontal cortex is the other neuron making machine in the brain, next to the hippocampus. It’s right behind your eyes and forehead. Instead of being an inside organ of the brain, it’s actually the outside - the bark of the brain tree, if you will.

The PFC is most of your thinking, actually. It’s not your entire consciousness, since that’s impossible to pinpoint, but it’s the part of you that plans things and makes decisions. It then gathers up those thoughts, along with your internal goals (whether it’s ‘get an A’ or ‘get away’), and puts it into action. Pretty easy.

It’s also responsible for stopping you from doing something, making you think about it, and thinking about the consequences.

Kinda sounds like something a typical adolescent doesn’t have :\ But it’s true - in fact, the brain develops from back to front, and nothing is more front than the prefrontal cortex. That’s not to say that adolescents CAN’T MAKE DECISIONS EVER, but only that it takes them a really long time to get to where a regular adult would be like, ‘well, duh!’

Even for a really obvious and stupid thing like ‘Is it a bad idea to light your hair on fire?’ teenagers can and will take more than three times as long as an adult to have their brain say yes. That’s a long time! And in the time between being a teenager and becoming an adult, you’re more than capable of making completely idiotic decisions, or even not making decisions at all, instead just going with your feelings on the matter.

Right before the prefrontal cortex is the limbic system, which is the forefront of emotions. So it’s kind of no wonder that as a teen you can’t help but become engrossed in your own complex emotions, and end up acting mostly on those emotions. It’s the most sophisticated thing online in your brain, and you’re going to exercise it as much as you can. Though exercising your PFC is also the best way to get it going sooner and faster, too.

But it makes sense that it’s the last to develop, too - it’s requires so much time because it’s just so important to what it means to be you! And you can also see why it’s the other neurogenerating area - of course you’ll need an endless supply of neurons to keep up with your constantly morphing thoughts and actions and decisions, building up all these experiences to create you.

So I said that someone who learns quickly has fast dendritic branching, right? Though really the learning isn’t limited to like, school learning, or anything. You can be very quick to learn about social things, emotional things, athletic, puzzle solving, any of that. Really all you’re doing is responding quickly to a situation and adapting yourself to it, whether it’s how to solve calculus or how to comfort a friend. Or how to blindly move stupid shit slide puzzle pieces around so that damn worm can get inside the center of that damn apple. You know, that kind of stuff.

Because it’s that kind of all-encompassing adapting instead of just book learning, neuroscientists simply call it plasticity - the brain’s ability to adapt. Children who are still growing and making new connections by the millions adapt the quickest, but people are lying when they say that it stops when you grow up. You keep learning throughout your entire life, how can you not be, erm, plastic?

So if someone says that you aren’t very smart, or you think you aren’t very smart, do remember that the human brain wasn’t evolved to survive exam period, no matter how you wish it did, sometimes. It evolved to move around the world, function in society, connect with others, and solve problems in order to survive. That’s the real smarts, there.

Oh, and that whole idea that Darwinian this and survival of the fittest that? Psh. Old, outdated, and 100% untrue. Like I said, we are wired to love, feel, and connect with others. Trying to do things the manly way with logic, strength, and competitiveness just ruins us all in the end.

The nucleus accumbens is hardly ever talked about in your standard textbook, but is the entire life of drug addicts (or any addict, actually). The NAc, as it is called, gets a bad rap for often being called the addiction center, but it also holds the reins on your motivation and pleasure, even laughter.

Depending on how you NAc is built, you might be the addictive type, or you might need to take a lot to get addicted. You might be the type to be easily but strongly motivated, or you might be so lazy that nothing can pull you from your couch. Because of your NAc you might get a crazy good high, or you might find it a turn-off.

The NAc takes a long time to mature - not until you’re 25. You probably aren’t even that old yet! It doesn’t mean you’re stupid though - it just means that you take longer to get to where you need to. Having an underdeveloped NAc only means that you need a stronger ‘high’ and a stronger reason to do something you just ain’t gonna do. Doesn’t mean you’re a stereotypical teen, but honestly, think of all the people you know that probably do follow that. To get that high they might take stupid risks, might do drugs at higher doses, promise they won’t have sex but end up doing it anyway. 

All thanks to an immature NAc. 

But that’s why, if you’re going to do drugs, might wanna wait until it’s done growing. You can mess it up and develop an addictive personality.

However, if you culture your NAc, build up motivation and hold strong goals, even if you’re past 25, you’ll find that you’re better motivated to do good things, you’ll find more pleasure in doing the things you do, and you’ll be healthier in how you want what you want.

Little known fact, but you’re not actually the cells in your brain - you’re the connections those cells make. Cool, eh? It’s called dendritic branching, since there are…little branches called dendrites, and they carefully touch hold hands with all those other cells. When you learn, you’re actually allowing even more branches to grow, touching other cells and connecting dots. In a way, I suppose you can that someone who has fast dendritic branching also learns fast as well.

Actually that’s the reason why no one remembers their infancy - there were only a few neurons with connections at all! And without those connections, you couldn’t make memories, especially when you’re so busy dedicating that branching to other things, like learning faces and how to poop.

Interesting how we are made through the connections and networks the cells make with each other!

The limbic system is a bunch of brain parts that all work closely together. While these parts have their own specific function, together they weave emotions, motivations and behavioral responses. Neuroscientists like to describe it as the four F’s - Feeding, Fighting, Fleeing, and Fucking, an awful joke that’s been around as long as biopsychology itself.

The more noted brain parts include the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus. 

The hypothalamus is the body watcher - it has tight control over temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, body fluids, breathing, you name it. It also watches hormones, most specifically cortisol, the stress hormone. With these controls, the hypothalamus drives survival, getting you pumped up in the face of danger or ready to go with that babymaking, but it’s not so great when it comes to dissertations, final projects, and essays. People with severe depression usually have a wonky hypothalamus that goes crazy with its cortisol, which isn’t a surprise, really. 

The amygdala is associated with fear, arousal, and survival behavior as well. It’s a cute, almond-looking thing that sits next to the hippocampus. Its most important function, however, is emotion, and deciphering what emotions to feel when presented with something in the world. It is the piercing fear you have when you see spiders, but is also the warm glow within when you see the face of someone you love. Actually, there’s a section of the amygdala dedicated entirely to other people’s emotions, too - right down to the direction that person is looking at. Even a slight change in the angle of someone’s eyes alerts your amygdala and lets you know how you feel about it and how that person might be feeling, too.

We humans are wired for empathy and social connection. It’s important even for our survival. Those who are not very empathetic, especially those who can’t even recognize facial expressions, can thank their underdeveloped amygdala for that. Anxiety disorders and depression can also thank the amygdala, though more chemically than actual structure.

Together, the hippocampus, amygdala, and hypothalamus, along with all those other little areas, form our emotional contact of the world, for good or bad. We experience and express our emotions through the limbic system.

One important thing to note is that the limbic system is part of a more ‘primitive’ era, evolutionary-wise. Our actual thoughts and decisions are made in a much different, ‘newer’ area far from these parts. And while you can control your thoughts and decisions, you cannot control your limbic system.

This is the reason why you feel the way you do, and why no amount of ‘rational thought’ will make it go away - it’s literally in two completely different areas. You cannot help the way you feel, no matter how stupid you think it is, or how terrible you think you are. The limbic system, being more ‘primitive’ and ‘animalistic’, cannot be swayed with logic. It must be tamed, cared for, eased into training. Anyone who tells you to just get over by giving you such and such reasons needs to shut up, because it’s impossible. You’re not stupid. You can’t do it because your limbic system and frontal lobe are two completely different things!

Don’t let anyone tell you how easy it is, because trust me, the science is there to say that it isn’t!

My professor researches the hippocampus, so this is one area I know a lot about! There’s tons of absolutely fascinating things about it, so I think I’ll start with this one.

The hippocampus looks like a seahorse. It’s deep in the brain, around the area where the top of your ear connects to your head. It’s extensively studied because its role is fairly clear - not only is it critical to forming new memories, but you need it to get around, too.

It’s also a lot of neuroscientists’ favorite brain part, because it is incredibly special: it is only one of two areas in the entire brain capable of making new neurons.

So that idea that you can’t make new brain cells is entirely a myth!!! The hippocampus and its friend the prefrontal cortex make new cells everyday, called neurogenesis.

If you know anyone with Alzheimer’s, then you can probably figure out that the hippocampus is heavily affected by it - the classical symptoms of Alzheimer’s in fact include being unable to form memories (or recall memories, either), and being unable to find your way around even your own home. What a terrifying experience.

Depression is also correlated with the hippocampus, though in different ways from those with Alzheimer’s. Rather than having extensive brain cell death, the hippocampus simply shrinks. It can come back, though, given patience, relaxation, and a hell of a lot of effort. Turns out that the hippocampus is one of the most vulnerable areas to stress, so if you’re chronically stressed you’re more likely to suffer depression.

You might think that that’s obvious - ‘well, duh, if you’re stressed out all the time of course you’re going to be unhappy!’ - but it goes deeper than that. Most of the science community agrees that it’s all those stress hormones, which brain cells hate, that puts your neurogenesis on hiatus and causes your hippocampus to shrink in fear! 

All the more reason to take a day off! Your hippocampus depends on it!