Interesting Information About Brain

Hi everyone! I had a super busy week, but I was so happy because I was able to help a lot of people.

The more you take care of yourself, the more people you can support. And I keep sharing information about self-care on my channel. Today I want to talk a little bit about frontal cortex, because I think that the more information you get about your brain, the more control over your life and behavior you can have.

Here is the link to the video for my today's post: Interesting Information About Brain.

Have you ever wondered why sometimes you want to do what is right and end up doing what is easy? Let's say you want to start reading self-development books everyday because you know that it will help you to learn how to use your potential. But instead of that you just turn on TV and watch some TV show that doesn't really improve your life in any way. And maybe you even have a feeling later that you just wasted your time on something that you didn't really like. And you might feel bad that you didn't do what you were going to.

Well, it is actually very normal behavior. You are not alone. Our brain just work this way. We have some habits and we do them automatically without even thinking. Some actions do not require involvement of frontal cortex, the part of your brain that cares about long term goals and can do some deep analytical thinking. So if you want to make a change in your behavior, you need to use your frontal cortex.

On this picture you can see very simplified version of how brain might work.

On the left side you have an established habit. And you have more inputs between neurons. So the connection is stronger than on the right side of the picture, where you have less inputs. But you can also see neuron from frontal cortex area (FC). And it gives additional energy to harder path (right side of the picture) and inhibits easier path which leads to less desirable outcome. And dopamine, neuromodulator, is the fuel for this right thing. It means that if you have meaning and motivation in your frontal cortex to do something, this meaning can help you to choose the action that is harder for your brain (and maybe for your body) because dopamine helps you to stay motivated.

I noticed that the more I train my attention, the better I become in using my frontal cortex. And you can train attention in many ways. The most common one is to pay attention to your breath. At some point you lose it, then you consciously bring it back. And the more you do it, the better you become at it. And you can also try to pay attention to sounds, smells, maybe touches, something related to your senses. And again, when you lose your attention, try to bring it back. This is what I think mindfulness is. At least from my point of view.

If you want to learn more about the way brain works, I recommend you to check out Robert Sapolsky Lectures: Behavioral Biology.

I am not a scientist, I just love to learn new things and share them with others. I will keep learning and sharing. And I hope you will try to apply some of my ideas to your life and maybe they will help you like they helped me.

Be Strong And Love Yourself!

From Dasha With Love!

Love Wins!