“Super Brain – Unleash the Explosive Power of Your Mind” Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi

Our brain is constantly evolving. The heart and liver that we were born with will essentially be the same organs when we die. But the brain is capable of evolving and improving through our lifetime.

Upward learning curve is possible

A wide-spread opinion is that as we age, our brain ages too and it will be harder to learn new things, memory loses its edge, etc. However, that does not have to be so. As we get older, we tend to simplify our mental activities, often as a defense mechanism. We feel secure about what we already know and want to avoid learning new things. So instead of the brain creating new synapses, it keeps hardwiring the ones we already have. However, if we choose to follow an upward learning curve no matter how old we are and keep on learning, hence creating new synapses, dendrites, and neural pathways; we enhance health of our brain and this way minimizing the risk of dementia and even Alzheimer.

New neurons are born when we are not on autopilot

Indeed – brain is losing every day around 85 000 cortical neurons (1 per second). Which is 0,0002% of the 40 billion neurons that one has in cerebral cortex. Meaning it would take 600 years to lose half of them. But this is tough, as new neurons are also born regularly (neurogenesis). All one needs to do is to keep training one’s body and mind.

Instinctive, emotional and intellectual brain

Although we often despise the instinctive brain, it has its function – who would want to choose / decide consciously about digesting food after each meal? Huge areas of life should be on autopilot and they luckily are. When chased by tiger, our instinctive brain does something crucial – decides by itself to release adrenaline. It evokes electrochemical activity as specific synapses, telling one to run while optimizing heart rate and breathing for maximum physical performance and maximizes one’s concentration to endure the chase. Desires such as eating, sleeping, drinking and having sex disappear, until the danger is gone.

Emotional brain is something different. Emotions mean something and we want to control this “department” rather than be on an autopilot which is easy to happen. A key towards successful communication is overcoming our negative emotions (e.g. anger). How to do this? Try to notice and “observe” the emotion. In that tiny momentum when you think “this is me getting angry”, hence separating yourself from the feeling (creating gap between yourself and your emotion), the emotion loses momentum. So do not let emotions use you, make them your partner, e.g. in learning, as emotions intensify learning thus you remember better what you studied and learn more! Young children learn effortlessly as they are naturally enthusiastic and passionate about learning.

Higher or intellectual brain marks the arrival of self-awareness. Higher brain, the cerebral cortex, sits like a king atop of the lower brain. This part of the brain is where the question of the meaning of life was born. It also takes care of thinking, decision-making etc. The intellectual brain uses logic and rational thought to deal with the world in a mindful manner. So while instinctive brain makes us react, intellectual brain provides us with option to mindfully respond. Responding to any situation requires understanding while reacting doesn’t.

Another special feature of the higher brain is that it enables us to teach – turn our experience into knowledge and share it with others. And human society depends on teaching. Even though monkeys might be similar to us, the big difference between humans and monkeys is that the latter cannot teach other monkeys, even if they can learn very complicated tasks.

While higher brain enables us to learn and develop which is crucial for survival, it can also decide not to survive. Because humans have higher brain that is capable of thinking, we refuse to be dictated by our lower brain (which promotes survival as the most important goal), even when it comes to survival unlike any other animal. Nietzsche phrased it “Man is the only animal who has to be encouraged to live”.

Consciousness

One more interesting topic the book touched upon was consciousness. Apart from the very unreliable picture running inside the brain, we have no proof that reality is anything like what we see. Einstein put it in another way saying that the most incredible thing isn’t the existence of the universe but our awareness of its existence. Are trees really green and hard? Is the sky blue? We have agreed that they are but e.g. for termites the trees are not hard and the sky might not be blue for the creatures flying there. So, the physical world we experience only mirrors our human nervous system.

To sum up

·         Old age and dementia do not have to go hand in hand – we can choose to work out our brain and learn until the end.

·         One is not one’s brain (“My arm moved” vs “I moved my arm” – one is reaction, one is intention; one is brain driven, one mind driven).

·         One creates everything about how the world looks and feels. Perception isn’t passive. One is not simply receiving fixed reality. One shapes it. Self-awareness changes perception. The more aware one is, the more power one has over reality.

·         Mind, brain, and body are seamlessly connected. Being afraid of something bring along physical symptoms – muscle weakness, loss of appetite etc.

I liked the book. I have hard time accepting “enlightenment” / good advice from self-help books or magazine articles that are not backed up by hard facts, research, studies. Although most of the advice the book gives is no news to me, I trust it more as there are references to science and studies. 

So did I change something in my behavior after reading this book? A bit. I have tried to train my brain and live more consciously on a small scale, tried not to fall into comfortable routines and not to look for excuses in order to skip learning e.g. new phone or computer applications including this blog site with the excuse that I am too old to follow all this and don’t really need it. And maybe they aren’t vital, but for the sake of training my brain to avoid dementia in old age, it might be worth to give them a try! 

Deepak Chopra and Rudolph E. Tanzi "Super Brain – Unleash the Explosive Power of Your Mind” (2012)