![]() That feeling comes from your brain, which combines the sense of touch, temperature and past experience to create the sensation of wetness. You might think you feel the warm water when you step into a shower, but your skin actually has no sensors in it to feel wetness. However, research now shows that neurogenesis continues in adult human brains, with some scientists speculating that humans replace all the neurons they were born with in the hippocampus by the time they reach 50. Even scientists used to believe this was the case, with people having a set number of brain cells that slowly reduced over time. Once a brain cell dies, that’s it, according to this myth. However, everything you do, whether it’s calculating a budget forecast or writing a sonnet, involves neurons distributed in regions throughout the brain. The myth holds that right-brained people are creative, while left-brained people are logical. You’re actually all brained, no matter whether you’re an artist or an accountant. It’s not built in concentric circles around an ancient brain we all still carry around. While great fodder for fiction and philosophy, science shows the brain of every mammal follows its own plan. Even the ancient Greeks cast human struggles as one between passion and reason. The myth goes like this: Life is a constant battle between your rational brain and an ancient, deeply embedded lizard brain that houses all your wild passions, desires and fears. This is why damage to even a small part of the brain can impact cognitive function even years later. Brain imaging has shown that even when you sleep, sections across the entire brain are in use. That’s a nice thought, perhaps, but it’s based on a myth. This usually goes hand-in-hand with the idea that our brains are capable of so much more, we just don’t use it. But what follows is the truth, based on science. Most of these ideas have been kept alive by works of fiction or in the media. The following is based on information supplied by Barrett and other neuroscientists. The problem is, not everyone has gotten the message. She noted that neuroscience has a “stable full of myths,” but research has slowly eliminated them, one by one. Lisa Feldman Barrett recently wrote about such brain myths. Some people simply want to believe, for example, that humans have the biggest brains on the planet or that we can recall crystal clear memories that exactly replicate the experience. ![]() But as with myths in every subject, repetition and belief maintain them, not actual evidence.Īnd yet, these myths persist. ![]() Human beings have a wonderful capacity to devise imaginative, complex myths about a number of topics.
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