Myths About the Brain

though the this episode is called ten Myths about the Brain. Yeah, if you're new to the show and you've never heard us do one of our famous top tens, then you probably don't know. We rarely cover all ten. We will tease you a bit with six to eight and then say go read the article if you want the other one. And in this case, we've actually covered a couple of the things before, so there's no point in rehashing exactly

so that. I guess I just probably need to explain that you laid the ground rules pretty well man to a top ten that is really not tin um. So we we have brains in our heads. Uh, And I think most people walk around feeling like they have some ideas about the brain, some understanding, um, but it turns out that some of them are wrong. There's myths out there and so have kind of interesting weird origins too. Yeah.

I thought this is pretty cool article because we've covered the brain a lot and it's one of our favorite, favorite favorite subjects. So it's kind of cool to root out some of these things that a couple of these I thought were true. Well. Well, for example, like, um, your brain is gray, I thought that to be true. Well, and it's understandable why too, because people call the brain gray matter. Um apparently Hercule Paul row I just said that like a dog that was That was right, h

That's an odd name to have to say though. Yeah, Hercules plaically especially from my tongue marble mouth. He used to call his brains his gray cells. Oh yeah. Um, so yeah, everybody thinks the brain is great and it is gray. There are very much, um lots of gray areas called gray matter, but there's other colors to the

brain too. Yeah. This kind of knocked me out because I had no idea that the brain was also white, black, and red like our Georgia bulldogs in Atlanta, falcon starts lapping in there, everybody's brains walking around the bulldog fan So, like you said, there is a lot of gray matter, uh cells, neurons connecting to each other. There's also white matter. Well that's the stuff that connects them. Well, the white matter is is the nerve fibers right right, So it

connects like your gray matter regions to one another. So that makes sense. Yeah, but what about the substantia nigra Latin for black substance that is part of your brain is black? I would think that would be scary. Yeah, he was dead, dude, think so. But the that that region of the brain um, it has to do with motor control, like fine control, and that's that They think that possibly that's where Parkinson's damage comes from, or Parkinson's disease is located there. And the reason it's black is

because of neuromelanin, which is a pigment. And I was very curious why your brain would eat any kind of pigment? Whatsoever? Did you get to that? Yeah, it turns out they don't know, but they think that it basically takes um it removes heavy metals from your bloodstream. From that area and that they they also think that it has to do with there's a adrene of chrome, do you remember that?

From Fear and low thing in Las Vegas. So that stuff is real, and your brain produces as a byproduct of some of his normal processes, and we would all be totally psychotic apparently from the stuff if it wasn't for neuromelanin. They think basically getting rid of it. So we depend on that color. Yeah, that pigment, at least not for coloring in this case, but some other stuff. Yeah,

I couldn't. The reason we think gray besides people calling it gray matters because usually when we see a brain it's floating in a jar, then it has been turned gray from the formaldehyde and stuff. But I couldn't find any kind of picture of like an active brain with all these colors. I guess it's impossible unless they just, you know, peel your skull off and take a picture real quick. Yeah, I'm sure that was exist. What couldn't

I find a picture? I don't know. I mean, yeah, they do brain surgery, you know, with the healthy living brain. Didn't work super hard though, that's the secret. So there there you go. Red black, white and gray your brain,

all right. Number two, listening to Mozart makes you smarter. Yeah, this one I thought was did too, because Baby Einstein if you've never heard of that, that is, parents are living this stuff, big, big, multimillion dollar industry of packaging classical music and poetry and stuff like that to a not just to your baby and toddler and growing child, but for your fetus as well. Even. Yeah, the Mozart effect is what it's called, UM, and it's gonna be smarter.

Apparently the Mozart effect is trademarked by a guy named Dan Campbell. Basically, UM puts together Mozart and CDs and books and stuff like that. Um. The thing is is this Mozart effect was It was first noted in the fifties, I think by an ear nose and throat doctor named Albert Tomattus, and he said that he made it. He said that UM, the his patients who were struggling with speech and audit auditory disorders UM showed improvement when they

listened to Mozart specifically. And then in the nineties somebody else apparently conducted a test at the University of California, Irvine that showed that people's IQ scores improved after listening to Mozart, and then the Mozart effects was born. Well, so based on these studies, I would think that it does make you smarter. So is that true? Apparently not necessarily no, because these are all myths. Yeah, that that that you see Irvine study in particular was kind of

taken out of context. I get the impression, and um, they were saying, well, we never said it makes you smarter. We just said that it improved people's ability on the specific temporal spatial test. Yeah, this one specific thing. We didn't say it makes you smarter. That's the popular media that did that. So things got a little twisted around over time, and since then they have not been able

to duplicate these results from that original test. So it turns out it probably won't hurt you any right, but listening to classical music is not going to actually make you smarter. But they have found that, um, learning to play music, you can do a lot of stuff. Um, it improves concentration, self constant competence, coordination. Really yeah uh and you mentioned people playing Mozart to get the Mozart

effect for their fetuses. Yeah, Um, have you ever heard the one that you get a new wrinkle in your brain every time you learn something. I knew that wasn't true. It sounds a little bit like an angel gets his wings every time. All totally, Uh, that is not true. But there are some cool little factoids in here. Uh, one of which is that by the time you reach

forty weeks old, you have the same brain. It will get larger, of course, but you have all the same little folds and crevices called jerry and sulci um, all folded up together. And the reason it's folded up together is because our brain is large and the skull isn't, so it needed to scrunch itself in there as we evolved. And I think if you unfolded all that, the brain would be the size of a tennis court. No, no, that's the intestines a pillowcase. Okay, that's still pretty Yeah,

it's huge. Um, and that's why we're so smart. Um, which kind of leads us to another. Um. Another myth all right, that humans have the biggest brain, which is not the case, which makes sense to me. I thought this one was pretty cool. Actually, Um, A lot of people walking around I think that because we're so smart, we must have the biggest brain. But if you if you think about it, no, a whale is going to have a bigger brain than a human brain. That's true

because whales are enormous. Our brains about three pounds a whale. Sperm whales about what's seventeen pounds, Yeah, which is a huge brain. So why aren't sperm whales running the planet? The reason why, It doesn't really matter the size of the brain. It's the size of the brain to the rest of the body. That ratio is what matters. Yeah, I thought that was super interesting. They used dolphins as an example because the dolphin's brain is about the same

size of a humans brain. Dolphins are super smart, But an average dolphin weighs about three fifty pounds. Uh, I don't know. Does it say how much the average adultways, it's not three. I would say, depending on whether it's male or female, anywhere between a hundred to two hundred pounds, whether or not average somewhere in there. Sorry. Uh. And then they also go on to name some other animals, which was just sort of cute to think about. A

beagle's brain is two point five ounces. Cute, little beagle and a sparrow has a brain that weighs less than half an ounce. That's adorable. So again though it's the it's the brain size to body size ratio, and humans it's one to fifty UM. Most other mammals it's one to one eight UM, and then in birds it's one to two twenty typically. Yeah, but we do have humans compared to mammals, we have the largest cerebral cortex, which is really where like that's the money section. It's also

the newest part of our brain. It's on the outermost surface, um, and that's where all the higher functions are carried out. And that's what really separates us. That's why we run the planet. Otherwise just be orangutans. Um. What about subliminal messages and we learn from those? Uh, that is a falsehood, sir. I guess that's the spoiler. All these are false but

their myths. Yeah, they're myths. Um. But back in the nineteen fifties, there was a marketing executive, a researcher named James Vickery who, uh did you know everyone always heard you know, you go to the movies and they splash up Coca cola and popcorn. I thought that was a myth. I did too, but that was true. They did that in nineteen fifty seven. Yeah, there's a there's a still in this article from the movie and over Kim's face it says hungry eat popcorns and it's from a frame

of the movie. So that's one three thousandth of a second. And um, Vickery said, you know what, Uh, sales increased in the theater by eighteen percent for popcorn I'm sorry for drinks, and by fifty seven percent for popcorn thanks to these messages. Yeah, and everybody said, okay, well, we're very interested in basically psychologically manipulating everybody into buying our products. So they started putting that stuff in jingles and in UM movies and television, and UM, they found pretty quickly

that it actually doesn't have an effect yet. Well, they banned it first of all, the FEC band in nine, because they did think it worked at the time. UM. But then later on it turns out that James Vickery just lied about the results, not true at all. He's like, hey, I was a sales guy, not a scientist, but you expect uh so yeah, like you said, the FEC band subliminal advertising in general, which was a good move because

if it did work, that's not okay. No, but a lot of people still think that it's still around and then it actually does work, Yes, but it is not true. And they even tested this in Canada evidently on TV. They flashed the message call now during a broadcast, and I guess nobody called. Maybe they didn't give a number. There's this right, I feel like I need to call somebody,

but I don't get it. I wondered though, like if if they were studying the wrong thing, like call now makes sense, but what if it has to be much more explicit, like hungry eat popcorn? You can't eat popcorn? Like maybe that would make you grab a bite of

popcorn fit we're in your lap. Maybe it has to be more direct, like hungry, go buy popcorn at the front concession stand now, you know, because then your brain would obey that command rather than a roundabout command that's the result of something you have to do, telling you to go do that thing. Maybe that would work. So you're leaving the door open for this for further testing. I could see it subliminal below the lineman or lemon,

which is the threshold of our conscious awareness. Yeah, it looks like Lineman when by itself, that's what's in sprit. But if he said subliminal, then somebody would just on two upside the head, you know. Yeah, where are we now? We are on the idea that brain damage is always permanent. I didn't know that this was a thing. I didn't know that people said that. Sure, I never heard that. Well, I think the point of it is is you know that the brain can't repair itself once it's damaged, And

that's absolutely not true. It's not true. The brain is extremely resilient. It's it's so much so that there's this thing called plasticity, um, which is it kind of ties into that idea that you get a new wrinkle when you learn something that's not true. But your brain can rewire itself. That's how you learn and unlearned behaviors through brain plasticity. Yes, so I guess there are some truth

in that. Neurons, once they are damaged, they cannot grow back, right, but thanks to plasticity, that will make new neural connections in sometimes surprising ways, which is why if you've had a stroke and damage part of your brain, you can relearn to speak alps if you've lost that ability by forging these new connections. There's a girl out there, um who has only one hemisphere of her brain. That's it that way. I don't remember she was born that way or if it was the result of surgery or damage

or something, but she's got half of a brain. Her brain has just one hemisphere, and she has binocular vision. She can see out of both eyes, which they had

no idea how that was going on. And they finally went in and looked, I guess using an m R I and they found that her optic nerve that should be connected to the missing hemisphere had basically grown, had grown to go patch in another part of her brain on the other side, and it basically hijacked this other part of her brain and was using it for sight.

That is unbelievable. That's the brain. I wonder what you lose though, I wonder if it forges a connection and at the expense of another, you know what I'm saying, Yeah, like, could she be like, man, I can see through both eyes, but I can't tie my shoot any longer. Yeah, maybe, yeah, it's possible, But I mean the brain would would say, well, it's better you can see somebody else can tie your shoes. Well that makes me wonder, though, I wonder if there is an order to it all, like if the brain

knows what's more important. Yes, there is. As a matter of fact, this ties into that idea that you only use ten percent of your brain. Wow, all right, let's hear it. Well that's not true, by the way, right, And actually that one has a pretty interesting origin, doesn't it. Yeah, they're not quite sure where it came from. Um, it seems like it's always been around though, the notion that

you only use ten percent of your brain. But um, they think it may have come from American psychologist William James in the early nineteen hundreds when he said the average person rarely achieves but a small portion of his or her potential. And that was just sort of twisted into ten percent of your brain is used. And people, you know, you see people taking advantage of this notion all the time with self help books like Tap into the Other and it's just bunk, right, And this is

where it ties in. It is in that all regions, all physical regions of your brain are being used. But there's a theory that's around for savantism. Explain savantism, which I want to do someday, we need to write the article on it. But so fascinating. There's a theory right now that savanta is um is from the result of like brain damage. What what savantism is the result of the brain's tyranny of the frontal lobe is what it's called.

And basically the idea is that your frontal lobe decides what's important, and it bosses around all the other regions of your brain to carry out this very smooth, efficient streamline process that basically it decides is the most important, and in doing so, it cast to the side a lot of other stuff, like the ability to make great art, or the ability to count a bunch of matches that just fell on the floor, whatever, And that savantasm is the result of this executive function, this tyranny of the

frontal cortex being disrupted, so that maybe you aren't just the most efficient shark in the tank any longer, and you're not out there and like going, going, going, and like trying to compete and beat everybody else. But there's all these other things that are now free to just kind of blossom, like artistic deep, amazing, artistic, interesting abilities. Yeah, that's that's this theory point and we're just now learning

this stuff. But it suggests that maybe we do only use a portion of our abilities, not physical, like we're using a dred percent of the physical parts of our brain, but what we're using it for is that issue. Yeah, you see what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, so there's definitely something to that. Yeah. I trip out on the brain a lot, Like when I'm studying it for the podcast,

I'll get sidetracked. Like this morning, I was reading this article and I just had one of those little flights of fancy where it amazed me that I was looking at these printed shapes on a pay paper that formed words into sentences that I understood and had meaning. And

I just was amazed by the brain. Just laying in bed this morning, I was like, oh my god, Like I'm reading these words that makes sense, and I'm speaking words that have a symbol form on a paper, And I promise you I wasn't on LSD this morning, but I just had one of those moments where it just like totally amazed me that I was even able to read. So the brain basically made you impressed with itself. Yes it did. And while you mentioned ls do we I guess we can say in passing apparently drugs do not

create holes in your brain. That is not true, um. And there's a lot of uh back and forth over how much damage drugs due to your brain at all, how reparable that damage is. And there are studies going on on all all the all the time about long

term drug use and the results. One of them, interestingly found that they think that some long term use of some drugs can cause structures in the brain to grow, and that is why addicts may have a hard time kicking the habit, because they've grown a certain part of their brain. I guess to Yeah, your limbic system is strengthened through that. Very interesting and alcohol um does not kill brain cells. It damages the dentrides that we've talked about, and those are the ends of the neurons where the

connections are taking place. I guess right. So it makes your neurons talk sideways to one another like the brain cells are still there, but they just can't talk about yeah, pretty much. And there's something a neurological disorder called Wernikey Corsicov syndrome, and that is uh can result in a loss of neurons in the brain. But that's basically what I think of when I think someone has like pickled themselves with alcohol. But that's kind of what's going on.

It's actually not the alcohol that's killing brain cells. It's from it's from a uh A deficiency and thymine. That amazing. Yeah, So if if you have a thymine deficiency, you can get this war Nikki Corsicov syndrome and um, that's a B vitamin. And if you are an alcoholic, you typically aren't absorbing your your thymin like you would if you weren't an alcoholic, which is why it's associated with alcoholism.

But it's not alcohol killing brain cells, right, And it's much easier for me just to say they've pickled themselves, which is really sad. We're laughing, but it is. It is super sad. Yes, it is. If you've ever met anyone that was pickled, well, yeah, and here's a alcohol Any addicts suffering as a result of their addiction is extremely sad, it is. So that's all I got. How many was that? Seven? Is eight or six and a

half something like that. Um, if you want to learn the fate of the other remaining brain myths from this top ten list. Type in brain myths in the search bart how stuff works dot com and it will bring this article up. And actually we sort of have issue with one of them we left off was the decapitation. They said it was a myth. I guess I didn't even read it, kind of but didn't we say it was? They say, and they're like, yeah, it's gonna last for a couple of seconds or whatever, like, which is what

we said in the podcast. But for some reason they made that seem like, but that's nothing right. But then they said that it's an extremely painful way to die because you are conscious. Afterwards, it was it was kind of a cluster mixed messages. Yeah, all right, uh so I said, such partians this time for a listener. Now, yes,

I'm gonna call this poop poopy time. We did our our podcast on fecal transplants, and we've had all manner of poopy emails coming in and I'm gonna share one from Jacob Carnes, U, Hi, Josh, Chuck and Jerry and he spelled Jerry right. I just finished the Fecal Transplant podcast and felt compelled to write in after you mentioned the Nora virus, which I was afflicted with about two weeks ago. Didn't last long, just about twenty four hours,

but it hit instantly, like someone flipped the switch. I will spare you the details, but it was nearly the worst I've ever felt. The day after was nearly the best I've ever felt, due to the euphoria of still being alive. But for the following week, my gut felt like it just wasn't right. My hunch is that it was really messed with the internal flora. He needs some Kombucha's that. Oh it's this um. It's just like fermented basically like probiotic drink. Um. I guess it's Eastern. It's

really delicious. There's some very delicious kombucca drinks out there, and it's supposedly promotes um colonization in your gut. You're drinking this stuff. I love it. Yeah, where you get it? Whole Foods has his kind. It's called GTS and they have a specific flavor called ginger a. That's just it's so good. You have to check that out. Yeah all right. Uh. He follows up to say, this is my favorite part.

Like I said, I felt compelled to write after you mentioned the Nora virus, but I felt obligated after you've brought up the terror of your young selves experience when you had the misfortune of using the bathroom after your

father's remember that old man poop. When I was a child, my father liked to enjoy a cigarette while doing his business is very seventies, So when I heard the call uh shortly after him, I was subjected to the putrid number two smell mixed with the stale cigarette smoke, and to this day I have trouble separating the ladder from the former. As I grew up, the need to look cool convinced me to try and take up the habit

of smoking to look cool on the toilet numerous times. Uh. But my childhood association has at least helped me come to my senses. So you never learned to smoke because he associated with his dad's poop. That's good. Whatever works. Thanks for another great podcast, guys, Jacob Carnes. Yeah, I guess for all of you smoking out there, like take it to the toilet. See what happens. I take a

big whiff of poop. Well, while you're smoking a cigarette and they'll probably bring Q of your habit mixing, disgusted with anything. Well, we'll break you have habits right, Um, if you have a habit breaking tip, bad habit breaking tip, we want to hear it because that's the demonstration of brain plats. The city is you know Uh. You can tweet to us at s y SK podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.

You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and you can join us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it How stuff works dot Com brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,