On a cursory glance at the state of modern science, the inexperienced reader may get the impression of one strange discrepancy. The size of the subject matter surprisingly does not reflect the success achieved in its study.
For example, the science of the brain, an organ weighing only 1.5 kg on average, requires such sophisticated technologies, but so far it has not revealed many of its secrets. How so? What kind of secrets does the human brain keep, why are scientists forced to puzzle over deciphering the principles of its work?
We invite you to plunge into the world of the greatest mysteries of the human brain, to which science has not yet found answers.
1. Nature or nurture?
One of the main aspirations of the sciences that study the brain and psyche is to determine the degree of influence of heredity on the formation of personality in comparison with the influence of external factors, such as upbringing, environment, friends, idols, and so on. What determines the development of character, future addictions, desires?
Studying twins as people with the same background in heredity can provide significant clues, because they represent an ideal object of research on the difference between congenital and acquired.
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Great hopes are pinned on the study of twins separated at an early age: only in this way can one know for certain what qualities brothers or sisters will develop and whether they will be as similar as if they grew up together. However, due to understandable ethical reasons, such aspirations are not destined to come true in full.
Scraggly data open to scholarship suggests that twins separated immediately after birth have similar habits and tendencies down to the smallest detail (for example, thumb-sucking or preferred subject at school), but with respect to others. Manifestations of character, as we managed to find out, there was no such pronounced similarity.
2. Why does the brain stop functioning?
Alas, people sometimes have to observe the saddest pictures of how the once blooming organism suddenly ceased to perform its basic functions and all well-established systems seem to begin to disintegrate. The brain is no exception, and in the same way it can lose its former performance up to a complete stop of work.
The most famous example of such a sharp degeneration is Alzheimer's disease. Even despite the fact that scientists have identified specific places in the brain that are affected by this disease, they are not yet able to stop the already running mechanism of destruction. Medicine does not currently have a means that can prevent the development of a fatal process …
Unfortunately, since science knows the structure and functioning of individual parts of the brain, the integral organization of its work, and in particular, disorganization, remains more than mysterious.
3. Secrets of sleep and dreams
It is perfectly natural and habitual that people dream, but, surprisingly, scientists still do not know why this happens. The only thing they can confidently assert about is the absolute importance of sleep for the body.
In attempts to make assumptions about the purpose of sleep, the theory of the necessary rest and relaxation provided by the brain at this time is leading. However, when it comes to rest, why does the brain itself remain more than active, producing dreams? Perhaps, in a dream, training of the necessary reactions takes place, the study of emotionally significant events and the solution of urgent problems for a more perfect response later in reality.
4. Unraveling traces of memory
Another mystery of how the brain works is the memory structure, incomprehensible so far. What mechanism is responsible for preserving certain facts and events, and how is their necessity determined? In the meantime, there is no need to know about it.”
Scientists managed to establish the brain zones, foci of neurons and their connections, which are responsible for fixing something in memory. But what is happening in these areas is still unclear to science. It is even less known whether it is possible to intentionally change the structure of memory mechanisms in order to erase a certain part of it. In the meantime, there is no need to know about it.”
One study showed that the activation of neural connections when remembering an event is almost identical to the response of nerve cells when they perceive the same in the past. Thus, it can be assumed that experiencing the phenomenon in reality and in memory makes the brain act in a rather similar way.
In addition to studying the functions of memory in a state of norm, the topic of its disturbances, for example, false memories, is extremely interesting. In 2005, when a series of explosions thundered in London, doctors and police witnessed 10 stories of different people about the allegedly seen footage on television relating to the incident. However, no such videos were shown on any channel.
What is the purpose of memory if it sometimes retains unreliable data?
5. The mystery of consciousness
Until now, science is not clear - where the brain ends and the mind begins. Maybe it's the same thing? What about concepts like soul, individuality, personality? Which of these does the brain contain, and in what proportions? This area remains in the study of human consciousness as the most fundamental and most subjective.
Thanks to modern imaging techniques, scientists can record the activity of certain areas of the brain while performing certain actions. But how to understand - how and when this activity becomes thought?
Also, the sphere of conscious and unconscious experiences remains unclear. Many processes do not require the involvement of conscious comprehension: breathing, stomach work, gait, and much more. In addition, there are unconscious actions of a higher level, for example, already 7 seconds before a person makes a decision, one can notice a focus in his brain, signaling a fully formed behavior model. Is there real free will in this case, or is all our behavior the result of the mechanical work of a complex system of nerve cells?
Let's hope that sooner or later science will open the veil of many secrets of the brain.
Katrin Straszewski