True or false? Trish Riddell debunks some common myths about the brain in the first in a series of articles on neuroscience.
Next issue: NLP
Fact or myth? Take our brain test
The questions should be answered true or false:
01 We make no new neurones in our brain after we are born
02 We use only 10 per cent of our brains
03 There are left brain and right brain people
04 Listening to Mozart does not make you smarter
05 Your memory can hold 7 + 2 things at a time
06 It’s all downhill after 60!
07 We know what will make us happy
08 Our memories of past events in our lives are inaccurate
09 The reptilian brain controls our emotional responses
10 The adult brain is able to be changed
How would you answer the 10 questions above? Recently, I polled a community of coaches using these statements about the brain, to see if they could separate myth from scientific evidence. Below are my answers, with an indication of how many coaches agreed or disagreed with me. Why not take the test yourself, before you read on?
01 We make no new neurones in our brains after we are born
FALSE (8 per cent said true)
As adults, much of our behaviour is fixed (though not unchangeable), so we do not need to create lots of new neurones. However, each new memory that we keep requires activity in new neurones. So we could run out of neurones to store new information.
This problem is overcome by creating new neurones in the one part of the brain we need them most – the hippocampus.
We know we make fewer neurones in the hippocampus when stressed or depressed. The good news is that we make them when we exercise. So, if you want a healthy hippocampus, do lots of exercise!
This is really important for anxious or depressed clients. Encourage them to exercise more so they create more new neurones.
02 We use only 10 per cent of our brains
FALSE (33 per cent said true)
This myth is a misinterpretation of a statement by the famous US psychologist, William James. He stated it was unlikely the average person used more than 10 per cent of their intellectual potential. This has transmogrified into the statement that people use only 10 per cent of their brains.
Studies of patients with damage to their brains have failed to identify a single part of the brain that does not have a function.
This is important because it can be used to imply that people are lazy thinkers. It is all there and active. We just need to choose to use it.
03 There are left brain and right brain people
FALSE (25 per cent said true)
In order to increase our brain’s potential, we have evolved so that some tasks are performed preferentially using one half of the cortex. For instance, our language production centre, Broca’s area, is in the left frontal lobe.
However, not all language abilities are found in the left hemisphere. Similarly, the right hemisphere processes complex spatial patterns relatively better than the left, though not exclusively. The corpus callosum allows information to pass quickly between the hemispheres so that information is shared by both.
Some clients think they are overly logical or artistic and claim to be left- or right-brained. It is more likely they haven’t practised certain skills, than their brains are ‘wired’.
04 Listening to Mozart does not make you smarter
TRUE (13 per cent said false)
I sometimes listen to Mozart when I am working. However, I don’t do this in the hope I will be made smarter. The original research was conducted by Shaw and Rauscher. They tested the spatial reasoning of a group of college students before and after listening to 10 minutes of Mozart’s music. They found that the students showed short-term improvement in spatial reasoning only. Attempts to replicate even this very modest finding have failed.
This is another myth that you can bust for others when you hear it.
05 Your memory can hold 7 things at a time
FALSE (40 per cent said true)
This ‘fact’ is based on one of the most highly cited papers in psychology, which described studies that estimate as about 7 the number of categories of sound (eg, tones) or space (eg, locations) that can be identified accurately.
It also described experiments which suggested that we could remember about 7 chunks of information immediately after hearing them. While 7 was the answer in both studies, subsequent research suggests that memory span varies depending on what is being remembered (7 digits, 6 letters and 5 words) so even the number of things we can remember is not described by the magical number 7.
This is just one to note – use it when you want to increase your credibility with clients in knowing more about the brain.
06 It’s all downhill for the brain after 40 (or 50 or 60)
FALSE (8 per cent said true)
While it is true that working memory for facts decreases with age, the picture for the ageing brain is not all bleak. Laura Carstensen suggests that some age differences in memory arise from differences in temporal focus. Young adults focus on saving as much factual information as possible, since this can benefit them in the future.
In comparison, older adults focus less on storing facts and more on positive events. Thus, while there are some deficits in the ageing brain, the picture is definitely not all negative.
This is useful for older clients or those who may be dismissing older colleagues because they believe that the brain deteriorates with age.
07 We know what will make us happy
FALSE (38 per cent said true)
Think of something that you really wanted, and quite quickly received. Did your expected happiness correspond with your actual happiness? Daniel Gilbert suggests that we overestimate both how unhappy we would be if something bad happened and also how happy we will be if something good happens.
In fact, we are happiest when we are anticipating something that we have wanted for some time. Think how that might save on the shopping bills!
This is useful when working with clients that are goal-based. The journey often provides more satisfaction than reaching the goal.
08 Our memories of past events in our lives are inaccurate
TRUE (38 per cent said false)
Elizabeth Loftus showed it is possible to plant false memories by giving people a booklet containing true stories from childhood (verified by relatives) and one false story about being lost in a department store as a child.
After reading the booklets, participants were asked to write what they remembered about each event. Twenty-five per cent claimed to remember the false event. Thus, our memories can be modified by suggestion and become, over time, a mixture of memory and imagination.
This is really important in coaching since it provides the basis for NLP techniques that change memories and therefore our response to a past experience.
09 The reptilian brain controls our emotional responses
FALSE (50 per cent said true)
There is indeed both a more primitive, reactive, emotional system that responds in a characteristic way to emotional events, and a more highly developed, proactive, system that will often over-ride the primitive system to give us more control over our emotional responses.
The problem is that what neuroscientist Paul MacLean defined as the reptilian brain contains only the brain stem and cerebellum. These are responsible for stereotyped emotional responses, such as aggression in an angry cat.
The reactive emotional brain is based in the amygdala (part of the Limbic brain). The proactive emotional system is found in the orbitofrontal cortex and allows us to change our response to events that trigger strong reactions.
This is significant because it shows that our emotional responses are able to be controlled – we are not controlled by our amygdala.
10 The adult brain is able to be changed
TRUE (25 per cent said false)
Our brains have evolved as learning machines with two main mechanisms for learning. The human infant brain creates 100 per cent more connections (synapses) between neurones than in the adult brain.
In the first years of life, the expected experiences of each child determine which synapses should be kept (because they are used) and which are lost (lack of use). So, for example, the synapses that represent the sounds that we hear in our own language are kept, and those for other languages lost. However, over time, the number of synapses drops to adult levels.
We also learn by creating new synapses. Since this is available in brains of any age, an old dog really can learn new tricks!
This is important information for coaches when faced with clients who believe they are too old to change.
Dr Trish Riddell is professor of applied neuroscience at the School of Psychology and CLS at the University of Reading
Volume 7, Issue 4