Crazy Facts About The Mind

Your grey matter is a truly remarkable thing, a biological machine with more raw processing power than a supercomputer. Get your synapsesaround the craziest facts about your mind.

THAT’S GOTTA HURTThere’s a reason you can’t help but flinch when you see another man take a boot to their vital parts. Mirror neurons cause the same pain receptors in your brain to flash up when you see someone else get hurt. They may even explain our ability to feel empathy.

NOT SO TOTAL RECALLMuch of your memory is based on guesswork. That’s because the brain only picks out the most important bits when recording information – the gaps are filled in by your mind’s own projections of what it thinks should be there when it comes to replaying the memory later.

SIZE DOESN’T MATTERMen’s brains are around 10% larger than women’s, but that won’t help much next time you take her on at Eggheads. The female brain actually contains more nerve cells and works more efficiently. And besides, Einstein’s brain was on the small side, weighing 1,230g compared to the average 1,400g.

ON YOUR MARKSEven if you consider yourself to be a little slow when you’re watching Only Connect, the signals in your brain will still be travelling at around 260mph. Not such a slouch after all. 

BECAUSE THEY GOT HIGH
Oxygen depletion at high altitudes can cause hallucinations and mess with the part of our brain responsible for emotions. It might explain why so many divine revelations seem to have taken place on mountaintops – mountaineers have often been known to have out of body experiences over 8,000ft. 

APPLY YOURSELFUrban myths (and Bradley Cooper in Limitless) have convinced us that we’re only using a tiny fraction of our brain’s true potential. Sorry to be a party pooper, but every part of our brain has a known function. Best stick to fish oil capsules.

MR. TICKLEAnyone tried tickling themselves and found it doesn’t work? No, sure, me neither. It’s actually impossible because your brains is able to differentiate between your own touch and someone else’s. In fact, touch is the first sense that the human brain develops.

MULTITASKINGNext time your other half trumpets her own multitasking skills, counter with science. It’s impossible for the brain to divide focus equally between multiple activities. If you’re chatting on the phone while driving, your brain is constantly switching the secondary task to the subconscious.

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOXIt sounds obvious that our brains are best able to focus on analytic tasks when we’re wide awake, but it’s also true that our brains are at their creative best when we’re tired. We’re less able to filter out distractions and form logical connections, forcing us to consider a broader range of information and form new ideas.

REAL INCEPTIONInfiltrating the subconscious mind of billionaire energy tycoons may be some way off, but living out your fantasies through your dream-self is entirely possible. ‘Lucid dreamers’ have the ability to recognise when they’re asleep and control their environment. The cool thing is that anyone can train to do it.

TIME WARP
Our brain is responsible for our perception of time. When we process lots of new information in one go, time can literally seem to slow down. A life threatening experience, for example, can seem to last forever because our brain records so much more of the event.

PMAThe more we think about an event from the past, the stronger the physical pathway in our brain becomes, and the easier it is to recall that particular memory. However, 'reframing' negative events in a positive light will eventually trick our brains into remoulding the memory entirely.