BRAIN MATTERS: Man V/s Animal

Recently, my neighbour had come to meet my wife along with her one-year-old son. As they were busy with their chitchat, I was enjoying a show on Animal Planet channel. The episode on that said day was on Zebra, I was astonished to know that a foal can run within 45 minutes of birth. At the same time, the one-year-old son of my neighbour was crawling and trying to stand holding my legs, a thought crossed my mind, whether human beings are inferior to animals?

This questioning led me to do some research on this topic and to the work of David Eagleman- neuroscientist, teaching at Stanford University. His work not only proved my query to be a wrong assumption, but also made me aware of some astonishing facts about the human brain. I am sure, like me, many of you too are not familiar with you own brain. Through this article, I will place before you, certain facts about our brain, so that you too can appreciate the insightful research of David Eagleman and prowess of your own brain!

1. Unlike Animals which are born with a readymade brain, we humans are born with an unfinished (I would like to term it as ‘Work in Progress’) brain. Our brain allows itself to be shaped by the experiences that get unfolded, as we start growing physically. This means that it’s our immediate surroundings and the environment in which we grow, that decides the development of our brain.

2. At birth, neurons in the brain (nerve cell) are disparate and unconnected, in the first two years of life; they begin to connect with one another swiftly taking signals from the external immediate physical environment. This connection between the brain neurons is called as ‘Synapses.’ As many as two million connections get formed every second in an infant’s brain. By the age of two, a child will have more than 100 trillion synapses, almost the double of that of an adult. However, once the child starts growing up further, almost 50% of these connections slowly get eliminated. The brain will retain only those synapses which are strong and regularly used by it and eliminate the weaker ones or those that are not used. Who we are, is ultimately decided not by new connections that get formed inside our brain, but by what gets removed.

3. The connections or synapses are formed based on the external world experiences, allowing the brain to adopt itself to the local environment. Thus, we are shaped by the environment into which we are dropped.  This insight is very important, because if a child is not given a proper environment – one which is safe, healthy and nurturing, the child’s brain will struggle to develop normally, leading to cognitive and behavioural issues.

To sum up, who we are depends on where we have been.

– Prakash Prabhu
[ Mr.Prakash Prabhu works for The Manipal Group as a Senior HR Manager with over 15 years of corporate experience. He has been the lead writer and contributor to CHIRP magazine.(An intra-Manipal group monthly employee magazine) An avid reader who devours one book after another, Mr.Prabhu is also a certified handwriting analyst.]