Apparently, having low self-esteem will shrink your brain.
The study, presented at a conference at the Royal Society in London, also found that the brains of these people were more likely to shrink compared with those who have a high sense of self esteem.She found that the brains of those with low self-worth were up to a fifth smaller than those who felt good about themselves.
These people also performed worse in memory and learning tests.
Hmmm - I thought that size didn't matter when it came to brains. Wasn't skull volume one of the pillars of racist psuedo-science ?
| Medicine |
London taxi drivers have brains which grow substantially over time.
This comes as no surprise to Londoners: taxi drivers have opinions on absolutely everything, and one of them, Fred Housego, once won the BBC quiz show, Mastermind, before becoming a little bit of a national celebrity.
The basic theory here is that learning increases connections between brain neurons and can also foster the growth of new neurons.
This concept was revolutionary in the 80's, when scientists thought that brain neurons don't grow back. But it makes sense if you think of the brain as an adaptive organ. Every time you enter a new environment or encounter a new task, your brain changes to support your functioning in that environment. Sometimes, you're recruiting skills you already have, in which case you're just strengthening the connections between those skills. Sometimes you need to grow new neurons to expand your capacity so that you can function.
Conversely, if you spend a long period of time doing basically the same thing, day after day, your brain doesn't need to change as much. It doesn't necessarily atrophy -- it just doesn't grow.
I'm less impressed by arguments about brain size than about connectivity -- as you gain more experience adapting to a situation, your neural connections sustaining that activity strengthen from dial-up modem to T-1 status., so you get faster at it. There's also some intriguing evidence that the brain goes through a series of changes in connectivity as you age, which may support theories about changes in adult thinking styles over time.
An excellent, very accessible book on the subject is Magic Trees of the Mind, by Marian Diamond. It's particularly interesting for parents of young kids, since it talks about brain growth in early childhood.
Guess I did learn something in grad school!
Right -- I understand arguments about density of connection. I don't understand how this is related to arguments about overall brain volume, and whether brain volume denotes anything at all.
Related is some of the recent work on MRIs of kids with ADD, where they show that some brain parts are smaller (although I wish their statistics were better). Again, is it brain sub-segment size that's important, or brain activity ? [The more interesting work on ADD looks at brain activity, and that's very persuasive]
