"Men are from Mars, women are from Venus", "We generally only use 10% of the brain", "Right brain personality vs left brain personality"...
You must have heard a lot of brain and psychological myths like this, and of course you should have heard a lot of rumors. But no amount of debunking can stop bestsellers and marketing campaigns from spreading them again and again.
New Year' New Deceit, Dangdang's All That' The Way.
So, where are these myths about the brain that are not reliable? In the face of the so-called "high-tech" products of brain science and psychology, what "fire eyes and golden eyes" do ordinary people need to not be deceived?
Figure | Figureworm creative
Do we usually only use 10% of the brain?
Our Homo sapiens brains make up only 3% of the total weight, but they consume 20% of the total energy intake. But there are always people who think that our brains are only 10% developed.
In the movie "Superbody", the protagonist Lucy is the superhuman who liberated the remaining 90% of the "brain potential". But I'm afraid even she doesn't know why homo sapiens brains leave this 90%. She can't be blamed for that. From an evolutionary perspective, if 90% of the brain is not important to our survival and reproduction, then natural selection should not leave them behind – after all, the brains of Homo sapiens are too capable of expending energy.
Today, the rumor is still widely spread. Barry Gordon, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University, believes that we are more than happy to believe that we have great potential, and that the "10% brain" rumor allows us to explain our shortcomings: can't remember words, can't write homework, can't read papers... This is all because the brain is not fully utilized.
But this kind of rumor not only has no scientific basis, but also helps the science popularization work.
Stills from "Superbody"
We now know that damage to almost all brain structures leads to impaired cognitive function. If only 10% of the brain is used by us, then the damage to the remaining 90% of the brain should not lead to any functional impairment. Second, there have been many studies that show that when we exercise most cognitive functions, the active brain regions are much more than 10%. In addition, unused neurons and neuronal connections gradually degenerate, but autopsies of normal brains do not reveal large areas of neuronal degeneration.
In fact, in daily activities, a person uses almost 100% of the brain. Even during sleep, the brain's prefrontal lobe and major sensory cortex are active—these two cortexes alone are already more than 10 percent of the brain's size.
Therefore, the spread of the "10% brain" rumor seriously distorts the scientific conclusions. Our potential does not come from the "untapped" brain, but from the continuous remodeling and improvement of the brain itself.
Left Brain Logic, Right Brain Art?
Do the left and right brain functions differently? This debated topic is called "brain function lateralization" in neuroscience.
In fact, it is clear that certain brain functions do have lateralizations, such as language functions. As early as a hundred years ago, two French doctors discovered that the two regions located in the left frontal lobe and temporal lobe, the Broca district and the Wernick district, are closely related to the production and understanding of language.
The District of Broca (left, in the frontal lobe) and the Wernicke District (right, on the temporal lobe) | Nikola Prpi
Most patients with Injuries to the Broca Area are unable to produce language normally, such as saying "I want to drink coffee" when trying to express a sentence that says "I want to drink coffee." coffee. think. "Patients with Injuries to the Wernicke Area cannot properly understand what others are saying. Therefore, "language function is located in the left brain" has long been a consensus.
However, this consensus has gradually changed with the understanding of the brain. In recent decades, scientists have realized that the lateralization of language function is related to the sharp hand (dominant hand). That is, the left-handed Broca and Wernick regions sometimes form in the right brain, and some left-handed and double-handed language functions are not even lateralized.
In a study published in the journal Brain, researchers found that as left-handedness increased, so did the odds that language function was located in the right brain. This means that the rules of lateralization of brain function may not be as universal.
Since language does not conform to the uniform rules of lateralization, let alone a little more complex cognitive function?
Left Brain Logic, Right Brain Art? | Healthline
It is true that certain cognitive functions have a small amount of lateralization. Our understanding of the lateralization of brain function is mainly derived from the study of split-brain patients around the 1960s. The callosum is an axonal collection that connects the two hemibrains of most mammals, and in split-brain patients, the callosum is removed for certain surgical needs. Thus, experimenters can study two hemispheres separately. These studies found that the left brain is primarily responsible for analysis and oral expression, while the right brain is primarily responsible for spatial information and art appreciation.
However, it is not appropriate to directly extend these research results to all people.
First of all, most people's corpus callosum is intact, so in daily life, the two halves have continuous communication, which is very different from split-brain patients. Second, most cognitive tasks in everyday life are not as well-defined as those in experiments—analysis can be either an analysis of a text or an analysis of a painting. These daily tasks require the collaboration of two halves to achieve maximum efficiency.
In an article published in Psychology Today, psychologist Christian Jarrett argues that "left-brain logic, right-brain art" in the traditional sense has a convenient sense of simplicity, and that this division allows us to classify ourselves into one of these camps. So while this classification is wrong, the meaning behind it may be far greater than scientific knowledge itself.
Is there a big difference in cognitive abilities between men and women?
"Boys are good for science, girls are for liberal arts."
This cliché has always implied a wishful thinking assumption: men are naturally good at logical thinking, while women are better at playing chess and painting. However, research in recent decades has led to a growing awareness that even if there is a difference between men and women, it is not in the way of thinking, but in the anatomy of the brain that there are differences – but this difference is difficult to explain.
For example, the scientists used an imaging technique to look at the brain connections between men and women — between the left and right hemispheres, and between brain regions. They found that same-brain and hemi-cerebral connections were more common in men, while women had more cross-brain and trans-hemisphere connections. The team therefore believes that these findings suggest that the male brain pays more attention to the coordination of perception and movement, while the female brain emphasizes communication between the brain regions responsible for logical analysis.
Same-brain and hemi-cerebral connections are more common in the male brain, while female brains have more cross-brain regions and trans-hemi-brain connections | Ingalhalikar, M., ..., and Ragini Verma. (2014). ‘Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain.’ PNAS.
It's important to note, though, that the study overlooks one problem: Men's brains are generally larger than women's.
Some researchers believe that the difference in the way male and female brains are connected is largely due to the different size of the brain, so the needs for nutrition, efficiency, and so on are different. A study from Hanyang University in South Korea supports this theory: as the brain volume grows, the degree of thickness of the cerebral cortex is very small, but the complexity of the sulcus gyrus increases greatly. Therefore, different volumes of brains cannot be directly compared, but should take into account the different needs provided by different volumes.
Another important problem is that the brain is also highly malleable. In other words, the brain connections that are "prescribed" by innate conditions will continue to be altered after birth. Therefore, the "connected map" of the adult brain does not provide relatively valid evidence for the cognitive differences between men and women.
Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling of the American Association for the Advancement of Science believes that the differential treatment of men and women by the social environment, such as differential education and differential work environments, is likely to help shape certain differences in the brains of men and women. So be extra careful with the "gender trap" when understanding the data provided by neuroscience.
The "connectivity map" of the adult brain does not provide relatively valid evidence for cognitive differences between men and women | Figureworm creative
Can listening to classical music make babies smarter?
Classical music, especially Mozart's piano sonatas, has long been associated with "prenatal education" and the "parenting bible." The popular "Mozart effect" points out that infants and young children can improve their intellectual performance by listening to such prenatal education music, so as to "win at the starting line".
Moza special effects should have become widely known in the mid-1990s, and their utility gradually covered beyond parenting; when the author of The Mind Myth visited a farm in Italy, the farmer triumphantly declared that his cattle had grown up listening to classical music — producing a lot of milk.
The Mozart effect originated in a 1993 Nature paper. In the study, psychologist Frances Rauscher of the University of Wisconsin and others played Mozart's Double Piano Sonata in D major, K. Mozart, a two-panel participant in two of the three groups of participants. 448" and a voice instruction that taught people to relax, while the third group of people rested quietly for ten minutes. They found that participants in the K. 448 group had a temporary, significant spatial cognitive improvement compared to the speech indicator group and the quiet group, and this improvement disappeared within fifteen minutes.
As the popularity of the paper grew, the world unleashed a frenzy for Mozart's sonatas. But then a growing body of research found that the study was so lowly reproducible that Mozart's music did not improve infants' spatial cognitive abilities. In addition, studies have found that as long as you hear your favorite music, your spatial cognitive ability will have a temporary improvement.
The Mozart effect is either completely absent or, if it exists, only temporary | Figureworm creative
These studies have shown that the Mozart effect is either completely absent or, if it exists, only temporary. What's more, a meta-analysis published in the journal Intelligence found that many of the high-impact studies were of interest to Lauschel's team, a question that reduced the credibility of the Mozart effect.
The truth may be as the author of this meta-analysis says: listening to Mozart or Bach, our cognitive abilities are improved than not listening to anything—stimuli can improve intellectual performance, which has long been known.
How to dispel myths?
There's so much more to the brain and mental myths we can reach in our daily lives, and you might think of more. The sources of these myths are actually very complicated, and they are not all fabricated by "people with hearts". They may be mythical because of the simplification and distortion of research, or they may simply be re-questioned because of the academic misconduct of researchers or the poor reproducibility of the study itself.
But in any case, we cannot ignore the negative impact of these myths on ordinary people and the scientific community. On the one hand, they will be mixed into the information that really has a lot of experimental basis, confuse the eyes, confuse the public, and ultimately weaken the value of the experimental basis. On the other hand, rumors such as "the cognitive abilities of men and women are very different" may exacerbate the stereotypes that exist in themselves, resulting in the erosion of the rights and interests of both men and women, affecting social decision-making, etc.
Dispelling these myths requires not only continued efforts by academia to advance new research, but also for each of us to truly understand our brains. Instead of easily giving yourself some of your performances, find a so-called "scientific" reason.
bibliography
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[2] Leonard, C., …, and Christine Chiarello. (2008). ‘Size Matters: Cerebral Volume Influences Sex Differences in Neuroanatomy’. Cerebral Cortex. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhn052.
[3] Im, K.et al. (2014). ‘Brain Size and Cortical Structure in the Adult Human Brain’. Cerebral Cortex. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhm244.
[4] Fine, C., Rebecca Jordan-Young, Anelis Kaiser, and Gina Rippon. (2013). ‘Plasticity, plasticity, plasticity… and the rigid problem of sex’. Trends in Cog. Sci. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.08.010.
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[7] Dekker, S., Nikki C. Lee, Paul Howard-Jones, and Jelle Jolles. ‘Neuromyths in education: Prevalence and predictors of misconceptions among teachers’. Front. Psychol. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00429.
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[9] McKelvie, P. and Jason Low. (2010). ‘Listening to Mozart does not improve children's spatial ability: Final curtains for the Mozart effect’. British Journal of Developmental Psychol. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1348/026151002166433.
[10] Schellenberg, E. G. and Susan Hallam. (2006). ‘Music Listening and Cognitive Abilities in 10‐ and 11‐Year‐Olds: The Blur Effect’. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1360.013.
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[13] The Sydney Morning Herald. (2010). ‘Study busts 'Mozart effect' myth’. Retrieved from: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/study-busts-mozart-effect-myth-20100512-uw4c.html.
Author: Amotonsen
Edited: EON, Iris, odette
Source: Fruit Husk
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