The brain is an extremely complicated organ in the body. It is responsible for every thought we think, every memory we have, every action we do, and every feeling we experience. It weighs about 1.4 kg and contains a huge number of nerve cells—about 100 billion neurons. Each of the neurons is interconnected with the other neurons in a complex way so that there are more than a million neuronal connections made every second. We wonder a lot about the brain. This article will help you understand one major question about it.
Is the Brain a Muscle?
According to anatomy, the brain is not technically a muscle, although it has muscle in it. The brain is mainly made up of white matter and gray matter, which are parts of neurons. These are cellularly completely different from muscle tissue and don't work like muscles.
However, in some way, they are similar. Like muscle, you need to use the brain or you will lose some of its function. Like muscle, the brain strengthens with use.
Muscles get stronger when we use them because our body makes new motor proteins that result in increased muscle contractions. The muscle increases in mass and becomes stronger at the most basic of levels.
There is evidence to suggest that the brain works the same way. Mental stimulation will improve the function of the brain and will reduce the chances of developing cognitive delay and other types of diseases. Exercising the brain, with knowing the answer to the question "is the brain a muscle", will cause the brain to become stronger and much better able to take part in the millions of everyday challenges the brain needs to face. This includes paying attention to things, solving problems, and controlling the functions of the body.
Exercise Your Brain Now!
It's true that when you exercise your brain, you will have a stronger brain. Here are some tips for you to strengthen your brain.
1. Don't Use a Calculator
Calculators have taken over much of the mental calculations you normally would do in your head. Rather than using a calculator, you should practice math problems with your brain instead. This will result in a stronger brain that can do mental calculations easier and will make your working memory much stronger.
2. Shut Off Your GPS
The use of GPS is causing us to lose much of our spatial intelligence. Instead of using a GPS, strengthen your skills at map-reading. Bring a map with you and use it to find out where you need to go. Taxi drivers, who don't usually use GPS, have a great deal of gray matter located in their hippocampus when they are compared to those who drive a bus and who don't have to know directions to places. It turns out that the hippocampus helps with memory, learning, and spatial navigation. It appears that having to navigate with your brain help the hippocampus build more neural pathways in response to the need of storing these maps within our brain.
3. Learn a Foreign Language
As you have known the answer to "Is the brain a muscle" you may like trying to learn a foreign language. It will definitely build your ability to strengthen your brain. When you begin to understand new words, different types of sentence structures and a new grammatical system, you will challenge your brain in a positive way. You will make your hippocampus bigger, which aids in learning, long term memory, and spatial navigation. The cerebral cortex of your brain will also become bigger, which can be divided into four different lobes that help in planning, speech, reasoning, emotion, recognition, movement, problem solving, memory, visual processing, and perception.
4. Play Chess
Chess will challenge your brain in a huge way. It makes you think several steps ahead of and it requires a great deal of strategy. There is a strong connection between having a high IQ and being a chess player. Chess will challenge your brain like no other game will be able to do.
5. Do Puzzles
There are several puzzles you can do that will strengthen your brain. Think about puzzles like Sudoku or crossword puzzles that help your brain grow exponentially. There are many types of puzzles you can engage in, including lateral thinking puzzles and logic puzzles. These kinds of puzzles will increase your ability to do deductive reasoning and will teach you how to organize your thoughts. Your brain will be trained to think more broadly. And remember, there is no such thing as being too old to do a puzzle.
6. Read Different Kinds of Books
With a basic understanding of "Is the brain a muscle" you may want to try reading to stimulate your brain. If you want to strengthen your brain, make sure you make use of reading materials that are not in the genre you usually read. Trying some non-fiction books will exercise your brain better. Besides reading books on unfamiliar subjects, scientists believe reading mystery novels will have your brain strengthened greatly. It engages your prefrontal cortex and your working memory, so you can store all the mysterious clues up until the answer to the mystery is finally solved.
7. Memorize a Poem
You needn't just focus on math problems. You can sharpen your memory by improving your recall powers. The best way to do this is to memorize a poem or the lyrics to a song.
8. Think of a Good Story
It isn't lying to make up a good story. Write down a good story and commit it to memory. This can enhance your imagination and your creativity. It helps you learn to improvise and to think spontaneously.
9. Learn New Words
If you are an average adult, you have a known vocabulary of almost 30,000 different words. No matter how many words you know, there are certain to be words in a dictionary that you don't know. Try learning about 2 to 3 new words each day and do this each and every day. Try using your new words in sentences you say to others, so you can retain their meaning.
10. Write Instead of Type
While typing is much neater than writing, you should spend as much time on hand writing things as much as you can. Research has shown that when you write by hand, it engages your brain, especially if you write things down in another language.
After knowing the answer to "Is the brain a muscle" and getting some easy ways to exercise your brain, you may want to learn ways to improve your memory mostly, then watch the video below.