How to make your brain work better

The Power of the Brain

What does a powerful brain look like? In my view, a strong brain has three characteristics:

Firstly, it’s physically healthy and efficient, free from observable diseases, and can effectively complete learning and work tasks.

Secondly, it’s mentally happy and calm, able to maintain tranquility and joy, and quickly return to a normal thinking state when faced with external stimuli. Conversely, a brain that is easily hijacked by emotions, irritable, and often makes impulsive decisions is not strong.

Thirdly, it’s highly plastic, meaning it has a strong ability to adapt to changes. For example, ceramics, once shaped, cannot be changed, indicating poor plasticity. But putty has strong plasticity and can be shaped into any form. The same applies to the brain. A brain with poor plasticity may be well adapted to the current environment, but if the environment changes, or it faces new problems and challenges, it will be overwhelmed.

What does a brain with strong plasticity look like? Such a person will have a particularly strong ability to learn and adapt. For example, some people find it difficult to learn a foreign language, while others can master multiple languages. Some people can only survive in one environment, but others can quickly adapt to different environments and live well. Some people can always adapt and surpass themselves no matter what challenges they face in life. These are all manifestations of strong plasticity.

Let me give you an example I’ve seen with my own eyes.

When I was studying at Johns Hopkins University, there was a brain health center there that specifically helped patients with mental illnesses train their brains and restore brain vitality.

The director of this center, Dr. Fotuhi, is a dual Ph.D. in medicine and psychology, a genius. He not only speaks four languages fluently but also has an extraordinary memory.

In an international public lecture, he demonstrated his memory. He asked the audience in the first two rows to stand up and say their names and hometowns one by one, and then he started to repeat them. The information of more than 20 people was exactly the same. Dr. Fotuhi said that if you can master the correct use of the brain and through some training, ordinary people can also achieve this level of memory.

You may not believe it, can we really all reach this state? Frankly speaking, it is indeed difficult.

Why? From an evolutionary perspective, the human brain is not prepared for strong mental labor.

Why do I say that? You see, the human brain has evolved for millions of years, but for most of the time, humans have relied on physical labor to survive, and the brain is more used to command body movements, make simple profit-seeking and harm-avoiding responses, etc. Large-scale mental labor by humans has only been a thing for about a hundred years.

The need for the brain to process so much information every day has only emerged in the past few decades. At this point, you can imagine what a big challenge this mental labor, which has only appeared in the past few decades, is for the brain?

But the demand has arisen, and the development of the brain has not kept up, so what should we do? Fortunately, the potential of the brain is huge. We can make our brains stronger, faster, and better adapted to current needs through deliberate training.

So how can we make our brains stronger?

First, we need to know how the brain works. This is like a machine. Only when we understand its working principle can we adjust and improve it based on the principle.

The Basic Structure and Working Principle of the Brain

Let’s start with the basic structure and working principle of the brain.

As a human organ, the brain is simply composed of two types of cells and many blood vessels.

The first type of cell is called a neuron, the basic working unit of the brain. Neurons look like trees, with many dendrites and long axons.

Dendrites, like tree branches, are where neurons receive signals. Axons, thin and long, like tree trunks, are where neurons send signals. The synapses of these two types connect with each other, forming communication connections between neurons.

The other type of cell is called a glial cell. As the name suggests, glial cells act like glue, sticking neurons together. However, there are three types of glial cells: astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and microglia.

Different glial cells have different functions. For example, astrocytes, as the name suggests, look like stars. They mainly transport nutrients to neurons and remove metabolic waste.

The second type, microglia, is the most important immune defense line in the central nervous system.

The third type, oligodendrocytes, mainly wrap axons, like the insulation layer wrapped around wires, which can help transmit neural electrical signals and avoid signal crosstalk.

Apart from neurons and glial cells, the rest of the brain is all blood vessels. The brain has a rich supply of blood vessels, one of the organs with the most blood vessels in our body. If all strung together, they could be 160,000 kilometers long. For this reason, the brain, which accounts for 2% of body weight, consumes 20% of glucose, making it the organ with the highest energy consumption in the human body.

Understanding the structure of the brain, how does the brain work? When the brain works, neurons transmit signals through electrochemical reactions.

What is an electrochemical reaction? I won’t give you too academic an explanation here. You can imagine it as a beacon tower on the Great Wall. Each neuron is like a section of the Great Wall. When a piece of information arrives in the brain, it activates a few neurons in a certain brain area, which will release neurotransmitters through the axon to pass the signal to the next neuron.

This is like lighting a beacon on the Great Wall and sending out a signal. The next neuron receives the signal through the dendrites, just like the soldiers on the beacon tower seeing the signal, they will light the beacon again, letting the next soldier see it, and the signal is transmitted down level by level.

The working principle of the brain is essentially this simple. But what’s complicated is that the brain has over 100 billion neurons, each neuron has many dendrites and axons, so the number of connections they can form is almost infinite. When to send signals, who to send signals to, how strong the signals are, the changes formed in between can also be said to be infinite.

Therefore, the human brain has infinite potential and strong plasticity because the brain can generate countless new neural connections, and each connection is a new possibility.

The Three-Step Rule to Build a Powerful Brain

Understanding the working principle of the brain and the analogy of the beacon towers on the Great Wall, you can probably understand what we need to do to make the brain stronger.

Let’s think together, if you were the border general in charge of the defense along the Great Wall. What would you need to do to make the beacon tower system efficient and stable?

I assume you’ve thought about it, let’s go over my answer together.

Firstly, you need to ensure the lives and safety of the soldiers on the beacon towers, avoiding various risk factors such as diseases, injuries, and enemy invasions.

Secondly, you need to provide this system with enough supplies and tools, such as food, fuel, tents, wolf dung, etc., to fully supply and nourish this system.

Thirdly, you need to consciously train this system often to enhance its adaptability and handling ability. Whether it’s bad weather with wind and rain, or easy-to-relax holidays, whether the enemy comes from the east or the north, you have to make them respond quickly.

Similarly, to make the brain stronger, you also need to follow these three principles: avoid harm, reasonable nourishment, and sufficient challenge.

What does that mean?

Firstly, avoiding harm is to protect the brain organ and not do silly things that harm it.

Reasonable nourishment is to meet the physiological needs of the brain and allow it to function normally.

Sufficient challenge is to stimulate the brain to produce more neurons, help neurons produce more and more lasting synapses, and tap the potential of the brain.

From maintaining the status quo without deterioration, to meeting needs and maintaining a good state, and then to challenging and stimulating greater potential, this is also the three-step ladder to our powerful brain.

Reflection Questions

What state do you think your brain is in, and why?

Feel free to share your experiences and insights in the comment section, and share them with us all. You’re also welcome to share this lecture with friends who are interested in making their brains healthier and more vibrant.

Starting from the next lecture, we’ll look at what exactly we should do.

Link to original article: How to make your brain work better