Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2012
65 Brain Facts
Some interesting things you may, or may not, need to know
Andy Habermacher
65 Facts
Whether brain development, neurons, your brain cells or your brain in business the 65 facts are here.
NeuroRevolution
The workshops targeted at applying neuroscience to businesses. Benefit from the latest knowledge of the brain in business. Page
Services
Neuro services: coaching, consulting and what this can do for you and your organisaiton.
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leading brains
Brain Development
1. The first signs of the nervous system develop around day 21 in the embryo. 2. At times the brain cells are being produced at 250,000 per minute 3. The cells are produced around, the neural tube in the primitive developing brain in the womb. There is then a great neuronal migration whereby all the neurons crawl along glial cells to their final destination. 4. Once neurons have reached their destination they reach out and start connecting. This process broadly under the name of neuroplasticity can continue all your life. 5. The brain has now been genetically mapped. Different regions are differently influenced by your genetic expression.
6. The first few months of life are characterised by cell death, and not growth, as the brain prunes its connections to those that it really needs. Only about half of your brain cells will survive with you till adulthood. 7. The number of connections is also reduced as the brain starts to use only those that are important and slowly prunes way superfluous connections. Babies technically speaking have more connected brains than adults!
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leading brains
blood. If you had a runny nose this was the cooling fluid dripping out of the brain. As humorous as it sounds it shows how hard it is to fathom intelligence. Recent research has, however, shown that the heart also has its own neural network. Indeed that your hearts beating can influence your brain wave patterns. So maybe Aristotle wasnt so far from the truth after all. 4
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Brain regions
45. The top of the spinal cord is a part of the brain (the Pons). 46. Some functions, e.g. running are coordinated in the spinal cord not in the brain. 47. The brain stem at the top of the spinal cord is the oldest part of the brain, evolutionary speaking, and is responsible for primitive reactions and living functions such as controlling heartbeat, body temperature and breathing. 48. The dissected brain has a big chunk of so-called white matter. These are not brain cells but rather the connections between brain cells in the outer cortex and other parts of the brain. It is white because the coating of these axons are covered in what is called a myelin sheath. This accelerates the electrical current. (see diagramm below) 49. The hippocampus is your memory centre in the middle of the brain and is known to be larger in London black cab drivers who need to memorise a vast amount of information to pass the cabbie test. 50. The limbic system sits in the middle of the brain and processes our emotions
area, also in the left hemisphere, for the comprehension of language. 38. The case of Phineas Gage, in the middle of the 19th century, has become well reported in popular literature. Gage had a metal rod blasted through his skull in an accident (see picture above) and survived merely losing an eye and various parts of his frontal lobes! 39. In the 19th century the brain as the seat of consciousness was rejected by the Church, as they believed the mind was God given. 40. Mapping of neurons began around 1900 and the theory of the neuron was then first proposed. 41. The electrical signalling in neurons was first formulated in the 1950s. 42. In the 1970 & 1980s some of the chemical processes between neurons were understood for the first time. 43. With the advent of imaging technology from the 1980s and 1990s the knowledge of the brain also increased exponentially. 44. The human brain was genetically mapped for the first time in 2011.
Artistic representation of a neuron the sheath around the axon is, in real life, whitish in colour.
leading brains and controls hormonal release. 51. The emotional centre is essential to decision making. No emotions - no decisions. This means we cannot separate emotions from rationality. 52. Our prefrontal lobes at the front of the brain are the last to develop and what differentiate us from other animals. The frontal lobe is the seat of executive functions and higher cognition. It takes up 35% of the outer cortex. 53. 99.99% of all information is processed unconsciously. 54. Our motor cortex, controlling our movement. Sits like a band over the middle of the brain. It accords different amounts of processing power to different parts of the body (see diagram below). The tongue for example takes up more place than our thighs. 55. We have a part of the brain called the fusimform face area (FFA) that is only used to identify faces.
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Coaching
Unleashing the power of your mind or the minds of your, team or oragnisation. Coaching goes inside to release the power within. The NeuroBusiness Group headed by Dr Srinivasan Pillay is a leading international coaching organisation focused on brain targeted coaching interventions: www.neurobusinessgroup.com
Consulting
Use brain science to accelerate your strategy, energise change, boost motivation, remove fear and simply give a neuronal charge to your business.
leading brains
2012
Speaking
Inspirational insights a journey into the brain to inspire your audiences.
Andy Habermacher, brain leader, uses his love of neuroscience to give powerful and inspirational insights into human behaviour and the workings of business. His British humour combined with his Swiss upbringing give him a warm and open manner possessing the stage with confidence and taking you on a journey through the brain and human decision making. His stage presence will have your audience engaged and he will provide knowledge and insights and tie this to practical applications that will have the audience leaving with more knowledge than they can use. Andy is all about brains in business.
Books
The Fox Factor, Andy Habermacher Order at: amazon / itunes / kindle Leading 100 Billion Neurons, free ebook, Andy Habermacher Download at: itunes / smashwords Your Brain and Business, Srinivasan Pillay Order at: amazon / kindle German: Neuroleadership, Theo Peters, Argang Ghadiri Order at: amazon
The garden of neurology holds out to the investigator captivating spectacles and incomparable artistic emotions. In it, my aesthetic instincts found full satisfaction at last. Like the entomologist in the pursuit of brightly colored butterflies, my attention hunted, in the flower garden of the grey matter, cells with delicate and elegant forms, the mysterious butterflies of the soul, the beating of whose wings may some day who knows? clarify the secret of mental life. Santiago Ramn y Cajal, from his autobiography Recollections of my Life