If you ask me why I am fascinated with the brain I will go deeper than just explaining my past medical history. I will tell you I can remember wishing to be a pediatric neurosurgeon at nine years old. I will tell you that from the moment I decided on the wish, every school project on the topic of my choice has been brain related. So, ask me why I am fascinated with the brain.
I am a twin who was born three months premature. When I was one month old, I had a brain bleed causing hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus is a condition in which excess fluid builds up in the brain. This causes major brain and head swelling.
As an infant, I had brain surgery, something similar to an external ventricular drain. This procedure and my neurosurgeon essentially saved my life.
The brain bleed caused the hydrocephalus, but what caused the brain bleed? Sure, there is medical research with varying causes, but what causes the causes? It took a brilliant person with a brain to think of the idea for remedies of hydrocephalus, such as an external ventricular drain.
In the human brain, we have four main lobes. The frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and occipital lobe. While every part does naturally develop as we age, the frontal lobe specifically does not develop completely roughly until the age of 25. What do you mean your brain, which commands other parts of your body to grow and develop, dictates that it itself should do more developing as well? Your brain makes a choice to say, “Hey! What about me? I wanna grow some more!” and then thinks “Well, I guess I’m in charge of me, so lemme grow some more!”
Without thinking about the fact that our brains are thinking these thoughts, our brains are thinking these thoughts. And, we are conscious of it. That is fascinating. We as humans not only enjoy life but are also conscious about it. Surprisingly, studies suggest other mammals and animals may be more conscious of their existence than we may assume, but humans think more in depth about philosophical questions than animals can. Essentially, we use our brain to figure out our brain.
Every single thought and action happens because of the brain. We go about our lives so much, we do not stop to think about how our brain never, ever, ever stops working. It is simply always doing something. Billions of neurons in your brain create all of these never-ending thoughts.
According to Harvard Medical School, “In the human brain, some 86 billion neurons form 100 trillion connections to each other — numbers that, ironically, are far too large for the human brain to fathom.” Basically, we cannot even fathom the things that make us fathom things. Wow.
Going back to the brain lobes mentioned earlier, each lobe does something a little different, but in the end they all work together. Your frontal lobe controls your critical thinking, your parietal lobe controls your spatial awareness, and your temporal lobe is the reason you can hear, speak, and understand languages. The occipital lobe in the brain sits at the back of your head and controls your vision.
Of course, there are many, many other parts and pieces in your brain doing all sorts of things, but these are just four basic parts that do more than we can think. And, the brain, which does all this to make the body function, is also in charge of making itself function as well!
In the weeks before we are born, before the times we can remember, our temporal lobes are already at work while we grow inside the womb. While every part of your body and brain grow and mature in utero, your temporal lobe is an amazing example of cells at work so incredibly early on. BBC explains after 18 weeks in utero, a baby’s brain begins receiving signals from things the baby hears. At 23 and 24 weeks, a baby will hear its mother’s voice and even respond to it.
The magic of perception and perspective is that everyone has a different opinion about themselves and others. Different people will use their senses differently to gather information on their surroundings and then put this perception of happenings around them into perspective. Our senses may gather some differing information from one another, but the real difference in how we see things is in perspective.
Each human feels things even just slightly differently from another because we all have different backgrounds which have altered our perspectives. No two human brains think the same. Even if you are bonding with a friend and you are both happy, your happiness will still be different from the other person.
The brain is fascinating because it does incredible work nonstop, always helps us to function, and keeps us alive daily. It could basically harm itself, as seen in my infancy, or make us thrive unimaginably. Now thriving unimaginably and having the perspective I do on this beautiful matter in everybody’s head, my brain has a driving thought to become a pediatric neurosurgeon.