Functions of the Brain

     The human brain is a truly amazing machine; not only a machine but a machine made up of millions of microscopic machines all working together to form many things like perception, thought processes, memories, and senses. There are countless things being discovered about the brain everyday and it seems like the past 25 years has really opened up the worlds eyes on just how we really think. For the purpose of this blog I would like to divide the brain into two broad sections. One being how the brain forms and behaves through different stages in our lives and how our brain tends to perceive the world around us. Though these might seem hand in hand our thought processes can change completely while our perception on certain senses can be tricked into seeing something totally opposite of what it truly is.
     Grey Matter is the darker matter in our brain and spinal cord consisting of mostly nerve cells and dendrites. This is an important topic discussing our behaviors throughout segments of our lives. For instance, as man and woman tend to reach puberty, the grey matter in our brain is at a peak. This begins to change the way we begin to act. We tend to take more risks in our adolescence because our medial prefrontal cortex tends to be more active in this time period than when we begin to age. The risk taking might sound like a bad thing and make you think of some hoodlum kids running wild in their teenage years but this is actually a very important time in our lives. The brain is extremely malleable in this time and is learning the do's and the don'ts of the world. The risk taking is supported by the limbic system in the brain which is kind of like the little devil in the ear convincing one to take all of these risks. It takes into account the reward processing for taking that risk because it is extremely hyper-sensitive in this time. As time goes on and we begin to reach adulthood we undergo a process called synaptic pruning which is the elimination of unwanted processes dependent upon on the environment. Basically its kind of like a use it or lose it approach to the brain world. This is why good habit forming during this time is essential because things like addiction can really stick to a kid undergoing this type of risk taking behavior.
     The other side of the brain has to do with consciousness. Anil Seth said in his TED talk "Your Brain Hallucinates your Conscious Reality" he explains that conscious and intelligence are two different things. You can see this in performing tests such as having a checkerboard floor that is grey and white and placing something by it that seems to depict a shadow on some of the tiles but not on the other. While some of the tiles might look different, they are in fact the same exact color. It just so happens that our brain is trying its best to process this but in reality it couldn't tell you these are the same color.

https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality#t-846378
https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jayne_blakemore_the_mysterious_workings_of_the_adolescent_brain#t-544133
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3025448/