Amaze readers with the complexity of the human mind is one of the objectives that the Catalan neurologist Isabel Güell chases in his book “A strange world”in which he reveals that “the brain is not a tape recorder, but a much more imaginative mechanism; organized to remember what we want and forget the rest”
“The brain is not a tape recorder, but a much more imaginative mechanism; organized to remember what we want and forget the rest”
“There is no trunk of memories. Every time we remember something we do it according to the state of mind we have”. This is one of the “secrets” that he shares in his manual (Debate), in which he describes several clinical cases that he attended during the covid pandemic to explain neurological diseases.
Güell, a member of the medical staff at the Teknon Medical Center in Barcelona, warns that “over the age of fifty, and even earlier, it is usual to present occasional -and not so occasional- memory failures”which does not imply that a dementiawhat is a “extensive deterioration”.
Of course, it warns of the extremely high prevalence, of almost the 40% of Alzheimer’s from the age of 85a disease caused by the accumulation of proteins in the brain, the causes of which are unknown, although it is investigating “with enormous resources” how to stop it.
Is the brain the great unknown?We cannot compare it with other organs in the sense that the mind contains an incredible world at the level of what we are, of self-awareness, or in the philosophical field.
Let’s go step by step discovering diseases that continue to be of unknown origin, but that have treatments that slow them down. Science is opening doors and we are learning very useful things, both to treat pathologies and to get to know ourselves.
But many questions also open up and it will be very difficult for us one day to know everything. It is such an incredible machine that as we get to know it we want to know more. It is very important that we are clear that the vast majority of consultations with the neurologist have a solution.
How is the brain structured?our brain has two hemispheres looking at each other like a mirror, united by the “corpus callosum”, which is made up of millions of nerve fibers that keep them continuously communicated, so it is difficult to differentiate them in terms of their participation in behavioral aspects.
However, at the clinical level the differences are evident: patients with brain damage in the right temporal lobe ignore their disease, while those with lesions in the left react dramatically.
On the behavioral level, it could be that the hemisphere right be more dreamy, emotional, intuitive or creative, and the more analytical, logical and rational left.
What differences are there between the brain of men and women?In the women the centers for the language they have a 11% more neurons than in men, and the main axis of emotion and memory – the hippocampus – is larger.
This implies that, in general, women express their emotions better and remember more the details of events with emotional content.
In the reaction to the stress and conflictthe amygdala or central axis of fear (trigger of aggression) has more processors in man, which makes it a danger to settle disputes.
But it seems that the psychological stress of conflict registers deeper in the brain. femalelike a kind of hypersensitivity to stress.
How far does the plasticity of the brain go?The cells of the organism divide and regenerate, while the neurons not. However, it is increasingly being seen that the brain is more plastic than previously thought, in that if an area is injured, it stays that way, while in other organs there is regeneration, as is the case of a liver. .
For example, the dominant hemisphere responsible for language is the left, but in injuries produced in childhood the other hemisphere can assume a large part of the functions of language.
Recovering function is clearer in childhood, but in a person who has a stroke at the age of 65, it has been seen that the surrounding neurons have the ability to recover language functions.
What is the relationship between aging and memory loss?He brain aging It can affect memory capacity, our brains process information worse, we forget names or have a hard time retaining new information. But Age alone does not evolve into dementia.
How do we work memory?every time i know learn they are missing something joining two neurons, chemicals are being created and the brain is developing. People already know this and do a thousand activities because if you stay in a passive situation in an armchair watching TV, you get older.
We are probably going to delay Alzheimer’s if we work on memory with exercises that motivate. It’s also basic interact and communicate because a thousand cognitive aspects are worked on, what are called higher functions, such as attention, language, orientation or learning.
Is there any indication that makes us anticipate that we may have Alzheimer’s?A: As it is so prevalent with age, we do not have to be very concerned, since 40% will have it. It worries more if your grandparents or great-grandparents have had it or other family peopleand much more if you have had a 60-year-old mother, who has suffered it.
Worry yes, but move on forgetting about these diseases if we don’t have them from the start.
