Stuff You Should Know - Myths About the Brain

Episode Date: February 15, 2013

As is usual for SYSK, Josh and Chuck go over some, but not all, of the entries in this list of ten common myths about the brain. While it lives there in your noggin you don't really have much of a grasp on your brain and how it works. You think you do, but you don't. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Greetings, Earthlings. Hello, everyone. Brains, brains, brains. That's right. That's my intro. That you didn't do it 10 times, though. Oh, no one wants to hear that. And we're not going to even talk about 10 brain myths.

We, even though this episode is called 10 myths about the brain. Yeah, if you're new to the show and you've never heard us do one of our famous top 10s, then you probably don't know. We rarely cover all 10. We will tease you a bit with six to eight and then say, go read the article if you want the other one. Exactly. And in this case, we've actually covered a couple of the things before. Right. So there's no point in rehashing. Exactly. So I guess I just probably need to explain that. You laid the ground rules pretty well, man. So a top 10 that is really not 10. So we have brains. Yes. In our heads. And I think most people walk around feeling like they have some ideas about the brain, some understanding. But it turns out that some of them are wrong.

There's myths out there. Yeah. And some have kind of interesting weird origins, too. Yeah, I thought this is pretty cool article because we've covered the brain a lot. And it's one of our favorite, favorite, favorite subjects. Yeah. So it's kind of cool to root out some of these things that a couple of these I thought were true. Well, for example, like your brain is gray. I thought that to be true. Well, and it's understandable why too, because people call the brain gray matter. Sure. Apparently, hercule pro roe. I just said that like a dog. No, that was right. It's an odd name to have to say, though. Yeah, that's hercule, please. Especially from my tongue. Marble mouth.

He used to call his brain to the gray cells. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, everybody thinks the brain is great. And it is gray. There are very much lots of gray areas called gray matter. But there's other colors to the brain, too. Yeah, this kind of knocked me out because I had no idea that the brain was also white, black and red, like our georgeable dogs in Atlanta Falcons. That's right. Everybody's laughing in there. Everybody's brain's walking around the bulldog fan. So like you said, there is a lot of gray matter, cells, neurons, connecting to each other. There's also white matter. Well, that's the stuff that connects them. Well, the white matter is the nerve fibers, right? Right. So it connects like your gray

matter regions to one another. Gotcha. So that makes sense. Yeah. But what about the substantia nigra Latin for black substance? Yeah. That is part of your brain is black. I would think that would be scary. Yeah. Like it's dead. You'd think so. But that region of the brain, it has to do with motor control, like fine control. Yeah. And that's that they think that possibly that's where Parkinson's damage comes from. Okay. Or Parkinson's disease is located there. Right. And the reason it's black is because of neuro melanin, which is a pigment. And I was very curious why your brain would eat any kind of pigment whatsoever. Yeah. Did you get to that? Yeah, it turns out they don't know, but they think that it basically takes it removes

heavy metals from your bloodstream from that area. And that they also think that it has to do with there's a adrenochrome. Do you remember that from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Yes. So that stuff is real. And your brain produces it as a byproduct of some of its normal processes. And we would all be totally psychotic apparently from this stuff. If it wasn't for neuro melanin, they think basically getting rid of it. So we depend on that color. Well, yeah, that pigment at least. Right. Wow. Not for coloring in this case, but for some other stuff. Yeah, I couldn't. The reason we think gray, besides people calling it gray matters, because usually when we see a brain, it's floating in a jar. Yeah. Then it has been turned gray from the formaldehyde and stuff.

But I couldn't find any kind of picture of like an active brain with all these colors. Yeah. I guess that's impossible unless they just, you know, peel your skull off and take a picture real quick. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure those exist. Why couldn't I find a picture? I don't know. I mean, yeah, they do brain surgery, you know, with a healthy living brain. I didn't look super hard, though. Yeah. That's the secret. So there you go. Red, black, white, and gray, your brain. All right. Number two, listening to Mozart makes you smarter. Yeah. This one I thought was proven. I did too, because Baby Einstein, if you've never heard of that, that is parents who live in this stuff, big, big, multi-million dollar industry of packaging classical music and poetry and stuff

like that to play not just to your baby and toddler and growing child, but for your fetus as well, even. Yeah. The Mozart effect is what it's called. Right. And maybe it's going to be smarter. Apparently, the Mozart effect is trademarked by a guy named Dan Campbell. Yeah, basically puts together Mozart and CDs and books and stuff like that. The thing is, is this Mozart effect was it was first noted in the fifties, I think, yeah, by an ear, nose, and throat doctor named Albert Tomatis. Yep. And he said that he made it. You say tomato, so he said that that the his patients who were struggling with speech and audit auditory disorders showed improvement when they listened to Mozart specifically. And then in the nineties, somebody

else apparently conducted a test at the University of California, Irvine, that showed that people's IQ scores improved after listening to Mozart. And then the Mozart effect was born. Also, based on these studies, I would think that it does make you smarter. So is that true? Apparently, not necessarily. No, these are all myths. Yeah, that that that you see Irvine study in particular was kind of taken out of context. I get the impression. Yeah. And they were saying, well, we never said it makes you smarter. We just said that it improved people's ability on the specific temporal spatial test. Yeah. This one specific thing, we didn't say it makes you smarter. That's the popular media that did that. So things got a little twisted around over time. And since then,

they have not been able to duplicate these results from that original test. So it turns out it probably won't hurt you any. Right. But listening to classical music is not going to actually make you smarter. But they have found that learning to play music can do a lot of stuff. It improves concentration, self confidence, coordination. Oh, really? Yeah. And you mentioned people playing Mozart to get the Mozart effect for their fetuses. Yeah. Have you ever heard the one that you get a new wrinkle in your brain every time you learn something? I knew that wasn't true. It sounds a little bit like an angel gets his wings every time a bell ring. Totally. That is not true. But there are some cool little factoids in here. One of which is that by the time you reach 40 weeks

old, you have the same brain. It will get larger, of course, but you have all the same little folds and crevices called giri and sulci. All folded up together. And the reason it's folded up together is because our brain is large and the skull isn't. So it needed to scrunch itself in there as we evolved. And I think if you unfolded all that, the brain would be the size of a tennis court. No, no, that's the intestines. Right. A pillowcase. Right. Okay, that's still pretty big. Yeah, it's huge. And that's why we're so smart, which kind of leads us to another myth that humans have the biggest brain, which is not the case, which makes sense to me. I thought this one was pretty cool, actually. A lot of people walking around think that because

we're so smart, we must have the biggest brain. Yeah. But if you think about it, no, a whale's going to have a bigger brain than a human brain. That is true. Because whales are enormous. Yep. Our brain's about three pounds. Yeah. A whale, sperm whales about, what, 17 pounds. Yeah. Which is a huge brain. Yeah. So why aren't sperm whales running the planet? The reason why it doesn't really matter the size of the brain, it's the size of the brain to the rest of the body. That ratio is what matters. Yeah, I thought that was super interesting. They use dolphins as an example because the dolphin's brain is about the same size of a human's brain. Dolphins are super smart. Right. But an average dolphin weighs about 350 pounds.

I don't know. Does it say how much the average adult weighs? It's not 350 pounds. I would say, depending on whether it's male or female, anywhere between 100 to 200 pounds, there's an average somewhere in there. Sorry. And then they also go on to name some other animals, which was just sort of cute to think about. A beagle's brain is 2.5 ounces, cute little beagle. They're very cute. And a sparrow has a brain that weighs less than half an ounce. Right. That's adorable. So again, though, it's the brain size to body size ratio in a human 's. It's one to 50. Most other mammals, it's one to 180. Yeah. And then in birds, it's one to 220 typically. Yeah. But we do have humans compared to mammals. We have the largest cerebral cortex,

right, which is really where like that's the money section. It's also the newest part of our brain. It's on the outermost surface. And that's where all the higher functions are carried out. And that's what really separates us. That's why we run the planet. Otherwise, we'd just be orangutans. Um, what about subliminal messages that we learned from those? That is a falsehood, sir. I guess that's the spoiler. All these are false. Yeah, but they're myths. Yeah, they're myths. But back in the 1950s, there was a marketing executive, a researcher named James Vickery, who did, you know, everyone always heard, you know, you go to the movies and they flash up Coca Cola and popcorn. I thought that was a myth.

I did too, but that was true. They did that in 1957. Yeah, there's a, there's a still in this article from the movie Picnic starring Kim Novak. That's awesome. And over Kim's face, it says, hungry, eat popcorn. And it's from a frame of the movie. So that's one three thousandth of a second. And, um, Vickery said, you know what, sales increased in the theater by 18% for popcorn. I'm sorry for drinks and by 57% for popcorn. Thanks to these messages. Yeah. And everybody said, okay, well, we're very interested in basically psychologically manipulating everybody into buying our products. So they started putting that stuff in jingles and in, um, movies and television. Yeah. And, um, they found pretty quickly that it actually doesn't

have an effect yet. Well, they, they banned it. First of all, the FCC banned it in 1974 because they did think it worked at the time. Oh, okay. Um, but then later on, it turns out that James Vickery just lied about the results. Yeah. Not true at all. He's like, Hey, I was the sales guy, not a scientist, but do expect. Uh, so yeah, like you said, the FCC banned subliminal advertising in general, which was a good move because if it did work, that's not okay. No, but a lot of people still think that it's still around and that it actually does work. Yes. But, uh, it is not true and they even tested this, uh, in Canada, evidently on TV, they flashed the message, call now during a broadcast and I guess nobody called. Yeah. Maybe they didn't give a number. It was the same.

It was like, I feel like I need to call somebody, but I don't get it. I wondered though, like if, if they were studying the wrong thing, like call now makes sense. Right. But what if it has to be much more explicit? Like hungry eat popcorn. You can eat popcorn. Like maybe that would make you grab a bite of popcorn if it were in your lap. Right. Maybe it has to be more direct. Like hungry, go buy popcorn at the front at concession stand now. Right. You know, yeah, because then your brain would obey that command rather than a roundabout command. That's the result of something you have to do telling you to go do that thing. Maybe that would work. So you're leaving the door open for this for further testing. I, I could see it. Yeah. Subliminal below the Lyman or the lemon,

which is the threshold of our conscious awareness. Uh, yeah, it looks like Lyman when by itself. That's what's in Sprite. But if he said subliminal, then somebody would just punch you upside the head. You know, yeah. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty.

Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Yeah. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental

health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award winning artist Michelle Williams, and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings five years down in many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Where are we now? We are on the idea that brain damage is always permanent. I didn't know that this was a thing. I didn't know that people said that. Sure. I never heard that. Well, I think the point of it is, you know, that the brain can't repair itself once it's damaged. And that's absolutely not true. No, it's not true. The brain is extremely resilient. It's so much so that there's this thing called plasticity. Yeah, which is it kind of ties into that idea that you get a new wrinkle when you learn something. Right. That's not true. But your brain can rewire itself. That's how you learn and unlearn behaviors through brain plasticity. Yeah. So I guess there's some truth in that neurons, once they are damaged, they cannot grow back. Right. But

thanks to plasticity that will make new neural connections and sometimes surprising ways, which is why if you've had a stroke and damaged part of your brain, you can relearn to speak, perhaps if you've lost that ability, by forging these new connections. There's a girl out there who has only one hemisphere of her brain. That's it. Born that way? I don't remember. She's born that way or if it was the result of surgery or damage or something, but she's got half of a brain. Her brain has just one hemisphere and she has binocular vision. She can see out of both eyes, which they had no idea how that was going on. And they finally went in and looked, I guess, using an MRI. And they found that her optic nerve that should be connected to the missing

hemisphere had basically grown, had grown to go patch into another part of her brain on the other side. And it basically hijacked this other part of her brain and was using it for sight. That is unbelievable. That's the brain. I wonder what you lose, though. I wonder if it forges a connection and at the expense of another, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, could she be like, man, I can see through both eyes, but I can't time my shoot any longer. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. It's possible. Interesting. But I mean, the brain would say, well, it's better. You can see somebody else can tie your shoes. Well, that makes me wonder, though. I wonder if there is an order to it all. Like if the brain knows what's more important. Yes. There is. As a matter of fact, this ties

into that idea that you only use 10% of your brain. Wow. All right. Let's hear it. Well, that's not true, by the way. We should go ahead. It's a myth. Right. And actually, that one has a pretty interesting origin, doesn't it? Yeah. They're not quite sure where it came from. It seems like it's always been around, though, the notion that you only use 10% of your brain. Yeah. But they think it may have come from American psychologist William James in the early 1900s when he said the average person rarely achieves but a small portion of his or her potential. Right. And that was just sort of twisted into 10% of your brain is used. And people, you know, you see people taking advantage of this notion all the time with self-help books,

like tap into the other 90% and it's just bunk. Right. And this is where it ties in. It is bunk in that all regions, all physical regions of your brain are being used. Yes. But there's a theory that's around for savantism that explains savantism, which I want to do someday. We need to write the article on it. We've covered it a lot in different areas. It's so fascinating. Totally. There's a theory right now that savantism is from the result of brain damage. What savantism is, is the result of the brain's tyranny of the frontal lobe is what it's called. Really? And basically, the idea is that your frontal lobe decides what's important and it bosses around all the other regions of your brain to carry out this very smooth, efficient

streamlined process that basically it decides is the most important. And in doing so, it casts to the side a lot of other stuff, like the ability to make great art or the ability to count a bunch of matches that just fell on the floor, whatever. And that savantism is the result of this executive function, this tyranny of the frontal cortex being disrupted so that maybe you aren't just the most efficient shark in the tank any longer and you're not out there and like going, going, going and like trying to compete and beat everybody else. But there's all these other things that are now free to just kind of blossom like artistic, deep, amazing, artistic abilities. Wow. Yeah, that's the theory. And we're just now learning this stuff. But it

suggests that maybe we do only use a portion of our abilities, not physical. Like we're using 100% of the physical parts of our brain. But what we're using it for is that issue. Oh, yeah. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. So there's definitely something to that. Yeah. Huh. Yeah, I, I trip out on the brain a lot. Like when I'm studying it for the podcast, I'll get sidetracked like this morning, I was reading this article. And I just had one of those little flights of fancy where it amazed me that I was looking at these printed shapes on a paper that formed words into sentences that I understood and had meaning. And I just was amazed by the brain just laying in bed this morning. I was like, my God, that's nice. Like I'm reading these words that make

sense. And I'm speaking words that have a symbol form on a paper. And I promise you I wasn't on LSD this morning, but I just had one of those moments where it just like totally amazed me that I was even able to read. That's awesome. Yeah. So the brain basically made you impressed with itself. Yes, it did. And while you mentioned LSD, I guess we can say in passing, apparently drugs do not create holes in your brain. That is not true. And there's a lot of back and forth over how much damage drugs do to your brain at all, how repairable that damage is. And there are studies going on all the time about long term drug use. And the results, one of them interestingly found that they think that some long term use of some drugs can cause

structures in the brain to grow. And that is why addicts may have a hard time kicking the habit. Yeah. Because they've grown a certain part of their brain, I guess, to your rewards. Depend on that. Yeah. Your limbic system is strengthened through that. Very interesting. Yeah. And alcohol does not kill brain cells. It damages the dintrites that we've talked about. Yeah. And those are the ends of the neurons where the connections are taking place, I guess. Right. So it makes your neurons talk sideways to one another. Yeah. Like the brain cells are still there, but they just can't talk to one another. I love your pal. Yeah. Pretty much. And there's something a neurological disorder called Wernicke-Korsakov syndrome.

And that is, can result in a loss of neurons in the brain. But that's basically what I think of when I think someone has, like, pickled themselves with alcohol. But that's kind of what's going on. It's actually not the alcohol that's killing brain cells. It's from a deficiency in thiamine. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. So if you have a thiamine deficiency, you can get this Wernicke-Korsakov syndrome. And that's a B vitamin. Yeah. And if you are an alcoholic, you typically aren't absorbing your thiamine like you would if you weren't an alcoholic, which is why it's associated with alcoholism. But it's not alcohol killing brain cells. Right. And it's much easier for me just to say they've pickled themselves on booze. Which is really sad. We're laughing, but it is super sad.

Yes, it is. If you've ever met anyone that was pickled. Well, yeah. And there's about all of these. Any addicts suffering as a result of their addiction is extremely sad. It is. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy, number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that in on the priming sample. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly.

And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton, Bradford, host of the award winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma

surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flip through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So that's all I got.

How many was that? Seven, eight, six and a half, something like that. If you want to learn the fate of the other remaining brain myths from this top 10 list, type in brain myths in the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it will bring this article up. And actually, we sort of have an issue with one of them we left off was the decapitation. They said it was a myth, I guess. I didn't even read it. Kind of. But didn't we say it was potentially true? They even say in there like, yeah, it's going to last for a couple of seconds or whatever, which is what we said in the podcast. But for some reason, they made that seem like, but that's nothing. Right. But then they said that it's an extremely painful way to die because you are conscious afterward. It was kind

of a cluster. Mixed messages. Yeah. All right. So I said, so far, it means it's time to listen to the mail. Yes, I'm going to call this a poopy time. We did our podcast on fecal transplants. And we've had all manner of poopy emails coming in. And I'm going to share one from Jacob Carnes. Hi, Josh Chuck and Jerry. And he spelled Jerry, right? I just finished the fecal transplant podcast and felt compelled to write in after you mentioned the norovirus, which I was afflicted with about two weeks ago. Didn't last long, just about 24 hours, but it hit instantly like someone flipped a switch. I will spare you the details, but it was nearly the worst I've ever felt. The day after was nearly the best I have ever felt due to the euphoria of still being alive. But for the following

week, my gut felt like it just wasn't right. My hunch is that it was really messed with the internal flora. He needs some kombucha. What's that? Oh, it's this, um, it's this like fermented, basically like probiotic drink. Oh, yeah. That's, um, I guess it's Eastern. It's really delicious. There's some good, delicious kombucha drinks out there. And it supposedly promotes colonization in your gut. You drinking that stuff? I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Where you get it? Whole Foods has this kind. It's called GTS. And they have a specific flavor called gingerade. That's just, it's so good. Not to check that out. Yeah. All right. He follows up to say, this is my favorite part. Like I said, I felt compelled to write after you mentioned the norovirus, but I felt obligated after you brought

up the terror of your young selves experience when you had the misfortune of using the bathroom after your father's. Remember that old man poop? Yeah. When I was a child, my father liked to enjoy a cigarette while doing his business. So when I saw 70, it is very 70s. So when I heard the call, uh, shortly after him, I was subjected to the putrid number two smell mixed with the stale cigarette smoke. And to this day, I have trouble separating the latter from the former. As I grew up, the need to look cool convinced me to try and take up the habit of smoking to look cool on the toilet numerous times. But my childhood association has at least helped me come to my senses. So you never learned to smoke because he associated it with his dad's poop. That's good.

Whatever works. Yeah. Thanks for another great podcast, guys. Jacob Karns. Yeah. I guess for all of you smoking out there, like take it to the toilet and see what happens. Like take a big whiff of poop while you're smoking a cigarette and they'll probably break you of your habit. Boo. Mixing disgust with anything will break you of habits, right? Yeah. Um, if you have a habit breaking tip, bad habit breaking tip, uh, we want to hear it because that's a demonstration of brain plasticity. As you know, uh, you can tweet to us at sysk podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuff podcast at discovery.com and you can join us at our home on the web stuff you should know.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works.com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Langston Kerman. Sometimes I'm on TV. I'm David boring. I'm probably on TV right now.

David and I are going to take a deep dive every week into the most exciting ground breaking and sometimes problematic black conspiracy theories. We've had amazing past notable guests like Brandon Cal Goodman, Sam J. Quinta Brunson and so many more new episodes around every Tuesday, many episodes out on Thursdays where we answer you, the listeners conspiracy theories. Listen to my mama told me on the heart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.