18 Interesting Facts About Your Mind

The human mind is a true mystery. Even with all the advances that science has made, there are still many more questions than answers about how our brain works, and about the true extent of its potential.

Although it is impossible to believe, most of the things we do with our minds still have no clear explanations. Science ignores the details of why and how we dream, how exactly our memories are formed, and what mechanisms enable the development and change of emotions. These, among many other questions, remain unanswered.

Every day, countless experiments take place around the world. All with the purpose of dissolving into the hidden threads that move our minds. Thus, new information is constantly coming into play, which never ceases to amaze us. Below are eighteen fascinating facts about the mind:

Curiosities in the brain

1. It has been shown that people establish greater empathy with people who touch their forearm and / or talk to them through the right ear during a conversation.
2. In addition, when people come up with something, they tend to look up and to the right. If they are really trying to remember something, they look down and to the left.
3. It is also a known fact that people have a better chance of getting a new professional job if they wear glasses for the interview. Glasses are subconsciously interpreted as a sign of specialization or intelligence.
   
4. The average time it takes to forget a great love is 17 months and 26 days.
5. A study found that when you are burned, certain brain networks are activated. The interesting aspect of this is that the same network is activated when we suffer from a romantic rejection.
6. Depressed people dream three times as much as people who are not sad.
7. And when it comes to physical pain, looking at a picture of your loved one can reduce physical pain by up to 44%. The effect is almost identical to that of regular analgesics.
8. The brains of children who have been subjected to domestic violence have the same activity patterns as soldiers who have fought in a war. The truth is that every thought is literally a physical path formed in the brain. The more you have a certain thought, the deeper the imprint that this path creates will be, and the easier it will be for the thought to appear in your mind. Therefore, it is good to always have uplifting and encouraging thoughts.
   
9. Video games can produce an addiction as strong as heroin. This certainly has something to do with the mechanisms that activate willpower, because the strength of willpower depends largely on the amount of oxygen and glucose in your brain.
10. When you are exhausted or hungry, it will be harder for you to say no or maintain a certain goal.
11. And while we are talking about exhaustion, it is estimated that the average person loses concentration after 90 minutes of being continuously focused on something. Herein lies the importance of taking breaks through an important task.
12. Within the brain, neurons are connected in many different ways. To be more specific, a million increased to a decade unit. If the brain were a hard drive, it would have the capacity to store up to 4 terabytes of information. In fact, each of us has around 70,000 thoughts per day, though many of them are repeated.
13. This is why the brain weighs only 1.5 kilos on average, but uses 20% of the energy and oxygen used by the body.
14. In a study conducted in the United States, it was proven that people who eat food without artificial coloring or preservatives, managed to achieve 14% higher scores on intelligence tests. Therefore, what we eat will affect the way our brain is operated and functions.
15. Despite its great capacity, the human brain does not have a good ability to distinguish between imagination and real experiences. Thus, someone may experience a movie as if it were an event that happened in the real world. You can feel sadness, fear or enthusiasm in the same way you would if you really experienced the event.
16. People have false memories. In an experiment, some photographs of volunteers were tricked, and they were placed in scenarios or with people where they had never been. By looking at the pictures, many of them remembered these people and even gave details about the events that took place.
17. Although it may seem incredible, people believe more in words that rhyme than in those who do not.
18. Some may physically feel a blow that another person receives, if this greatly affects them emotionally. This is because there are cells in the brain called ” mirror neurons ” that reproduce the experience as if you were the one who experienced it.