As early as the ancient Egyptian medical texts more than 5,000 years ago, there were many descriptions of the human brain form; people at that time believed that brain damage had some subtle relationship with physical paralysis.
Looking at Western history, you will also find that among ancient Greek philosophers and medical practitioners, there are many people who show special attention to the human brain; for example, Alkmaion in the 5th century BC and the Koss school represented by Hippocrates have studied and explored the human brain.
The "brain science" we are familiar with is actually a discipline that has only taken shape in the past 200 years. Compared with the vast history, it is a new thing.
It can be seen from this that humans' desire to explore the brain has existed since ancient times. Today, science has emerged from natural philosophy. As people gradually mature, people's ideas, methods and tools for brain exploration are constantly being updated and iterated.
In this era, the most easily accessible "tool for exploring the brain" that ordinary people are books related to brain science.
For example, the British writer Rita Carter, who mainly works on brain-related content, wrote "DK Brain Efficient Training Encyclopedia", which is a book that teaches us how to keep our brain healthy, young and flexible.
The author tells in a picture-based way how the brain works and how various parts of the brain work together to help humans carry out normal activities such as thinking, learning, and socializing.
Also, this book describes how a fully functional mind is produced under the combined action of various intellectual skills, and how to temper, exercise, perfect and make full use of these intellectual skills. The author thus provides us with various brain games, exercise methods and practice guidance.
It can be said that the practical guide presented in this book is to let us find ways to play to our strengths and avoid our weaknesses by testing these intellectual skills, so as to choose and combine a new, interesting and healthy lifestyle for the brain.
For example, why do we often forget things?
The author tells us that when the brain's neural network encoding memory is lost, the memory will disappear; and what we need to do is to reuse and strengthen the long-term memory network to extract important information and "storage" them.
Also, we often say "recalling something", which actually activates the memory of this event, which will strengthen the connection between the synapses in the brain; otherwise, the memory will not be reactivated, and the connection between the synapses will not be strengthened.
In fact, forgetting is actually a very normal thing; especially when the network in the brain experiences premature decline, forgetting becomes a very serious problem.
even, the book also tells us that the human brain's processing of memory is actually stored in categories, including "epistry memory, semantic memory, program memory, and working memory".
Take "episode memory" as an example, which refers to the memory of the events we experience, such as the memory of your wedding day with your partner, and what is involved depends on the specific experience.
followed by "semantic memory", which refers to the memory of knowledge. For example, "Paris, the capital of France", is extracted from the temporal lobe.
Let’s take a look at “program memory”, as the name suggests, this is “memory of automated motor skills”, such as the skills of cycling, which are stored by the brain in the area below the cortex.
Finally, it is "working memory", that is, "short-time memory"; it is not difficult to understand that what we usually remember is almost the moments that need to be used. If you want to remember a phone number, you can dial this phone number multiple times to achieve memory storage.
It can be seen that the brain structure is complex, and all parts are activities that participate in through interaction and association, and even the entire brain, to help us carry out daily behaviors such as learning, reading, writing, thinking and communication.
The author said: "The brain is the cornerstone of intelligence." The book "DK Brain Efficient Training Encyclopedia" just brings together the latest scientific research results on brain health.
For example, the book provides a series of practical methods to maintain brain health, as well as many high-definition graphical materials, and combines simple and easy-to-understand statements, allowing us to clearly understand the working principles of the human brain, brain exercise, thinking ability, how to try new things, etc.
Therefore, this is a popular science book suitable for everyone to read.
In short, if we want to find out what we think about, then this book is one of the best ways.
