Given how important your brain is, we haven’t been studying it for all that long and still don’t know as much about it as maybe we should. That said, scientists are still working to unlock the mystery of how that meaty organ in your head controls every aspect of your being and we’re learning more remarkable things about it and about us, as a species, all the time. As it happens, some of what’s being discovered about the mind is pretty remarkable and, well, mind-blowing.
10. A Doctor Studying The Brains of Psychopaths Discovered He Was a Psychopath
Everyone has a brain but not everyone has the same kind of brain. There are a number of neurological conditions and disorders that can alter your mind to a greater or lesser degree. And for years, one of the most fascinating parts of neuroscience and the study of the mind has been related to the minds of criminals, especially people like serial killers and psychopaths.
Now not every psychopath is a serial killer, of course, and even that difference is part of the study. Why do some psychopaths become killers while others just become CEOs?
James Fallon, from the University of California, was studying the minds of psychopaths as part of his work in the Department of Psychiatry. Where he worked, the lab had done actual scans of the minds of serial killers over the years as part of their criminal defenses. And Fallon, in his capacity as a psychiatrist, studied these scans and began to notice certain patterns. He used this as a jumping off point and became somewhat of an authority on the mind of the psychopath. And that’s when things got weird.
Delving into his own family history, Fallon discovered a number of shady relatives including famed killer Lizzie Borden. Later, he and his family participated in some Alzheimer’s research which required some brains be scanned as a control. Fallon saw his own scan later and recognized it immediately. It was the brain of a psychopath.
Fallon has never killed anyone, of course, and thought it was silly until pretty much everyone in his life agreed that yeah, he was a bit of a psycho. Manipulative, reckless, emotionally distant but able to feign empathy. It made sense. How did Fallon respond? He tried to practice being nice and recognizes that he has dark tendencies but not necessarily dangerous ones.
9. Scientists Have Suggested Dolphins Qualify as Non-Human Persons
One of the fun things about studying brains is that you don’t have to just study humans. Researchers studying dolphins, arguably the smartest creatures in the world next to ourselves, have made some impressive discoveries over the years about just how smart these animals are. And perhaps the most stunning conclusion any researcher has come to is that a dolphin deserves to be considered a non-human person.
What’s a non-human person? Pretty much what it sounds like. Psychologists from the City University of New York and zoologists from Emory University scanned the brains of dolphins and observed their behavior to determine that the animals have distinct personalities, self-awareness, the ability to consider the future and the ability to not just learn but teach others. They are people, just not human.
Efforts have been made to have dolphins and whales recognized with personhood and therefore individual rights since the study was released. In 2013, India declared dolphins could no longer be used in circuses and Sea World-type shows, though they stopped short of giving them human rights. .
8. LSD Activates Unusual Parts Of your Brain for Visual Processing
If you’ve ever used LSD, maybe you don’t need to know what science says it does to your brain but there is some fascinating stuff going on up there when you start tripping out. And when you think you’re seeing things, your brain is agreeing with you.
Brain scans conducted on people who took LSD specifically for the purpose of seeing how it affects brain activity had some illuminating results. Parts of your cortex which are normally buffered and protected from information overload get overwhelmed with signals. Your temporal cortex gets less info than normal while your posterior cingulate cortex gets too much.
Normally, your thalamus filters information through to other parts of the brain, but LSD disrupts the ability to do that, giving rise to unusual feelings and sensations. There is a lot going on that your thalamus normally protects you from because you don’t need to experience it.
While taking the drug you can process new visual signals in parts of the brain not normally associated with visual processing, which is what happens when you start hallucinating. The exact method of how it all works is still unknown.
7. Love and Cocaine Affect Your Brain in Very Similar Ways
If you’ve ever heard the expression “love drunk” or observed yourself or others acting weird when they’re in love, that’s not just a joke. Your brain really does go a little wonky when you’re in love and studies have shown that love and cocaine have a very similar effect.
The love in question isn’t that sort of long-term feeling of affection, but that early euphoric feeling that people sometimes get in a new and intense relationship. That explains why some people seem to go overboard and do weirdly impulsive things like getting married the day after they meet.
Both love and drugs like cocaine affect the same pleasure centers in your brain that give you a rewarding feeling. In fact, the way your brain processes love and pain relief are very similar. Both give you that dopamine rush that makes everything feel great.
6. Men Who Wear Ties Get Less Blood to Their Brains
A necktie is one of those clothing articles that doesn’t serve any real purpose but people keep wearing them more out of tradition than anything else. They’re considered formal and business-like. But there’s some evidence it’s not doing your brain any favors thanks to their tendency to restrict blood flow.
Obviously you’re not meant to choke yourself to death with a tie but the fact remains it’s essentially a noose you choose to loosely choke yourself with. The result of that is less blood flow to your head and brain as a result. Researchers scanned the brains of 15 men before and after wearing a tie. Blood levels to the brain were reduced by about 7.5% after tightening the tie. A small amount, to be sure, but just how much blood do you want to deprive your brain of, anyway?
The research concluded that the blood flow reduction may not be life threatening, but it could have more serious repercussions for smokers and people with high blood pressure. Earlier research suggested ties could ruin your eyes as well.
5. Murderers Tend to Have Reduced Gray Matter Compared to Other Criminals
We touched on the brain matters of psychopaths earlier, but what else is happening in the brains of murderers? Not every psychopath is a murderer and not every murderer is a psychopath but a study of 800 convicts showed some interesting results. The brains of murderers in specific were different from other brains. Specifically, those who had committed murder or attempted to commit murder had reduced gray matter when compared to those incarcerated for other offenses.
In what isn’t much of a surprise these reductions were noticeable in areas of the brain related to behavioral control and emotional processing. Less gray matter means they’re less able to process information related to those things.
The study excluded those who may have suffered from things like psychosis or schizophrenia as well as any that may have had brain injuries, eliminating those as potential causes for what was observed.
4. Nearly Every Single NFL Player Studied has Degenerative Brain Disease
It’s no secret that professional football is a physical game and the risk of injury can be very high. But no players signed up in the past fully aware of the risks that are far less obvious than simple bumps and bruises. Brain scans from numerous former NFL players have shown a widespread prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE.
At least 320 players have been diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease, and at least two dozen have died as a result, most of them in their 20s and 30s. In 2017, a study of 111 NFL players discovered the condition in 110 of them.
The condition, historically associated with boxers, leads to a lot more damage than it seems like on the surface. The men suffering from these conditions don’t just have an illness that kills them, it’s a condition that alters their personality. Some of the victims committed suicide while others, like Jovan Belcher, Phillip Adams and Aaron Hernandez murdered others before taking their own lives.
3. Pot Smokers’ Brains Show Abnormalities
Marijuana has become very popular in these last few years as more and more places have legalized its use. A number of states and countries are on board with smoking pot or otherwise enjoying cannabis and many proponents have, for years, argued that weed is far safer and better for you than things like alcohol or tobacco. But it should come as no surprise that the increased use has led to increased study and there is some research that suggests it’s not as good as everyone hopes.
The American Heart Association took a fairly neutral stance in 2022 suggesting more research needs to be done on the effects of marijuana on the brain. Rodent studies show that marijuana use can disrupt memory, learning, and brain development. Human studies, however, have results that are all over the map with more or less favorable results depending on the test, which is not really helpful for anyone.
A Harvard study in 2014 showed that pot smokers, even casual ones, had significant abnormalities in the parts of the brain controlling emotion and motivation. Is anyone shocked to hear pot smokers are not motivated? Probably not. But it could become more of a problem as pot use becomes more widespread.
2. Space Travel Changes the Shape and Other Aspects of Your Brain
Space is not a natural environment for humans and our bodies have some curious reactions when we’re left in zero gravity. One of the most curious side effects which has been learned from the Russian space program is that prolonged space flight can alter the shape and performance of your brain.
Researchers studying the brains of cosmonauts noted that the brain was essentially rewired. They scanned the brains of 12 astronauts before and after their time in space which averages 172 days per astronaut.
Brain fluid, white matter and gray matter were all altered after space flight. Portions of the brain will actually change shape to adapt to the environment of weightlessness but they don’t readily change back when astronauts return to earth. In fact, months later, the changes are still present and it’s not fully known what kind of effect that can have going forward.
1. Scientists Studied Monkey Brains and Managed to Extract Faces Their Thoughts
We studied dolphin brains to determine they are non-human persons so what could we have learned from monkey brains? Some full on science fiction stuff.
Researchers at CalTech were studying the brains of monkeys and how they processed things like faces that they were seeing. The result was that they were able to determine how the neurons in the brain organized information when the monkey saw a face and then extract that information. That is to say, they could reconstruct a face that the monkeys had seen based solely on information in their brains. When the reconstructed faces were compared to the actual photos of people, the results were nearly identical.
The scientists weren’t specifically trying to read monkey brains, it actually came about as research into algorithms for facial recognition technology. And it turned out that the algorithm worked almost exactly the same way that the monkey’s brains did.
While the potential for perfecting facial recognition technology is present in these results, there’s also some more esoteric possibilities like maybe using the brain of a murder victim to see the face of their killer.