Column Chronicles: What about your brain?

What about your brain?

Frank Cotolo
November 25, 2021

We use it most of the time, this big cauliflower-looking mass inside of our skull. The brain is so underrated and misunderstood, which is weird since one of the jobs of the brain is to understand. Yet, you nor I know enough about it to respect it and work with it.

Let's get to know our brain better, okay? Here are some facts.

A part of your brain that is ruled by emotion is called the amygdala. Rarely used in rhyming poetry, the amygdala gets most of its work in people in their 20s and 30s because those are the years the brain is developing. When it stops developing, a person uses the prefrontal cortex, which stops letting emotions rule the processing. The prefrontal cortex is located before the frontal cortex, which is so powerful it can make a person believe he or she is strong enough to lift a full grown lion.

The right side of your brain (not stage right) handles creativity and the left side (not stage left) handles logic. These two sections should work together so that you might function well when cooking, singing harmony with two or more singers, untying knots, juggling, fly fishing and scoring a bowling game.

It's not important to know the color of your brain. Most people think it is white but that is wrong. You may ask how does the brain let you get away with thinking something wrong? The brain, which is multicolored, does not care about truth. It is robotic, a machine that runs your body and sometimes ruins your body. It does not care.

Your consciousness retires for a while when you are tired. It's called sleep. But the brain never sleeps. It does not need sleep. Any brain that is asleep is a dead brain. The brain works all the time, even in a coma, even on a Ferris Wheel, even in a room filled with insurance salesmen.

The brain is filing information all the time. That is called consolidation. During consolidation, the brain deletes garbage thoughts and information you have collected. The brain makes its mind up what to keep and what to delete. This is why there are so many time when you cannot find your car keys or the TV remote.

Also, your brain is creating more cells to help it along in its 24/7 work life. It makes enough cells to function at the highest level but many cells die because the person housing the brain does not keep the brain active. In other words, the person is a Couch Potato or disinterested in the many skills the brain offers. You know, the person is a dud. Recent studies show that the brain gets pissed off at the body not using it as much as it is available. That's when the brain begins to delete many pieces of information that might be important in the future. The brain knows (no other part of a living body can know) when it is in the shell of a dud.

If you do not understand any of what you just read, it is not the fault of your brain. It is the fault of how you, because you do not use your brain to its fullest.

Think about it.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.