by: Matthew Krajewski
Rebecca Sato of the blog Daily Galaxy recently posed the interesting question, “Does the brain possess superpowers?” I was so tickled by the post, and the interesting cases she summarized, I wanted to share the premise with RightHealth readers, and explore other realms of the brain, myth and reality, that may be of interest.
With the recent phenomenal success of NBC’s Heroes, to the lucrative Marvel and DC comic franchises that include the X-Men, Superman, and many other figures numbering too many to list here, people are culturally enamored with the idea of heroes and superpowers. The idea of heroes aside (one person can make a difference and so on…), the idea that there are hidden, untapped superpowers latent in human beings always seems to grip our cultural interest.
Sato recounts savants that have abilities that echo the characters found in the NBC hit Heroes. Stephen Wiltshire is an autistic savant that can draw anything he sees with just a quick glance at the object. Orlando Serrell developed the ability to calculate complex calendrical equations only after being struck with a baseball to the head. These are two of the cases Sato relates in her article, posing the quandary of why if it is an evolutionary attribute of human beings to filter irrelevant facts do some human beings possess the extraordinary ability to lack this filter and produce incredible results like Serrell or Wiltshire? Do all human beings possess some “superpower” that is blocked by this evolutionary filter?
Perhaps we believe that the brain possess hidden superpowers, because there is so much we don’t understand about it, and it tends to play tricks on us. Lifehack related some of these brain tricks in a recent post. Like our short term memory, we can only store about five to nine items in our short term memory, hence why phone numbers average seven numbers, the same average as our short term memory. Also, your long term memory shuts down when you sleep, hence why you can’t remember all those dreams you had when you were asleep, only fragments, there was no long term memory operating to store them.
One of the hot trends right now, as the craze for antioxidants dies down, is to find nutrients that benefit certain parts of your body, particularly your brain (and digestive track, but that’s another blog post on the way). Leftofzen posted a great list of twenty brain foods that will keep your brain humming. I found the benefits of walnuts particularly interesting, since they have been known to produce serotonin, and may counter some conditions such as insomnia or depression.
So even if we can’t answer if the brain possess superpowers, at least we know what to feed it to keep it healthy, and we can even learn a little bit more about the tricks it plays on us! Read more on the Brain on Righthealth when you get a chance.
