Celebrate the Brain

This week is Brain Awareness Week, and a variety of information came to me from different sources, some of which was quite interesting. For example, did you know that a 16-year-old is 800x more likely to have an accident than an 18-year-old? The brain matures from back to front, and since the frontal lobe is the - the "CEO", so to speak - So the last part of the brain that develops is the one used the most. This comes from Twitterer @twilliamson15 who posted adolescent brain workshop notes on his The Technorate Teacher blog. He also noted that the brain is 2% of body weight but consumes 20 to 25% of calories consumed and that it is 70% water but consumes 30% of all water we drink. Now, according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience and reported by Lab Spaces, measuring the speed of water diffusion through the brain "gives us a picture of one's mental speed." Meaning that faster diffusion means faster thinking. I am now even more curious about the role of water in the health of bodies.

And talking about health, there are some interesting, short videos on the Brain Fitness Channel. Here is an example:

• Is Memory Loss Avoidable? Many people think memory loss is an inevitable part of getting older. Learn why scientists no longer think this is true.
  

There is also a lot of new research about mapping the brain. Science Daily talks about Imaging Pinpoints Brain Regions That 'See The Future'. So smart people think faster, and some of this is genetic. But that doesn't mean that you are stuck with the brain you inherit. "Thinking is like running or weightlifting. It helps to have certain genes. But anyone can get stronger or faster by working out. " This is from an NPR "All Things Considered" program on Friday. The image at the top of this post is from the same site and shows the results of diffusion tensor imaging, or DTI that measures "the structural integrity of the brain's white matter, which is made up of cells that carry nerve impulses from one part of the brain to another." More than just a pretty picture.

So these were some fairly random thoughts that I found interesting. For more information, a LOT more information, on brain research and diseases of the brain, visit The Dana Foundation.