Joy in Life and its effect on Brain Centre
Our brain is having billions of cells cramped together in a small space in our head. But the cells do not touch each other physically. There is a gap between each cell. This gap is called as synapse. The cells are having hair like filaments by which they touch the hairlike filaments of other cells. These hairlike filaments are called dendrites. The dendrites vary from person to person, from cell to cell. They may be 50 in some cases whereas in some other cased they may be 1000. They are not fixed. And through these dendrited they are able to communicate. The scientists have not been able to ascertain as to why some neurons that is brain cells have 50 dendrites for sending messages – that is communicating with other cells while some other neurons have 10,000 dendrites. Scientists are still investigating as to why it is so. They have got one very interesting finding and which is of particular interest to us in Sri Anand Yoga. And that is thay have observed people who are mentally active – old people who are mentally active – they are actually growing new dendrites all the time. This was finding by Marian Diamond at Barkley, who had done experiments on rats and he had shown that the brains of rats grew or shrank according to the environment in which they were there. Rats which were confined to the small cages and had no social interaction, there was no fun in life as compared to the other rats – their brain, i.e. their cortexes show shrinking and they had lot of loss of dendrites. On the other hand, rats which were put back with their friends, in their society and given lot of stimulation – their brains expanded and grew more dendrites. So this gave physiological explanation as to why lonely or isolated old people are much more likely to get confused, disoriented and seem to living in void than other old people who are actively involved with family and friends.
There is one other interesting angle to this aspect. One is tempted to conclude that having more dendrited means having more developed brain. But it is not so. Very very curious and interesting observation and which in Sri Anand Yoga we are very much interested is that the babies – small babies are born with many more dendrites than their grown adults. So this is very curious. When we say that the old people get mentally active, they grow more dendrites – but babies are already having far more dendrites than the grown up people. And as they mature their dendrites fall away – their dendrites become less and less. So maturing means the lowering of the count of number of dendrites which the baby is having. Ultimately it settles to the level whereby it had whatever its needs are – in other words how much a human person is using his brain. Whatever use is there of a person for his brain that much dendrites he will be having. We can not put any mathematical equation for this but this has been ascertained that baby is having more dendrites and it goes down and it settles as per the use of the brain and along with this we have to see that the old brains – brains of older people – they are capable of growing more dendrites as their social interaction increases.
Now why the dendrites on the brain cell of the babies are more and it goes down ? This can be compared to an experiment which we can do anywhere. Put a ball and bounce it on the floor. When we bounce it on the floor, it bounces back to almost the same height to which we bounced it. and slowly it goes on bouncing bouncing bouncing on the floor and with every bounce its height goes down down down untill at the end of say 9th bounces it goes flat on the floor. This is like in the case of the babies. Initially we are energetic, we are active – babies want to ask so many questions, they are active, they are joyful, they are playful, they want to enjoy life – but then we put restrictions on them, we try to discipline them, we try to culture them, we try to train them in our own way. With the result we put restrictions, we tell them don’t do this, don’t do that, do this, do that – thereby killing their spontaneity of a child. And this results in a lessening of dendrites. If we are able to bring up a child, not putting lot of restrictions on him and grooming it carefully, nurturing it with love then we will be able to keep the dendrites count at very high level. This is supported by the scientific finding. I do not know if anybody has done this experiment, but scientists have known that babies are having more dendrites and the dendrite count goes down as they grow adult.
There is a common understanding or common perception amongst scientists that our brain lose around a million neurons i.e. brain cells every year. As we grow older, the brain starts shrinking. But this is not provable because nobody can count the brain cells of a living brain. They can only have a deductive logic by having the brain weighed of a dead person and then draw conclusions out of that. But this is in doubt. It is very much in doubt whether we are really losing a million neurons every year without any replacement. We may be losong but there are replacements. Mr Robert Terry, a neuroscientist at te University of California at Santiago. He had some interesting finding in this respect. What he has observed is that there is no significant decline in neuron density in very three important areas of the brain – what he has said is that the number of large neurons does decrease but that is offset by the increase in smaller neurons. And large neurons also appear not to be dyeing but shrinking. There can not be any conclusive proof because of the limitations in doing experiments on living brain cells. But this is very interesting finding. Other neuroscientist Samuel Weiss and Brian Reynold of the University of Calgerry in Albetta – they have done experiment on brain and they have found that they can stimulate dormant brain cell to active life. What they have done - they have cultivated mouse neurons in the laboratory and gave them a chemical called Epidermal Growth Factor causing the immature inactive brain cells to divide and form mature ones. And human brain is almost certainly storing such dormant cells for use as a replacement reserve. What we say is that we are having lot of dormant cells because of non use. We do not use full capacity of brain. We do not live our life to a full extent. That is why we are having these dormant cells. And it is possible to bring these dormant cells into life. What the scientists have done chemically we can do it without chemicals.
Brain has its own natural mechanism for activating itself in old age. It is very interesting to know that after you pass the age of 80, new dendrites grow longer and sprout more new branches. It is very interesting. It becomes more and more complex after they pass 80. So as neurons shrink, they create new synapses which in turn stimulates more endocrenical activity in the brain. There is a protein called Nerve Growth Factor (NGF). This is natural substance and this natural substance stimulate the growth and repair of a brain cell. At John Hopkins Laboratory this NGF experiment was done and it was shown that NGF prevented the degenaration of old neurons in rats and monkeys when this was injected into the brain of old rats. This improved to a very significant extent the spatial memory – i.e. memory related to the space.
The study was conducted at this university it was a very long term study and it was found out that there was no general decline in intelligence amongst old people unless they are suffering from high blood pressure. Till the age of 120 – which is our natural biological age – if we do not fall sick, we will live upto the age of 120. And scientists have more or less concluded that sickness, not the ageing process itself is to create decline in mental functioning.
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