When you look, touch, smell, or even read something, such as this text, you are learning something. When your brain learns something, that means it’s constantly changing, physically. These physical changes are made to the neuron, or the nerve cell, which controls something complex such as learning. The way they work is by sending electrical or chemical signals between each neuron.
Just like anything functional, neurons have certain components that do certain things. Neurons are composed of three parts: a cell body, dendrites, and the axon. A cell body is exactly as it sounds, the body of the cell that holds most everything. It resembles an uprooted tree root mass (Medina, 89). The dendrites are small fibers that can send or receive signals …show more content…
Eric Kandel is responsible for this discovery. He discovered this by observing sea slugs; as the neurons learn, they can swell, sway, and split. When the connection is broken, they will move to a nearby region and form a new connection with another neuron (Medina). The human brain is not fully developed until the early 20’s, and it essentially fine tunes itself until the 40’s (Medina). It is constantly building, demolishing, and rebuilding connections.
How Brain Wiring Impacts College Students
Wiring can be applied to almost all of the other brain rules stated in Brain Rules by John Medina. The one particular rule that caught my attention is Stress. I believe this particular rule applies to college students the most, especially myself. As the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as too much….”, stress is obviously not one of them. There is a tipping point where too much stress can lead to severe problems.
When the brain detects stress, it signals the adrenal gland to release adrenaline, as well as cortisol, into your bloodstream. This is done as “fight or flight” reaction when we come across a situation where survival is key; it is done as a way to get our muscles moving immediately. Prolonged exposure to adrenaline can lead to scarring in the blood vessels. These scars can attract molecules and can eventually grow large enough to block the blood flow, leading to a heart attack or …show more content…
When there is too much stress, the brain begins to suffer. Poor arithmetic, memories, language process, and concentration are results of too much stress. When chronic stress is experienced, that is when things get bad. Stress hormones can disrupt neural networks in your hippocampus, which are the webbing of brain cells that store your most precious memories (Medina). Extreme conditions of stress can lead to damage of the hippocampal cells, essentially causing brain damage to some of your most important brain tissue.
Depression. That is a cringe-worthy word for some people, especially to myself. It is every bit a disease and can be caused by prolonged stress. This is something some college students deal with on a daily basis. The effects of stress and depression on a college student is disastrous. My experience caused me to fail out of school one semester and perform poorly the following semester resulting in a suspension for the subsequent semester.
Words cannot describe how important wiring and stress are, and how much they go hand in hand. They are probably the most important brain rules in the book. Every brain is different because everyone learns different things in different ways. Right now, as you are reading this, your brain is building new connections and sending millions of signals from neuron to
Just like anything functional, neurons have certain components that do certain things. Neurons are composed of three parts: a cell body, dendrites, and the axon. A cell body is exactly as it sounds, the body of the cell that holds most everything. It resembles an uprooted tree root mass (Medina, 89). The dendrites are small fibers that can send or receive signals …show more content…
Eric Kandel is responsible for this discovery. He discovered this by observing sea slugs; as the neurons learn, they can swell, sway, and split. When the connection is broken, they will move to a nearby region and form a new connection with another neuron (Medina). The human brain is not fully developed until the early 20’s, and it essentially fine tunes itself until the 40’s (Medina). It is constantly building, demolishing, and rebuilding connections.
How Brain Wiring Impacts College Students
Wiring can be applied to almost all of the other brain rules stated in Brain Rules by John Medina. The one particular rule that caught my attention is Stress. I believe this particular rule applies to college students the most, especially myself. As the saying goes, “there’s no such thing as too much….”, stress is obviously not one of them. There is a tipping point where too much stress can lead to severe problems.
When the brain detects stress, it signals the adrenal gland to release adrenaline, as well as cortisol, into your bloodstream. This is done as “fight or flight” reaction when we come across a situation where survival is key; it is done as a way to get our muscles moving immediately. Prolonged exposure to adrenaline can lead to scarring in the blood vessels. These scars can attract molecules and can eventually grow large enough to block the blood flow, leading to a heart attack or …show more content…
When there is too much stress, the brain begins to suffer. Poor arithmetic, memories, language process, and concentration are results of too much stress. When chronic stress is experienced, that is when things get bad. Stress hormones can disrupt neural networks in your hippocampus, which are the webbing of brain cells that store your most precious memories (Medina). Extreme conditions of stress can lead to damage of the hippocampal cells, essentially causing brain damage to some of your most important brain tissue.
Depression. That is a cringe-worthy word for some people, especially to myself. It is every bit a disease and can be caused by prolonged stress. This is something some college students deal with on a daily basis. The effects of stress and depression on a college student is disastrous. My experience caused me to fail out of school one semester and perform poorly the following semester resulting in a suspension for the subsequent semester.
Words cannot describe how important wiring and stress are, and how much they go hand in hand. They are probably the most important brain rules in the book. Every brain is different because everyone learns different things in different ways. Right now, as you are reading this, your brain is building new connections and sending millions of signals from neuron to