It’s a no brainer how rad the human brain is Join me over the next few weeks as we deep dive into my all time favorite subject - the brain!

Fun Brain Facts:

Your brain isn’t fully formed until age 25!!

Information in your brain travels at around 268 miles per hour!

The Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC) is one of the most studied areas of the brain in psychology. The PFC is the last area of the brain to develop at around 25 years old with neurons continuing to mature until your 30s. (WILD - imagine all of the decisions you make before then!)

Ever been so stressed out that all you can do is sit down?

The PFC is more sensitive to stress than any other area of the brain. Under stress, the PFC is unable to work properly, neuron pathways can't connect, neuron activity is decreased, and the working memory of the brain is turned off. Hence why it can be so hard to not only think under stress, but to FUNCTION under stress.

The PFC also gives us a clear understanding of why having a mental illness, such as depression or anxiety, can cause us to decrease in our daily functioning. If our PFC is smaller, not as active, and/or underdeveloped, imagine how much more we have to work to simply function day-to-day. Stack the symptoms of mental illnesses on top of a biological issue, like a smaller PFC, and you're looking at DOUBLE the effort just to complete simple tasks.

Give yourself some grace friends. Sometimes it's not just that you can't handle stress or that you're having a depressive episode. Sometimes it can be much more in your brain that can't be seen.

Self-awareness is the ability to perceive and understand the things that make you who you are as an individual, including your personality, actions, beliefs, values, emotions, and thoughts. The insula is believed to be responsible for this understanding in our brain.

Brain scans have shown the insula to activate in the human brain when people feel emotions, participate in their addictive habits, listen to their favorite music, watch a show they enjoy, and even when they feel pain.  The insula works together with the limbic system to send out messages to the rest of the brain to explain what is happening in the body.

When the insula is not able to communicate properly, it can misfire, leading to the brain having a lack of understanding. In other words - it becomes hard for the person to explain or understand why they are doing what they are doing. (Have you ever been asked "Why did you do that?!" and have no answer?)

The insula plays a key role in healing - if we can understand why we are acting a certain way, addicted to certain habits, or even just gain a general understanding of what's going on in our body, we can grow. Thankfully, this is something that can be taught through skills like mindfulness, coping skills, and emotional regulation.

The Amygdala is snuggled in under the surface of the brain, near your temples. This little Lookout Tower is constantly on guard determining any given situation. In people with trauma, it is believed that their Amygdala is hyper aware - meaning that it is over active and responds to situations that aren’t truly fear inducing.

When the Amygdala sounds the alarm in the brain that you’re unsafe, the brain is essentially “hijacked.” The Amygdala takes over and the Pre-Frontal Cortex turns off. (This is why it’s hard to think when you’re scared.) The Amygdala has direct connections to many areas of the brain making it easy to send information, which goes faster than the human brain can process. This is where our instincts kick in - fight or flight!

For some, this can look like aggression. Sometimes the aggression seems unwarranted or like a person is out of control, but truly, it’s their Amygdala telling them they’re unsafe when they’re not.

The Amygdala also plays a key role in Anxiety, causing us to feel nervousness, anxiousness, or fear more than normal. When rats and monkeys were studied, scientist took out one piece of their Amygdalas to determine if they could live a normal life. They did in fact continue life as completely normal, except they didn’t feel ANY fear. 

So, we know that our Amygdala’s only goal is to keep us safe, but we don’t want it to be over reactive and live a life constantly in fight or flight. Your Amygdala can essentially be “retrained” through therapy, awareness, and coping skills. 

The Hippocampus is what stores all of your memories and retrieves those memories for your brain. The Hippocampus functions much like a librarian, sorting correct information, memories, and thoughts and then storing it properly in your brain.

Recently, the Hippocampus has been directly linked with stress levels, handling conflict, and taking charge of your autobiographical memories (aka how you think about yourself = self-esteem). When your Hippocampus is functioning properly, it stores your memories properly creating an accurate narrative in your brain about that memory. When it is not functioning well that narrative in your brain gets skewed, causing your brain to misread situations and signal your Amygdala, putting you in fight or flight unnecessarily and increasing your stress level.

Ever had a panic attack over something that turned out to be nothing? Shoutout to your Hippocampus! 

When this cycle happens over and over, your narrative about yourself can become muddled, causing low self-esteem, increased emotional struggles, and all the feelings of self-doubt, self-loathing, and self-criticism. Therapy is a great way to stop this cycle, as you learn to reframe those memories and give your Hippocampus a chance to store them properly. 

Last, but not least is the Hypothalamus - your body's very own regulator.

The function of the Hypothalamus to keep your body in homeostasis, which is an equal balance, or happy state, within the body. The Hypothalamus regulates many of your bodily functions: hunger, thirst, blood pressure, body temperature, mood, sleep, sex drive, and more! Notice how many of these have to do with depression?

Researchers have linked depression with an overactive or enlarged Hypothalamus. When the Hypothalamus is unable to regulate and keep the body in homeostasis, it goes into a depressive state in which its functioning is decreased. This looks like poor sleep, poor appetite, low mood, increased fatigue, increased sickness, and other physical symptoms that increase our depression.

As this cycle continues, the body is not getting what it needs to thrive fully; therefore, causing other functions of the brain to decrease and we start to get less Dopamine, which is essential for humans to feel pleasure in their life. This cycle of depression can continue on for weeks, months, and even years.

Finding healthy coping skills, doing things that we enjoy, allowing our bodies to get full on foods that are good for us (both physically and mentally), and getting enough sleep at night are all ways to aid the Hypothalamus into better functioning.