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Sunday, June 26, 2016

Neocortex helped humans beliefs in religion- HOW TO IMPROVE NEOCORTEX


The neocortex (Latin for "new bark" or "new rind"), also called theneopallium ("new mantle") and isocortex ("equal rind"), is a part of the mammalian brain. Of all the mammals studied to date (including humans), dolphins (Long-finned pilot whale) have been found to have the most neocortical neurons.[1] In the human brain, the neocortex is the largest part of the cerebral cortex which covers the two cerebral hemispheres, with the allocortex making up the rest. The neocortex is made up of six layers, labelled from the outermost inwards, I to VI. In humans, the neocortex is involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning and language.[2] There are two types of cortex in the neocortex – the true isocortex and the proisocortex.


The following are 10 “exercise” choices for a prefrontal cortex workout.
  1. Put on your rose coloured glasses. Create a positive future story; optimism is associated with rising levels of dopamine which engages the brain.
  2. Follow a sleep routine. At the end of the day, choose a pleasant activity that brings your day to a peaceful end. Getting adequate sleep is connected with memory function.
  1. Deny the drama and avoid getting caught up in gossip, what-if's and theatrical reactions (other people’s too). Drama fires up the amygdala that gets the prefrontal cortex off its game.
  2. Move your body with sports, dance, martial arts, yoga or other active pursuits.
  1. Find ways to express your gratitude. Gratitude activities increase positive emotionswhich then activates the prefrontal cortex.
  1. Offer and receive physical contact.  Give and take hugs to literally soothe the brain with calming inhibitory peptides.
  1. Create silly sentences, acronyms and cartoons to help remember things. These skills call on the prefrontal cortex and Executive Functions to access working memory. By integrating jokes, riddles and puns you can also learn to think flexibly by shifting between different meanings and associations of words.
  2. Play! Make-belief play, in particular strengthens Executive Functions.
  1. Be of service and volunteer. The social and mental activity required sends blood rushing to the prefrontal cortex.
  1. Learn to juggle. Learning any new and engaging activity fires off neurons in a positive way. Other activities that require focus and practice such as dancing, circus arts, music, theatre and sports are predicted to significantly strengthen Executive Function.

Pump Up Your Neocortex: Exercise for your Brain


  • Make your fitness goals measurable:
    • Use metrics as surrogates for achieving your subjective goal, such as being happy with your physique. For instance, with resistance training, forecast some measurable goals that you want to reach at the beginning of a thirty-day training period, such as increasing the amount of weight you use or the number of repetitions you perform with a few of your regular exercises. For example, increasing the number of repetitions from 10 to 12 or the amount of weight by x number of pounds on your bench press, military press and biceps curls. These three exercises will serve as an adequate sampling of all the exercises in your repertoire to get a general measure of your training effect, or improvement in your fitness level. Applying metrics will increase your chances of success in reaching your fitness goal simply by giving you a tangible means of recognizing it when you reach it.
  • Incorporate some Eastern (mind-body) exercises into your total fitness regimen
    • What distinguishes us Human Beings from the rest of the animal kingdom is our brain, specifically our neo-cortex. The human neo-cortex is the seat of abstract thinking. Examples of abstract thinking ranges from something as simple as knowing that an object, such as our mothers, still exist even when they are out of our visual field to the most incredible abstract thought in all human history to date; Einstein’s epiphany that energy and mass are really two different versions of a single entity related by his famous equation E= mc². Eastern Exercises such as Yoga and Tai Chi actually “pump up” the neo-cortex. If you think of the incredible things that we achieve when we flex our muscles, you can imagine the possibilities of what we can do when we flex our neo-cortices.
  • Nutrition: follow the fiber Here is a link to my overview on fitness and nutrition: F²C³-A Nutrition and Fitness Formula for Optimal Performance
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