The human brain is amazing! It is a vital part of human body. It controls our body and enables us to do everything. There are many things human brain does without us consciously thinking about it. In this post, we have a list of seven amazing things our brain causes us to do things automatically.
1. Laughing
A paper published in 1998 gave some explanation as to how the brain is involved in our impulse to laugh. A girl labeled as A.K. is discussed in the paper after having undergone surgery to control her epilepsy. The doctor discovered that stimulating a roughly 4-square-centimeter (0.6 in2) area of the superior frontal gyrus (part of the frontal lobe of the brain) always triggered laughter from A.K. This area of the brain is a part of the supplementary motor area. When A.K. explained why she was laughing, she thought of something after the laughter. This is usually the opposite for most people, as we perceive something as funny and then laugh as a response.
Authors of the paper believe that our experience of laughter is triggered by several different areas of the brain, each responsible for adding different elements to the experience. There’s the emotional reaction, the cognitive process of understanding why something is funny, and ultimately the uncontrollable part of the reaction, which involves the movement of facial muscles to create a smile. After interpreting something as funny, our physical reaction to the situation is created by our brain’s reaction, making is very difficult to control.
2. Shivering
Shivering is another reflex action put into place for our own protection. The reaction is created by triggering the hypothalamus, which is located just above the thalamus in the brain. When sensory receptors in the skin detect a cold temperature in the external environment, our nervous system sends a signal to the hypothalamus to alert it to this information. The hypothalamus then sends signals to your muscles, causing them to rapidly contract.
Shivering raises our body temperature. Despite our best efforts not to shiver, it is out of our control, being a reflex action. Whenever your hypothalamus detects temperature below a certain point, it kicks in the shivering reaction, which will not stop until the temperature is raised above a certain point.
3. Making Us Sneeze
When we sneeze, the irritation is located in the respiratory epithelium lining the nose. Mast cells, such as inflammatory cells like eosinophils, produce chemicals such as histamine or leukotrienes. This chemical release is triggered by the irritating substance, which can be something that triggers as an allergen; filtered particles, a viral respiratory infection, or a physical irritant like smoke. After the irritating stimulus triggers the chemical release, vessels in the nose leak fluid, which ultimately stimulates nerve endings, causing itching. But how does our brain actually produce the sneeze?
The stimulation of each nerve ending activates a reflex response within the brain. The sensory nerves cause the activation of nerves controlling the muscles in the neck and head. The rapid air flow from the nose is achieved by a buildup of pressure within the chest while the vocal chords are closed (all which is part of the reflex action). As the vocal chords quickly reopen, the air flows out with high velocity, simultaneously removing the irritating stimulus.
4. Maintaining Balance
The brain works out how to maintain this balance through sensory input from the eyes, muscles, joints, and vestibular organs.Muscles and joints are responsible for sending signals to our brain about the amount of stretch and pressure while walking. When we lean forward, more pressure is felt in the front part of the soles of our feet. Any movement made by our body parts sends a signal to our brain, which allows it to judge where we are in space.
Muscles and joints are responsible for sending signals to our brain about the amount of stretch and pressure while walking. When we lean forward, more pressure is felt in the front part of the soles of our feet. Any movement made by our body parts sends a signal to our brain, which allows it to judge where we are in space. Cues are given from the ankle also allow our brain to measure the texture and quality of the surface, which enables us to accurately sway in relation to the ground.
5. Changing Our Memory
In the experiment, participants were shown clips of car crashes and asked a standardized set of questions about what they saw. The participants were put into different groups, all of which were asked the same question but with slightly different wording. The participants in two groups were asked what they thought the speed of the car was, but the verb used to describe the collision was “hit” for one group and “smashed” for the other. A control group wasn’t asked about the speed at all.
A couple of weeks later, participants were asked questions again about the clips they saw. This time, they were asked, “Did you see any broken glass?” There was no broken glass in the clip. Participants who were told that the cars “smashed” (and who predicted the cars to be at a higher speed) inaccurately recalled seeing broken glass far more than the participants in the control and “hit” conditions. This suggests that our brain can recreate elements of a memory from new information given to it, which becomes stored as part of our original memory, resulting in a false memory.
6. Moving Our Tongue Into Position To Produce Words
we learn to talk through imitation. We don’t necessarily imitate full sentences but rather piece together different words we hear before we start to be able to interpret meaning, creating a structure for our words to be placed in. As we are imitating and learning these new words, our brain has to think consciously about how to position our tongue to create the intended sound. However, as our ability to pronounce each sound becomes more developed, our conscious mind is no longer involved in the process of positioning our tongue and lips; it has become an involuntary process. This explains why when we’re talking, we don’t consciously think about where our tongue is. The movements have already been learned by our muscles, and our brain automatically positions our tongue while we’re consciously thinking about what we’re trying to say.
7. Blinking
The outside corner of your eyes constantly produces tears. These tears are wiped away by the movement of your eyelids as you blink to keep your eye lubricated and clean. The automatic system that regulates our blinking patterns also makes sure that our eyelids close when something is about to strike our face. Although we have the ability to stop the process when we think consciously about it, the automated system will eventually force us to blink again.