Your brain is an amazing organ. It generates enough electricity to power a light bulb. It's said to operate at one exaFLOP, which is said to correspond to "a billion billion calculations per second." Its capacity could be one petabyte, or 500 billion printed pages of standard text. And as amazing as all this may seem, there's still a staggering number of things it can't do, things you might not even realize.
10. Your brain doesn't sense humidity.
Imagine you're walking outside. The day is warm and slightly cloudy. You feel something cold and wet hit your face, and you realize it's raining. What exactly did you feel? The nerves in your body register the pressure of the raindrops and the change in temperature. But what about the humidity?
Despite what our senses tell us, our brains aren't capable of perceiving moisture. What we perceive as moisture is a combination of sensations, including texture, pressure, temperature, and so on. When these sensations occur together, our brains are able to identify them as moisture because, in our experience, that's what moisture feels like. It's an illusion based on our previous experiences. But you've undoubtedly had experiences where you felt something that seemed wet, only to find it wasn't—a trick of the senses. It's simply your brain trying to process the sensations.
As it happens, our brains are bad at processing this sensation of wetness differently depending on where you are on the body, but you can at least estimate what you perceive as the level of wetness.
9. You don't perceive black in the absence of light.
When you need to draw what you see with your eyes closed, you'll use black. However, this isn't necessarily what you actually see. The color you see is a shade of very dark gray. The Germans have a word for this—eigengrau. It means "one's own gray" or "inner gray.".
There are several reasons why we never see black with our eyes closed, and they have to do with contrast. You need light to understand darkness. Without it, you settle for something less dark, that inner gray that plays behind your eyelids. There's also brain chemistry at play.
A protein called rhodopsin helps convert light signals into electrical signals in this brain. This is what allows your brain to make sense of what you see. The protein is activated by photons. Photons cause rhodopsin to isomerize, which initiates the process of "vision" as we understand it. But in the absence of light, spontaneous isomerization also occurs, allowing us to see very limited amounts when there is no light at all. And this produces the internal gray color.
8. Your brain can detect magnetic fields.
The mystery of how birds manage to migrate, sometimes thousands of miles each year, can be attributed to their remarkable ability to track the Earth's magnetic fields. Other animals, from sharks to flies, also have the ability to sense magnetic fields. This ability is linked to proteins called cryptochromes.
The strangest thing about cryptochromes is that they exist in humans too. Research shows that they are active in the brains of some people, and when exposed to magnetic fields, these proteins react just like those in animals, which can use them for navigation. So, theoretically, the human brain could sense changes in magnetic fields. But the problem is, your brain has no idea what to do with this information.
Although research shows your brain can do this, it doesn't do anything with it. There's no discernible influence on behavior, either conscious or unconscious, that we can detect.
7. When you're drunk, your brain can't form new memories.
Many people enjoy alcohol from time to time, and some enjoy it more than their fair share. This can become a problem if you drink so much that you can't even remember what you did the night before. Drinking until you forget everything is generally considered bad. But that may not be what happens when you drink, at least not technically.
Drinking doesn't so much make you forget as it prevents you from remembering. What's the difference? Forgetting implies you had a memory to begin with. But alcohol impairs your brain's ability to form new memories. If you drink a significant amount, you can reach a state of unconsciousness, meaning you did everything you did when you were drunk, but your brain couldn't store those memories. So, you didn't do anything and forgot; you simply never created the memories.
When blood alcohol levels reach 0.18–0.30, hippocampal function is impaired. This is significantly higher than what is generally considered the legal blood alcohol limit for being stopped by the police and is close to alcohol poisoning.
6. Your brain can't relax in unfamiliar places
If you've ever found yourself in a hotel room, or even at a friend's house, and sleep was as elusive as the mighty yeti, you're not alone. Sleeping in unfamiliar places is difficult for most people, and your brain is to blame. Or at least half of your brain.
Blame it on our ancient ancestors, who had to worry about predators and perhaps attacks from rival clans, but when we try to sleep in unfamiliar surroundings, our brains are less inclined to relax. The right hemisphere of your brain will be better at shutting down and falling asleep, while the left hemisphere seems to remain alert. This same behavior can be observed in animals like dolphins, who literally can't fully fall asleep without drowning. You may not drown in a Motel 6, but your brain isn't sure, so it has to stay alert.
This phenomenon occurs so frequently that it has its own name—the first-night effect. It causes your brain to react more readily to noise at night and wake you up more quickly if something happens. But this usually only happens for one night. Brain imaging techniques used to monitor brain function also show that after sleeping in the same place for a second night, many brains cool down, and both sides can switch off and rest simultaneously. However, some people need up to four days to fully rest in a new place.
5. Your brain reacts to physical and emotional pain the same way.
One of the worst feelings in the world is having your heart broken. Have you ever burned your hand on a stove? That hurts too. Could you reasonably say which one hurts more? Or, even more difficult, can you tell how they hurt differently? If you're finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between your understanding of physical pain and emotional pain, don't worry. Your brain doesn't know the difference either.
It's not just a pretty metaphor when they say that emotional pain hurts like real physical pain. MRI studies have shown that the human brain responds to emotional pain the same way it does to physical pain. This means that, physiologically, you experience the same pain, and your brain doesn't differentiate between the two. Worse, emotional pain actually makes you dumber. When you deal with emotional pain, you immediately take a hit to your mental abilities, and your IQ can drop by approximately 25%.
4. Your brain can't map heights.
If you've ever been on a plane, you know that at some point the captain usually calls over the intercom to tell you your cruising altitude. You may never have thought about it before, but next time you're on one, you might want to figure out your altitude before they tell you. Chances are, you can't, because our brains are very bad at representing altitude.
A study of rats' brains as they climbed revealed that the part of their brain responsible for representing space and distance barely registers when the animal is simply moving upward. The cells that measure distance simply don't know how high the animal is climbing because our brains seem to understand how everything works in three dimensions, particularly the ability to climb vertically, differently than they do on the ground. It's a bit like having two different navigation maps. Your brain is quite good at reading horizontal rather than vertical.
3. Your brain can't function properly on social media.
Did you find a link to this on social media? We have good news and bad news. The good news is that you're being entertained and educated at the same time. Isn't that great? The bad news is that social media is ruining your brain.
According to research, the average person spends more than two and a half hours on social media every day. This alters how your brain processes information and makes you susceptible to what's known as variable-ratio reinforcement, where you constantly expect to see new information and feel rewarded when you do. This makes it difficult to focus on one thing for long periods of time and makes you easily distracted.
Those who actively use social media perform worse on cognitive tests. It takes a real effort to focus on a single task. Worse, your brain reacts to social media almost like a drug. You crave it, and it can become addictive.
2. Your brain can't surprise itself.
You've no doubt heard that you shouldn't tickle yourself. If you haven't, try it right now. For most of us, it's a non-starter. You simply can't do it, even if someone else tickling you leaves you a writhing, laughing mess on the floor. But that's not necessarily because your brain is dumb.
Let's start with the fact that tickling is actually a defense mechanism. The sensation and our visceral, twitching, writhing response stem from our reaction to things like spiders or other strange little critters crawling on us. It's also potentially a response to aggression. Our ancestors may have laughed, even when they were uncomfortable, to show they weren't interested in fighting. But we can't do that to ourselves because our brain, so to speak, sees us coming. .
Surprise is the key to tickling. If someone tickles you, you don't know where their fingers will go next. The whole experience is uncomfortable, and the laughter is usually not very joyful. But your cerebellum knows where your hands go to tickle yourself, so the feeling of surprise can't take hold.
1. Your brain can't multitask.
Some people pride themselves on their ability to multitask. If you've been in the workforce for the past 30 years or so, you've probably seen most job postings say they need employees who can multitask. That's just how we do things these days. Except, it's not. This may come as a shock, especially if you think you're good at multitasking, but neuroscience tells you otherwise. The human brain is not good at multitasking.
No one discounts the sense of accomplishment you might feel when quickly completing three tasks in a row, but the fact is, you're better off tackling each task individually. And honestly, when do you think you're multitasking? Neuroscientists say most of us are task-switching. You're not doing two things at once; you're rapidly switching between them. The reason is that your brain isn't designed to focus on more than one thing at a time.
For example, neuroscientists suggest trying to write an email while talking on the phone. You may think you can do it, but try it for real. Notice whether you can speak in complete, coherent sentences, listen to the other person, and simultaneously type a legible email. In reality, most of us would talk, then type, then talk. Your brain can't separate these two communicative tasks simultaneously. In fact, the more tasks you try to do simultaneously, even with task switching, the worse your overall performance will be.