Page 207 - BEATS Secondary School

How do different activities
affect our brain?

In the book ‘Spark’ by the author John J. Ratey, it is mentioned
that exercise directly affects our brain. It increases our
dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin level instantly and
which affects our motivation, focus and memory. Dopamine
searches for rewards to motivate us. High norepinephrine level
helps us to stay focus and serotonin help us to control our brain
activity such as mood, anger and aggressiveness.

Nowadays we see games like open world FPP action games
which affect our brains in a very positive way. It has been found
by Rochester University, that the parietal lobe which helps us
in orienting attention, frontal lobe which helps in maintaining
attention and anterior cingulate for controlling or regulating
attention, are much more efficient in people who play action
games. Playing games help us to enhance our brain’s cognitive
flexibility which helps us in multi-tasking. Research in PLOS
believes that playing games boost gray matter in our brain
which helps us in making decisions, which are more accurate
and faster. This also improves our hand-eye coordination.

When we drink alcohol, the 20% of it is absorbed in the
stomach and rest of 80% of it is absorbed in the small intestine.
Then the heart pumps the absorbed alcohol in the whole body
and it gets to the brain really fast. This is why just after one
drink you can feel relaxed and light headed because it slow
downs ever process by affecting different parts of our brain
such as cerebral cortex which controls our senses, frontal lobes
which helps us to plan and form ideas, medulla which controls
the automatic actions such as heart rate and body temperature,
and as a result both the temperature and
heartbeat decreases.

Sleeping helps us in remembering
things. When you sleep, your brain
sorts the memories that you made
during the day by the process of
consolidation. The amygdala and
the prefrontal cortex work together
to help you achieve this.

- Parth Yadav, MYP 3