One of the biggest areas of research when it comes to studying the brain is looking into how the brain and its cells work in conjunction with the body’s central nervous system.
We are learning more about how the brain transmits neurons throughout the body. The brain interacts with the central nervous system by sending electronic pulses, or signals at a cellular level. During the course of the day, there are billions of signals sending information back and forth which affects the way that we feel, think and act.
As long as these synapses are functioning properly, everything is good and we live on with no problems. But if there is a malfunction in the way these electronic signals are sent, then it can affect our ability to reason, speak, feel, and do our normal daily activities.
Patients that are diagnosed with diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s do not have a normal functioning synapse process. The electronic signals sent from the brain throughout the body and other parts of the brain do not fire properly and this is why these patients experience memory loss, inability to communicate, plan and reason.
Autism, schizophrenia and even epilepsy are all linked to a breakdown in this synapse process. The more that we learn about this process through brain research, the more we can try to understand why the synapse process breaks down and eventually be able to prevent or cure this types of illnesses.
What we have found out so far is that we can slow down brain diseases and perhaps even prevent them by keeping our brains active as much as possible. We can train our brains to keep them sharp by participating in brain training exercises like solving specific tasks and other things that really make us think in deep thought. This forces our brain to fire these electronic pulses and use more brain cells over time thus limiting deterioration of unused brain cells.
We still have a lot to learn about our brains and brain research will be one of the most studied parts of our body long into the future.
