Dr. Majid Fotuhi

They just don't.

They may have all the other body parts.

They just don't have an arm.

And the things that they would do with the arm won't happen.

And somebody who doesn't have hippocampus, they can see and they can walk and they can talk.

but the part of brain that registers and consolidates and saves the events is not there.

So they asked the same question 40 times because it never registered.

That part was not there.

When you challenge your brain, the parts of the brain that are important for that function literally grow.

There's a part of brain called the cortex, which is like a blanket that covers all other brain areas.

And this part of brain is important for your cognitive abilities to read, write, type, do your taxes.

All your higher brain functions depend on cortex and the memory and learning depends on the hippocampus, which is actually an extension of the cortex.

so cortex and hippocampus are important for all your cognitive abilities and a unique feature of cortex and hippocampus is that they grow when they are stimulated just like when you lift a heavy weight more than your comfortable level you increase the volume of your muscles when you do something that's difficult and makes you think you increase the volume of the cortex and hippocampus and the more of it you do

the more it grows.

And it's not something that applies only to children or young adults.

They did a study in college students and they showed them how to juggle three balls and it took about a week for them to learn and they practiced it every day for three months.

They did MRIs of their brains at the beginning after three months and then three months after when they had not practiced juggling balls any further.

They saw a significant improvement in brain areas for hand-eye coordination from zero to three months.

So these college students had increased the volume of their hippocampus in areas that are important for keeping eyes on the ball and maintaining their balls in the air.

And when they didn't practice for three months, that volume had gone down, but not to the same level