Check My Brain

Have you ever wondered why you have the romantic feelings that you do? Could it, literally, be a situation of the chemicals and neurons in your brain firing a certain way?

My best guy friend Griffin asked me about this the other day and it got me thinking about such a situation.

It's a very interesting possibility. After all, scientists have barely been able to map the entirety of the human brain. Just last year, scientists studied and mapped one-millionth of one entire brain. The information they found within it was approximately 1.4 petabytes of data (peta is the next highest decimal point after tera). And that's just a tiny sliver. Even the scientists questioned how they would ever understand anything that complex.

While a lot of this is beyond my realm of understanding, it's still quite fascinating. If the day came that we could ever fully understand how the human brain worked, it could tell us so much about ourselves. Why do we find certain people and genders more attractive than others? Why are more people susceptible to certain diseases and conditions than others? Why do some people have more serious mental health issues than others despite a shared experience?

That last question is another very interesting one for me.

As mentioned before, I have major depression disorder and anxiety. My dad, while undiagnosed (he hated doctors), also had some type of mental health issue. My grandfather had PTSD from serving in the Pacific during World War II. Did my grandfather "pass down" his mental health issues to my dad and myself or did he inherit it from a previous relative as well?

Maybe someday, we'll be able to fully understand our own brains. However, considering how tribalism can still so easily tear apart our society, we still have a lot of evolving to do.

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