If your memory is "faulty" and your mood is unstable, it may be that your brain needs maintenance

Everyone knows that memory, sleep, emotions and the brain are related, but exactly what the relationship is is probably not clear.

For example: In daily study, what is particularly annoying is poor memory. Although you listen carefully, the knowledge disappears without a trace after going through your mind. There is no trace left... However, the pressure of study has not been reduced. It is not a casual saying that thousands of troops are crossing a single-plank bridge. I still remember that when I was studying, many people even suffered from insomnia due to too much pressure from studying. As a result, this aggravated the problem of poor sleep, and in the long run, they could not study well. It was a vicious cycle.

Of course, many people understand that all of this is a problem with our brain. There is no way around it. Whether it is learning, memory or sleep, it is closely related to our brain. As for emotions, they were once believed to be a product of the heart, but now it has long been determined that they are a problem with the brain. So what is the relationship between these and the brain, and is there any way to improve it?

01. What is the relationship between memory and the brain?

Over the years, people have been trying to decipher the relationship between these behaviors and our brains. For example, what part of the brain is memory related to? This is a classic story. Henry once suffered from epilepsy due to a car accident, so the famous neurosurgeon William performed a hippocampal resection on him. After the operation, Henry's epilepsy symptoms were greatly improved, and his motor ability, cognitive ability and intelligence remained normal. However, a serious problem arose: Henry lost his memory. From then on, he could not remember anything recent at all, so serious that he would forget what happened just now in just a few minutes. This result was also published in the corresponding journal, which made people realize the key role of the hippocampus in short-term memory.

Of course, memory is not just in the hippocampus. In fact, the amygdala is also related to memory.

02. The relationship between sleep, emotions and the brain

There have been many studies on sleep, which have also confirmed the relationship between the brain and these behaviors. We often dream during sleep, and scientists have interpreted the brain wave signals during sleep and found that many of the signals have obvious characteristics. For example, the brain activities in dream scenes correspond to those in real scenes, so they can interpret personal dreams to a certain extent [1].

Of course, the study of emotions is one of the focuses of neuropsychology. At present, many sites responsible for emotions have been found, such as the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, etc., and these sites and corresponding drug interventions have become important clinical strategies.

But no matter what kind of behavior it is, it can be attributed to one entity with certainty: the brain.

03. Brain

The brain is the center of the human body and a unit with very high energy requirements. The brain only accounts for about 2% of the body's weight, but consumes about 20% of the body's energy. It can be said to be one of the organs with the highest energy consumption in the human body. Behind this is actually the continuous cell signal transmission in our brain, which is also the basic way our brain works. Whether it is our thoughts, emotions or memories, they will eventually be transmitted in the form of electrical signals to form brain connections in the brain. If our brain cannot maintain these operations, then various problems will arise.

For example, the sleep problem that everyone is concerned about, one of the typical functions is to help the brain remove metabolic waste. Studies have found that during sleep, the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain doubles compared to usual, which can greatly help us clean up the brain. If our sleep is not guaranteed, the brain will not be adequately repaired, and it is easy to suffer from brain damage and memory loss, which will lead to bad mood and further affect sleep, thus forming a vicious cycle.

However, although this is the truth, it is actually difficult to solve the problem. Only when the condition is serious to the level of a disease will there be some medical intervention, and these interventions are actually not applicable to many students. Take fatigue as an example. Its cause is often too much stress. Simple medication cannot solve the psychological stress problem, and relieving stress is still a big problem. After all, for students, the challenges of going to college are objective, so they have to face the challenges even if they know the pressure is high.

04. Do you have any solution?

So, are there any other solutions? In recent years, a new idea has emerged, which is to increase brain energy. During the student years, the demand on the brain is very high, and the brain is one of the organs with the highest energy consumption in the human body. If the energy supply to the brain can be increased, then the pressure on the brain can be relieved to a certain extent.

This brings us to the energy supply of our human body. What is the energy of the human body? If you have taken high school biology, you may know a key word: ATP. Yes, this is a high-energy phosphate compound that realizes the storage and release of energy through the mutual conversion with ADP. All life activities of the human body, whether it is breathing, heartbeat, thinking, or learning, all rely on ATP, an energy currency.

So when we concentrate on studying, our brain will work at maximum power, so energy consumption increases, and as a result, we will feel tired quickly.

So, can we increase the production capacity of ATP? This depends on whether the ATP factory agrees. The factory that produces ATP is our mitochondria, which is a very special organelle that produces energy through oxidative phosphorylation to supply all our physiological activities. However, like all production, mitochondria will also produce losses while producing ATP, which is oxygen free radicals. This thing is a high-energy molecule. Although most of them will become our energy, there will always be a part of oxygen free radicals that will randomly diffuse, and this diffusion is not good. Oxygen free radicals will randomly attack any substance it encounters, whether it is DNA, protein or other structures. As a result, the mitochondrial factory will also be damaged.

So we see a bug. If we want to get a better energy supply for the brain, we should let the mitochondria increase the production of ATP. However, the oxygen free radicals generated in this process will damage the mitochondria themselves. So if it exceeds a certain degree, the mitochondria will collapse. Therefore, the energy produced by mitochondria cannot be increased indefinitely.

So can we increase the energy produced by mitochondria while reducing the losses caused by byproduct oxygen free radicals? This question has actually been a hot topic in academia, because it means that we can increase the production capacity of mitochondria to a certain extent.

05. How to increase the energy produced by mitochondria?

After repeated research, scientists finally found an important ingredient, pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) , which is a widely existing ingredient in nature, found in animals, plants and microorganisms. One of the characteristics of PQQ is that it can participate in redox reactions [2]. We just mentioned that mitochondria produce a large number of oxygen free radicals that cause damage to themselves, and PQQ happens to be able to resist oxygen free radicals. In this way, doesn't it mean that the production capacity of mitochondria can be boosted?

A series of targeted studies were then conducted, and the results were indeed positive. PQQ can significantly improve the quality of mitochondria. When the mitochondria are in good condition, the energy production will naturally increase [3].

Not only that, surprisingly, PQQ can actually increase the number of mitochondria, which is a bit of a pleasant surprise.

You know, mitochondria are ATP energy factories. Increasing the number of mitochondria is equivalent to directly increasing the energy supply factory, so the production capacity will naturally be great.

With this ability, the efficiency of the brain will naturally improve. The study found that after taking PQQ for 12 weeks, the comprehensive memory values ​​responsible for language and visual memory in the PQQ user group were significantly higher than those in the control group [4].

Because of this, PQQ became popular and became a favorite of many people, and related products began to appear.

In today's world of intense academic competition, the energy and state of the brain are the key to success! The discovery and nutritional application of more and more brain-boosting ingredients have also helped students to cope with high-load learning more easily and achieve better learning effects and results. Parents and students can consider scientific brain dietary nutritional supplements!

1Horikawa, Tomoyasu, et al. "Neural decoding of visual imagery during sleep." Science 340.6132 (2013): 639-642.

2 Misra HS, et al. Pyrroloquinoline-quinone and its versatile roles in biological processes[J]. Journal of Bioences, 2012, 37(2):313-325.

3 Stites T, Storms D, Bauerly K, Mah J, Harris C, Fascetti A, Rogers Q, Tchaparian E, Satre M, Rucker RB. Pyrroloquinoline quinone modulates mitochondrial quantity and function in mice. J Nutr. 2006 Feb;136(2):390-6.

4 Nakano M, Ubukata K, Yamamoto T, et al. Effect of pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) on mental status of middle-aged and elderly persons. 2009.