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Bruno Aguado
Ms. Gardner
English 10 Period 4
24 January 2015
Im A Brain; A Brain Isnt Me
According to the National Science Foundation, the average person has between 50,000
and 70,000 thoughts each day. This means for every hour we live, we have around 2,083 to 2,916
thoughts. Where do all of these thoughts formulate and come from? The answer lies literally in
your head: The brainevery single persons brainis the one organ that thinks independently.
Before you opened your eyes for the first time, the brain had been controlling how your body
will function. Some people constantly use the phrase Theres a skeleton inside you right now
to achieve their goal of disgusting or even frightening a person. The truth would be opposite of
what people expect: you are inside a skeleton, which in turn lies inside the meat-robot you, or
more correctly your brain, controls every single moment of your life. Theres a reason brain
death sounds more grim than simply death; its the moment where everything you were, are,
and could have been erases itself from your consciousness. The reason this happens is because
the brain stores everything youve done. If one can remember how to open a vault, they could get
their hands on their prized riches. The brain vault does the same with memories: If someone has
the willpower to remember, they can relive all types of experiences, for better or worse.
It seems to be that Ive always been able to recollect my thoughts for many, usually
trivial, matters. The most recent experience of me doing this was only about a week ago. It was
Tuesday morning, ten minutes before zero period began, and I was communicating with my

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friends using controlled vocal cord movement. As we were speaking, my friend materialized out
of the fog, wearing a jacket I know I had seen before.
Hey, havent I seen that jacket before? I inquired. It isnt unusual to wear a new jacket,
yet I distinctly remember seeing the black and red pattern before, but not in a long time.
No? my friend replied, confused with my sudden interest in cloth used to protect
against less-than-warm weather. I just got this out of my closet, its new. To me, at least.
Im pretty sure youve worn this before I raised my furrowed eyebrows trying to
remember when the last time I saw the jacket was. We were about to go onto another subject
when I exclaimed with gusto Seventh grade!
What? My friend was understandably confused.
You last wore it in seventh grade, in December a few days before the beginning of
Winter Break. You said you would only wear it that day because you realized it was too big.
My friend stared blankly at me before saying I cant believe you remember that
To be honest, it wasnt very difficult. I have this process of retracing my steps to a certain
memory. Im not able to do it with very miniscule details, but subjects that stick out to me I can
recall with no problem. In the BBC popular show Sherlock, the titular character Sherlock Holmes
has a process he calls his mind palace in which he envisions his thoughts as going into rooms
in his palace. I mimic the same idea, just not as extensively: I simply unlock my memory vault
and find what I need to, wether it is trivial matters or a definition on a vocabulary test. Whatever
the case is, the show Sherlock showed to me that I wasnt the only one who could recall details
from long periods of time ago.
The brain isnt only capable of storing useless information for extended periods of time:
It is capable of storing personalities and behaviors as well. As seen in the 1983 movie The Man

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with Two Brains, a brain in a jar by the name of Anne Uumellmahaye successfully retains her
past life experiences and habits, not only in her jar, but also in her newly gained body at the end
of the film. Actors with a recurring role are also known to be able to reach back to previous
performances to stay as authentic to their character as possible. Julio Alemn was interviewed for
his recurring role as Aarn Santibez and said, I always try to be, at the very least, the same
persona as my last appearance, you know? I have to be able to go back and relive the characters
thoughts to create a realistic representation of Aarn. Since Julio was born and raised in
Mexico, and his roles were almost always in telenovelas for Mexico until his death in 2012, it is
evident that the act of reaching into a locked chamber of ideas and habits stays universally true
for people everywhere.
The evidence that proves the brain is far more than a mere organ is abundant, yet still
widely debated upon. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the brain as the portion of the
vertebrate central nervous system enclosed in the skull and continuous with the spinal cord
through the foramen magnum that is composed of neurons and supporting and nutritive
structures and that integrates sensory information from inside and outside the body in controlling
autonomic function, in coordinating and directing correlated motor responses, and in the process
of learning. However, through numerous psychological studies such as the long-term working
memory conducted by K. Anders Ericsson and Walter Kintsch in 1955, it can be shown that the
brain retains information about themselves for extended periods of time. From the beginning of
consciousness until the moment of death, information about the world around them and itself is
piled into the brain, and the only way to retain new information is to push back the old
experiences.

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Every persons brain is as unique as a fingerprint. Each person learns differently, each
person experiences differently, and each person lives differently. Although this is true, one thing
connects us all together: The brains ability to store how each person acts is one key feature it
has. In my case, the brain allows me to be philosophical while taking hot showers, witty when
soloing in my jazz class, or strange when recalling insignificant facts from the past and then
reciting them to people who either dont care or dont realize what Im referencing. My brain
allows me to be what I want to be: I can become a millionaire with long, hard years of studying
or a person living paycheck to paycheck simply by how I decide to behave around fundamental
people. I myself dont carve my path into my future: My brain takes the reins for the bumpy road
ahead. Even though I am simply a brain controlling a fleshy, moveable kingdom, any generic
brain isnt me.