QURAN MIRACLE: NEUROPLASTICITY

Table of Contents

Quran Miracle: Neuroplasticity – Hardships, Rituals & Good Habits

Miracles in Human Brain

The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons or nerve cells and many more neuroglia or glial cells which serve to support and protect the neurons. Each neuron may be connected to up to 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other via as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections, equivalent by some estimates to a computer with a 1 trillion bit per second processor.

Estimates of the human brain’s memory capacity vary wildly from 1 to 1,000 terabytes. For comparison, the 19 million books in the US Library of Congress represents about ten terabytes of data.

The cerebrum is the “thinking part” and also the biggest part of your brain. It is responsible to hold your memories and controls your muscles. Another part Cerebellum lies in the back of your brain, and its job is to maintain coordination, balance and movement. The brainstem links your brain to your spine. It is responsible for the activities you can’t control, like breathing, digestion, and your heartbeat.

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Quran Miracle: Enough Opportunities For Everyone

Mostly people believe that everyone’s intelligence is fixed. We are born smart, dumb, or average and our ability for understanding and learning is determined by what we are born with. Actually, the factor that is responsible for a person’s level of intelligence at any age is their exposure to information and experience put together with the amount of time they spend learning.

Every time you learn a new fact or skill, you change your brain. It is something we call neuroplasticity. Thirty years ago, we thought that after puberty, the only changes that took place in the brain were negative i.e ageing loss of cells etc. but now research has shown us that all of our behaviours change our brain. And that these mutations are not limited by age. So your brain’s changing capacity i.e neuroplasticity is supported by three ways chemical, structural, and by functional changes. Research has shown that increased difficulty, increased struggle actually leads to both more learning, and more significant structural change in the brain.

So do not think yourself average or dumb and underestimate your potential. It is just a matter of training your brain. It is a world, a universe of possibilities. A slave can become a ruler, a weak can become the strongest person, an ignorant can become the most wise. A world of possibilities where anyone can reach to any level. It’s just a matter of how big a person thinks and how accurately he acts upon that. Most of the things are in your hand and with effort and struggle you can even change your capacities, capabilities and lastly your destiny. Remember most of the great men in human history were born to poor parents and in unfavourable conditions. But with their courage, dedication and struggle they changed not only their fate but the fate of all of humanity. To understand it more read Highly Logical Concept Of Destiny & Freewill in Quran.

Neuroplasticity And The Power Of The Brain

“Neurons That Fire Together, Wire Together”

When you learn things, the brain sends signals and messages from one neuron to another. If you do the same thing for a longer period repeatedly, your brain ultimately makes a link, a connection or path between neurons. This makes tasks easier, and you can do them better and better. It’s same like crossing a field full of crops. The first time can be difficult but when you cross it several times fighting your way thru the crops, the bushes, the grass… eventually it will create a path within the field from going over it again and again.

When you use a specific path or wire again and again, the relationship or connection between these neurons strengthens. The is called myelination and it actually involves building up a safety coating that encloses the wire, like the rubber insulation or coating on an electric wire. This myelin sheath makes signals capable to move faster, which the brain loves because brain’s primary objective is efficiency. Thus through continuous practice and repeated challenges, we can construct pathways that make our brains powerful and sharp and on account of this process, the brain literally grows bigger not in size but in weight.

Quran Miracle When It Emphasis on Adopting Certain Rituals & Good Habits

All Of Our Behaviors Change Our Brain

When you repeat an action, emotion, a behaviour or a thought over and over again, the pathway responsible for transmitting the signal grows stronger and it becomes easier and easier. This is how skills are developed and habits are formed. It’s also how emotional triggers are built and negative patterns are created.

This is the lesson all religious scriptures told you that by thinking good, keeping good company and by controlling your desires and by practice you can actually purify your soul and eventually be able to get control on your habits and the evil whispers that force you for wrong things.

٧ وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا
٨ فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا
٩ قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَنْ زَكَّاهَا
١٠ وَقَدْ خَابَ مَنْ دَسَّاهَا

And [by] the soul and He who proportioned it
And inspired it [with discernment of] its wickedness and its righteousness,
He has succeeded who purifies it,
And he has failed who instils it [with corruption]. (Surah Shams 91:7-10)

Things like spiritual disciplines, prayer, fasting, refraining from sin do a couple of things. They open our consciousness to things that we typically are not paying attention to. On the opposite side when Quran says to avoid sin is because of the reason that in that case our brain will become increasingly controlled by animal brain mechanisms and will become more and more unruly with desires and visceral feelings that are driven by carnal cravings and greedy desires.

So our brain is tremendously plastic, and it’s been shaped both structurally and functionally by everything we do, but also by everything that we don’t do. Behaviours that you employ in your everyday life are important. Each of them is changing your brain. Is this all designed, created, happening and running by its own. Nay, it is all by the Will and command of your Lord. So which of the favours of your Lord will you deny?

٤ إِنَّ سَعْيَكُمْ لَشَتَّىٰ
٥ فَأَمَّا مَنْ أَعْطَىٰ وَاتَّقَىٰ
٦ وَصَدَّقَ بِالْحُسْنَىٰ
٧ فَسَنُيَسِّرُهُ لِلْيُسْرَىٰ
٨ وَأَمَّا مَنْ بَخِلَ وَاسْتَغْنَىٰ
٩ وَكَذَّبَ بِالْحُسْنَىٰ
١٠ فَسَنُيَسِّرُهُ لِلْعُسْرَىٰ

Indeed, your efforts are diverse.
As for he who gives out his wealth and fears Allah
and affirmed the Truth of goodness:
We will ease him toward ease.
But as for he who withholds and considers himself free of need
and denied the Truth of goodness:
We shall facilitate him toward difficulty. (Surah Lail 92:4-10)

Quran Miracle: Why Righteous Get More Afflictions

The Value Of Problems, Obstacles & Failures:

Problems, hardships and failures help us learn, and they make our brains grow. If you were driving on a new street and your car’s wheel stuck in a hole, that would be okay. You wouldn’t stay there; you would just manage to get out from it and learn the choice you selected to get there.

Next time, you would remember that the hole was there, and you could drive around it. Failures and obstacles teach you how to improve next time.

Failures and hardships make the brain grow. In truth, the brain does NOT grow just from receiving the answers right. To keep strengthening & growing neural pathways, we must continue challenging ourselves and going to the next level of difficulty. This is the lesson Quran teaches again and again to the believers. This is also an answer to the skeptics who often argue that why those chosen slaves of God suffered so much in their lives…..The answer is simple….THAT WAS PART OF THEIR TRAINING.