At work you may find yourself tasked with difficult problems with little time to find a suitable solution. Fortunately, we have one of the most powerful machines in the world at our disposal - the human brain! Our brains are responsible for some of mankind's most remarkable achievements; from building civilizations, and inventing space flight, to the birth of the internet.

Given what our brains are capable of, a problem at work should be easy to solve, right?

Let’s go back in time. Our ancestors, who walked on this planet around 40,000 years ago, weren’t so different from us. Yes, they lived in simpler, greener, and more natural environments, but they still had our large brains. But why? The secret to the size of the human cortex comes down to one thing - our complex social nature.  Our ancestors began to live in communities governed by social structures; negotiation, manipulation, and communication would have become essential for survival. The bigger the brain, the more likely it is to house all of the components necessary for this level of functioning.

It all sounds like a well oiled machine so what’s the problem?

Well, while we may remain similar to our ancestors, the world around us has changed. In fact, it is drastically different to the environment our ancestors would have occupied 10,000 years ago. Population growth has transformed our world; today more than 7 billion people live on this planet but 10,000 years ago, there were likely less than 10 million people. Technological advancements are exponential. In the last 2 decades, we have seen the internet take off with the birth of the search engine. We can now communicate in social circles remotely with people all around the world; something unfathomable to the physical communities our ancestors would have belonged to.

"Evolution takes time, a very long time"

Now, despite the fact that our brain has been the biological basis allowing us to build this new and technologically-driven world, there is an irony behind its work.  Through our thirst for advancement, the human brain has been left behind in its ability to process such a complex world. Evolution takes time, a very long time. The rapid changes in our environment have happened so quickly, that our brains have been struggling to play evolutionary catch-up. In our modern skulls, lives our ancestors’ 10,000 year old brain; a relatively unchanged computer attempting to process its new and unfamiliar surroundings. Additionally, unlike old computers, our brain cannot be easily upgraded by adding more memory or a modern processor.

In the next nudgeUP blog we will further explore the difficulties we face and how our brain attempts to conquer this new world. 

edited by Kathryn Francis, PhD Fellow, MSc Psychological Research, BSc Psychology @kathrynbfrancis