10 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2021
    1. When peeking at your brain may help with mental illness
      • Experimental treatments use fMRI brain imaging to teach mental illness patients how to optimize their brain activity.
      • Scientists analyzed 17 relevant studies with 410 total participants, and concluded that people can regulate their own brain activity when they see it in real time.
      • The method is called neurofeedback, and it shows promise as a way to treat mental illness patients.
      • However, the method has to be studied more in order to understand how it works, and how to unlock its potential as a treatment.
    1. When should you end a conversation? Probably sooner than you think
      • In a conversation-based experiment with 252 strangers, researchers found that only in 2% cases both participants were happy with how long they talked.
      • It’s probably because we hide our true intentions for fear of being rude, even though we’d like to end a conversation early.
      • There was a big disconnect between what people wanted, and what they thought their conversation partners wanted.
      • This suggests that we’re really bad at guessing what other people want.
      • These findings show that we know very little about how conversations work, so it’s a great area for researchers to explore.
    1. Why we’re so bad at daydreaming, and how to fix it
      • Researchers find that people don’t know what to daydream about, but when they’re given directions - their pleasure from thinking increases by 50%.
      • The way to find pleasure in daydreaming might be to consciously focus on positive, meaningful memories and thoughts.
      • Daydreaming is a skill that you can get good at with practice, and once you do, it can be a way to never experience boredom again, and to finally be ok with your thoughts.
      • Try it! Just don’t confuse daydreaming with planning (which is not pleasurable), make it a habit, and you may find that you’ll be able to re-shape your emotions.
  2. Feb 2021
    1. Scientists break through the wall of sleep to the untapped world of dreams
      • Neuroscientists achieve the unthinkable - talking to someone who’s asleep, and they’ve already done it with several people.
      • Cross-national research team demonstrated two-way communication with lucid dreamers in the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep phase.
      • Eye movements generate current, which is recorded by electrodes placed around the eyes, and the signals are translated to dialogue.
      • Studying the mind during sleep used to be limited to people telling stories about their dreams after waking up, so this is a big gamechanger.
      • Psychology experiments with sleeping people are now possible, and it could greatly enhance our understanding of consciousness and the mind’s abilities.
    1. 'Night owls' may be twice as likely as morning 'larks' to underperform at work
      • Whether you perform best in the morning or evening depends on your chronotype - ‘larks’ work early, ‘night owls’ work late.
      • Because night owls go to sleep later but have to get up early with everyone else, they incur sleep debt and need catch-up sleep on non-work days, which is bad for health.
      • To explore this, researchers used data from a 1966 Finland birth cohort study, initially consisting of 12,058 children.
      • At age 46, 2672 men and 3159 women from the study were questioned about their chronotypes in 2012, and monitored for 4 years afterwards.
      • Compared to larks, owls had worse ratings for variables related to sleep and health, and were twice more likely to underperform at work.
    1. Can the Brain Resist the Group Opinion?
      • In a study of 20 participant’s brain activity and opinion-forming, researchers find that people are likely to conform to group opinion if their own is different.
      • It’s possible that the brain foresees potential disagreements in the future, and subconsciously drives us to conform to popular opinions.
      • This process involves the superior parietal cortex, a brain area that retrieves memories.
      • The study suggests that the opinion of others literally changes our brain.
  3. Jan 2021
    1. Music gives the brain a crucial connective advantage
      • Music’s benefits for the brain aren’t new, and this study provides further evidence that musical brains have better neural networks.
      • In fact, any challenging skill that requires intensive, long-time training can improve how your brain is interconnected - even if you’re an adult.
      • These findings come from a study of 150 brain scans with machine learning aid, where they counted the brain connections.
      • All musician brains were a lot more structurally and functionally connected than non-musicians.
    1. New Quantum Algorithms Finally Crack Nonlinear Equations
      • We can’t predict the weather, among many other complex issues, because computers still can’t solve nonlinear equations.
      • But this might change soon, as two different research teams created algorithms that can be used for nonlinear modelling on quantum computers.
      • Their techniques still need refining, and won’t be real-world ready for years, but these studies are another stepping stone towards truly useful quantum algorithms.
  4. Dec 2020
    1. Teen dislike of physical appearance strong predictor of depression in early adulthood

      Summary of the article:

      • Teens unhappy about their looks are up to 285% more likely to develop depression later in life.
      • This finding comes from a long-term study of ~4000 children born in 1991/2.
      • At age 14, both boys and girls were mildly satisfied with their bodies, but girls were more dissatisfied.
      • Body dissatisfaction at 14 predicted depressive episodes at 18, with the boys at much greater risk of severe depressive episodes.
      • Study authors conclude that body dissatisfaction should be seen as a public health issue, and reducing it could lead to better mental health outcomes for young adults.
    1. To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language Neuroscientists find that interpreting code activates a general-purpose brain network, but not language-processing centers.

      Summary of the article:

      • Understanding code is neither done by language centers, nor by mathematical centers of the brain — it’s a whole different ball game.
      • This comes from a researcher who’s studying how different cognitive functions relate to language processing parts of the brain.
      • The study involved young programmers who analysed code while their brains were scanned.
      • People either say that great coders are great at language, or great at maths - neither seems to be true, and there is no single specialized area that lights up from coding.
      • The test activated the multiple demand network in participants’ brains, a wide network for performing mentally challenging tasks.