jtotheizzoe:

Explore The Wellcome Collection’s 360-Degree Brain

This interactive tool (go check it out, it spins and zooms and enfoldulates on their website) is like having a brain in a jar on your shelf to study for anatomy class, but much less creepy and less likely to lead to a misunderstood monster roaming the streets of the local village and terrorizing the dreams of young people everywhere.

(ᔥWellcome Collection)

Also: Explore the brain’s beautiful connectome at Cocktail Party Physics!

lickypickystickyfree:

25 Napping Facts Every College Student Should Know

1. It makes you smarter
   According to Dr. Matthew Walker of the University of California, napping for as little as one hour resets your short-term memory and helps you learn facts more easily after you wake up.
2. Abandon all-nighters
   Foregoing sleep by cramming all night reduces your ability to retain information by up to 40%. If you can, mix in a nap somewhere to refresh your hippocampus.
3. It doesn’t mean what you think
   If you know you have to pull an all-nighter, try a “prophylactic nap.” It’s a short nap in advance of expected sleep deprivation that will help you stay alert for up to 10 hours afterwards.
4. You can’t avoid that down period after lunch by not eating
   Human bodies naturally go through two phases of deep tiredness, one between 2-4 a.m. and between 1-3 p.m. Skipping lunch won’t help this period of diminished alertness and coordination.
5. Pick the right time
   After lunch in the early afternoon your body naturally gets tired. This is the best time to take a brief nap, as it’s early enough to not mess with your nighttime sleep.
6. Hour naps are great
   A 60-minute nap improves alertness for 10 hours, although with naps over 45 minutes you risk what’s known as “sleep inertia,” that groggy feeling that may last for half an hour or more.
7. But short naps are best
   For healthy young adults, naps as short as 20, 10, or even 2 minutes can be all you need to get the mental benefits of sleep, without risking grogginess.
8. Drink coffee first
   The way this works is you drink a cup of coffee right before taking your 20-minute or half-hour nap, which is precisely how long caffeine takes to kick in. That way when you wake up, you’re not only refreshed, but ready to go.
9. The NASA nap
   A little group called NASA discovered that just a 26-minute nap increases performance by 34% and alertness by 54%. Pilots take advantage of NASA naps while planes are on autopilot.
10. Can’t sleep? Don’t stress
    Even if you can’t fall asleep for a nap, just laying down and resting has benefits. Studies have found resting results in lowered blood pressure, which even some college kids have to worry about if they are genetically predisposed to high blood pressure.
11. Napping may save your life
    A multi-year Greek study found napping at least three times per week for at least 30 minutes resulted in a 37% lower death rate due to heart problems.
12. More nap benefits for the brain
    Not only will napping improve your alertness, it will also help your decision-making, creativity, and sensory perception.
13. But wait, there’s more
    Studies have found napping raises your stamina 11%, increases ability to stay asleep all night by 12%, and lowers the time required to fall asleep by 14%.
14. The ultimate nap
    According to Dr. Sara Mednick, the best nap occurs when REM sleep is in proportion to slow-wave sleep. Use her patented Take A Nap Nap Wheel to calculate what time of day you can nap to the max.
15. Fight the Freshman 15
    Research shows that women who sleep five hours at night are 32% more likely to experience major weight gain than those sleeping seven hours. A two-hour nap isn’t feasible for many, but napping is a good way to make up for at least some lost night sleep.
16. If it was good enough for them…
    Presidents JFK and Bill Clinton used to nap every day to help ease the heavy burden of ruling the free world. Of course, they also had other relaxation methods, but we won’t get into those.
17. Do like the Romans do
    In ancient Rome, everyone, including children, retreated for a 2 or 3-hour nap after lunch. No doubt this is the reason the Roman empire lasted over 1,000 years
18. Don’t wait too long
    The latest you want to wake up from a nap is five hours before bedtime, otherwise you risk not being able to fall asleep at night.
19. Sugar is not a good substitute for a nap
    When we are tired, we instinctively reach for foods with a high glycemic index, but after the initial energy wears off, we’re left more tired than we were before.
20. It’s a good way to catch up
    If it takes you less than five minutes to fall asleep at night, you are sleep deprived. If you never can seem to get to bed earlier at night, a mid-day nap is a great way to catch up on sleep.
21. Underclassmen need more sleep
    Freshmen and sophomores who are still in your teens: you need up to 10 hours of sleep to feel rested. So odds are, you are sleep-deprived.
22. You’ll have to leave the party sooner
    After one school-week of not getting enough sleep, three alcoholic drinks will affect you the same way six would when you are fully rested.
23. Don’t drive drowsy
    Don’t be afraid to take advantage of an “emergency nap” on the side of the road in your car. Every year, as many as 100,000 traffic fatalities are caused by sleepy people behind the wheel.
24. The Einstein Method
    If you are concerned about sleeping too long, do what Albert Einstein regularly did: hold a pencil while you’re drifting off, so when you fall asleep, the pencil dropping will wake you up. (We do not guarantee you will wake up with a 180 IQ.)
25. Missing sleep is worse at your age
    For people ages 18 to 24, sleep deprivation impairs performance more significantly than in other age brackets.

(via istellar)

(via the-star-stuff)

jtotheizzoe:

scipsy:

Variability of brain size and external topography.

Photographs and weights of the brains of different species. Primates: human (Homo sapiens, 1.176 kg), chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes, 273 g), baboon (Papio cynocephalus, 151 g), mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx, 123 g), macaque (Macaca tonkeana, 110 g). Carnivores: bear (Ursus arctos, 289 g), lion (Panthera leo, 165 g), cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus, 119 g), dog (Canis familiaris, 95 g), cat (Felis catus, 32 g). Artiodactyls: giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis, 700 g), kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros, 166 g), mouflon (Ovis musimon, 118 g), ibex (Capra pyrenaica, 115 g); peccary (Tayassu pecari, 41 g). Marsupials: wallaby (Protemnodon rufogrisea, 28 g). Lagomorphs: rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus, 5.2 g). Rodents: rat (Rattus rattus, 2.6 g), mouse (Mus musculus, 0.5 g). (via Frontiers)

What the hell is going on with that rabbit brain? Huge olfactory bulb on the left (as in the rat and mouse, big smellers) and an inverted cerebellum on the right hanging off like a couple “brain eyes”.

(via istellar)

‘In this talk, Social Media strategists and developers Rome Viharo and Maf Lewis reveal the likelihood that Google’s search algorithm may already be sentient, what it means, and what it represents as a metaphor for collective problem solving.’

Watch this!  Please. 

jtotheizzoe:

The Forgetting Pill: Can We Erase Painful Memories?

If you could take a pill that would erase any memory, would you take it? Traumatic memories can be painful, debilitating baggage, persisting for decades and often difficult to control. Previous therapies involved discussing traumatic memories in detail, but new models of the elastic and networked basis of memory have demonstrated that this isn’t effective. Jonah Lehrer writes in Wired:

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, people have imagined memories to be a stable form of information that persists reliably. The metaphors for this persistence have changed over time—Plato compared our recollections to impressions in a wax tablet, and the idea of a biological hard drive is popular today—but the basic model has not. Once a memory is formed, we assume that it will stay the same. This, in fact, is why we trust our recollections. They feel like indelible portraits of the past.

None of this is true. In the past decade, scientists have come to realize that our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant. Even though every memory feels like an honest representation, that sense of authenticity is the biggest lie of all.

However, a “memory” is not a “thing”, in the usual sense of the word. It is an experience, in our brain, that we replay.

We have new understanding that the formation of memories is utterly dependent on biological processes, on proteins that help write new connections in our neural network. When we “re-fire” this network, we “recall” a memory. What if we could block the proteins that write the connections? Could we truly forget?

New research is getting close to just that. In rats, drugs can block the function of a key protein (PKMzeta) involved in strengthening memory synapses. The effect is preventing experiences from being reinforced. In a sense, one can forget that small neural web, and the memory that it encodes.

When we begin to view memory as relative, as dependent on a constant flux of neural networks, it calls into question what is “true”. And the ethics of taking a “forgetting” pill are just as murky. It turns out that our assumption that we can’t choose what to remember or forget is wrong, and soon we might have the power to make that choice. Would you?

For more, check out Jonah Lehrer’s full article, and this series on PKMzeta from Ed Yong. 

(via Wired Magazine, image by Dwight Eschliman)

jtotheizzoe:

scipsy:

A timeline of the study of the brain [Interactive]

I highly recommend clicking through to play around.

jtotheizzoe:

The Cranial Network

Your neurons have been social networking since long before Zuckerberg. 

LIKE.

 

(via Scientific American, By Dwayne Godwin and Jorge Cham)

Cover photo for The Journal of Neuroscience, 15 January 2012

Cover legend: A summary of the effects of polysialic acid (PSA) and its predominant carrier, the neural cell adhesion molecule NCAM. Deficits in expression of these molecules impair hippocampal long-term potentiation and depression (LTP and LTD) in mice, and are linked to schizophrenia and aging in humans. Accumulating evidence suggests that PSA-NCAM regulates the balance in signaling through synaptic GluN2A versus extrasynaptic GluN2B, and that pathological conditions related to deficiency in PSA or NCAM can be pharmacologically compensated by modulation of GluN receptors. Cover design by Oleg Senkov and Alexander Dityatev. ©NejroN/Bigstockphoto.com—the image of young man; ©Nejron Photo/Fotolia.com—the image of old man. For more information, see the article by Kochlamazashvili et al. (pages 2263–2275).

Don’t worry.  I didn’t understand it either…I just like the photo.

bitesizedpsych:

Phrenology is a pseudoscience or false science which dates back to the late 18th Century and posits that personalities correspond with bumps on the skull - for example, a particularly friendly person would have a distinguished bump where “friendship” was thought to be processed in the brain. Although since proven false, phrenology started the mainstream neurological rather than philosophical approach to the human mind.