Tag Archives: Neuroscience

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Here’s what lucid dreamers might tell us about our sleeping minds | Science News

Dreams are one of the most universal yet elusive human experiences

By Maria Temming, August 27, 2023 at 9:00 am

From article…

When Christopher Mazurek realizes he’s dreaming, it’s always the small stuff that tips him off.

The first time it happened, Mazurek was a freshman at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. In the dream, he found himself in a campus dining hall. It was winter, but Mazurek wasn’t wearing his favorite coat.“I realized that, OK, if I don’t have the coat, I must be dreaming,” Mazurek says. That epiphany rocked the dream like an earthquake. “Gravity shifted, and I was flung down a hallway that seemed to go on for miles,” he says. “My left arm disappeared, and then I woke up.”

Most people rarely if ever realize that they’re dreaming while it’s happening, what’s known as lucid dreaming. But some enthusiasts have cultivated techniques to become self-aware in their sleep and even wrest some control over their dream selves and settings. Mazurek, 24, says that he’s gotten better at molding his lucid dreams since that first whirlwind experience, sometimes taking them as opportunities to try flying or say hi to deceased family members.

Other lucid dreamers have used their personal virtual realities to plumb their subconscious minds for insights or feast on junk food without real-world consequences. But now, scientists have a new job for lucid dreamers: to explore their dreamscapes and report out in real time.

Source: Here’s what lucid dreamers might tell us about our sleeping minds
Games, Love & Relationships, Memories & History, Pleasures, Science & Health

Brain development: The myth the brain “matures” when you’re 25 | Slate

A powerful idea about human development stormed pop culture and changed how we see one another. It’s mostly bunk.

By Jane C. Hu, November 27, 20227:00 PM

Illustrations by Rey Velasquez Sagcal

When Leonardo DiCaprio’s relationship with model/actress Camila Morrone ended three months after she celebrated her 25th birthday, the lifestyle site YourTango turned to neuroscience.

DiCaprio has a well-documented history of dating women under 25. (His current flame, who is 27, is a rare exception.) “Given that DiCaprio’s cut-off point is exactly around the time that neuroscientists say our brains are finished developing, there is certainly a case to be made that a desire to date younger partners comes from a desire to have control,” the article said. It quotes a couples therapist, who says that at 25, people’s “brains are fully formed and that presents a more elevated and conscious level of connection”—the type of connection, YourTango suggests, that DiCaprio wants to avoid.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: Brain development: The myth the brain “matures” when you’re 25.

Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Science & Health

Your Brain Is a Prediction Machine That Is Always Active – Neuroscience News

By Neuroscience News, August 4, 2022

Our brain is a prediction machine that is always active. Credit: AI-generated illustration, via: DALL-E, OpenAi – Micha Heilbron

Summary: The brain constantly acts as a prediction machine, continuously comparing sensory information with internal predictions.

Source: Max Planck Institute

This is in line with a recent theory on how our brain works: it is a prediction machine, which continuously compares sensory information that we pick up (such as images, sounds and language) with internal predictions.“This theoretical idea is extremely popular in neuroscience, but the existing evidence for it is often indirect and restricted to artificial situations,” says lead author Micha Heilbron.“I would really like to understand precisely how this works and test it in different situations.”

Brain research into this phenomenon is usually done in an artificial setting, Heilbron reveals. To evoke predictions, participants are asked to stare at a single pattern of moving dots for half an hour, or listen to simple patterns in sounds like ‘beep beep boop, beep beep boop.’

Source: Your Brain Is a Prediction Machine That Is Always Active – Neuroscience News

Memories & History, Science & Health

Keep Forgetting Things? Neuroscience Says These 5 Habits Improve Memory and Leadership | Inc.com

Let’s go to the neuroscience: five specific tricks to improve memory and recall things better.

By Bill Murphy Jr., http://www.billmurphyjr.com @BillMurphyJr

Photo: Getty Images

When you forget things, you fall short: What time was that meeting tomorrow? Was it April who said she might want to become a customer in August, or was it August who said to call him next April?

Wait, what was the third thing?

I joke of course, but if there’s one thing many business leaders worry about — especially as they grow a bit older — it’s whether their memories have suffered. So, let’s go to the neuroscience: five specific tricks to improve memory and recall things better.

1. Walk backward. Let’s start with my favorite on the list, because the neuroscientists who came up with it can’t even explain why it works. Researchers from the University of Roehampton in London divided their subjects into three groups. In Group 1, participants were asked to watch a short movie, or memorize words, or study a set of pictures while walking forward. In Group 2, participants completed the same tasks while walking backward. In Group 3, participants acted as a control group, doing the same tasks but standing still.

Source: Keep Forgetting Things? Neuroscience Says These 5 Habits Improve Memory and Leadership | Inc.com

Science & Health

Why We Forget Things, According to Neuroscience | Time

By Corinne Purtill, April 28, 2022 7:00 AM EDT

Studies on the brains of zebrafish, like the one shown here, are helping scientists better understand memory, and the power of forgetting.
Illustration by TIME (Source image: Zhuowei Du)

A baby zebrafish is just half the size of a pea. A recent look inside its transparent brain, however, offers clues to the far bigger mystery of how we remember—and how we forget.

In an experiment that yielded insights into memory and the brain, a team of researchers at the University of Southern California taught the tiny creature to associate a bright light with a flash of heat, a temperature change the fish responded to by trying to swim away.

Using a custom-designed microscope, the team then captured images of the animals’ brains in the moments before and after they learned to associate the light and the heat. It’s the first known look at how a living vertebrate’s brain restructures itself as the animal forms a memory.

Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…

Source: Why We Forget Things, According to Neuroscience | Time

Arts & Humanities, Politics, Science & Health

The Supreme Court’s Assault on Science – Scientific American

A recent decision that makes it easier to sentence children to life without parole ignores what we know about the prefrontal cortex

By Daniel Weinberger on May 24, 2021

Credit: Getty Images

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Jones v. Mississippi makes it easier for judges to sentence children to life in prison with no chance of parole.

After 15 years of decisions that placed limits on the sentences given to juvenile offenders convicted of violent crimes, the Court reversed course in a profoundly antiscience decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The murderer in this case had just turned 15. This new ruling claims that the early teen years cast the die for how someone is likely to behave for the rest of their lives.

When criticizing this decision, legal pundits have been entranced by stare decisis, the legal doctrine that states a court will abide by precedent. But this argument woefully ignores the neuroscience that explains why juveniles should not be treated like adults—the very scientific evidence that influenced and guided previous court decisions

Source: The Supreme Court’s Assault on Science – Scientific American