2020 has been a difficult year for many of us—so it feels especially good to look forward to a new year. I hope that 2021 is a year of health and happiness for you and your family—and for the world.
If you’d like to get the year off to a good start by taking care of your brain, our holiday offer of $30 off a BrainHQ subscription is available through the end of the year. |
|
 Best regards, Jeff Zimman
Co-founder
Posit Science |
|
| | | Dreaming: Vision’s Defense Against Other Senses? Why we dream is an age-old question, one that now has a new potential explanation. A new theory posits that dreaming may be “a strange lovechild of brain plasticity and the rotation of the planet.” The idea is that since humans live in the dark half the time, their visual systems (which aren’t as useful in the dark) need to protect their space in the brain against the encroachment of other senses—and do so by creating visual images while we sleep. It’s a fascinating new angle on the purpose of dreaming. Learn more. |
|
|
Craving Social Interactions New research suggests that when social animals, like people, are deprived of positive social interactions, they begin to crave it—similarly to how they crave foods they are denied. In fact, both feelings of absence—of social connection and food—activate the same tiny part of the brain, the substantia nigra. Find out more.
|
|
|
Vaping Associated with Mental Fog Two new studies show that just as with smoking cigarettes, vaping is associated with higher rates of mental fog. Both children and adults who vape reported more problems with attention, memory, and decision-making than people who neither smoked nor vaped. These studies add to the growing body of work that suggests vaping is not a safe alternative to smoking tobacco. Learn more. |
|
|
Melatonin and Memory Melatonin—sold mostly as an over-the-counter sleep supplement in the U.S.—may have more benefits than helping us get a good night’s rest. Research in Japan has shown that melatonin can improve memory in mice, including in older mice. Next steps are to test whether it has a similar effect in humans. Learn more. |
|
|
Rethinking Animal Intelligence Humans often identify certain types of animals as especially smart—mostly primates closely related to humans, like great apes, and dolphins. But there are a lot of very smart animals. Take ravens, for example. In a recent study, “teenage” (4-month old) ravens performed as well as adult chimps and orangutans on most intelligence tests in a 33-test battery. Learn more about this study and how we might rethink animal intelligence in general. |
|
|
An Outsider’s Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me About What We Do and Who We Are (2020)
By Camilla Pang
Author and computational biologist Camilla Pang was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder when she was eight. As a girl, she often found other people’s behavior baffling, so she gradually constructed her own, unique map to navigate social interaction. Based on parallels with scientific principles and phenomena, Pang’s insights into human behavior may be enlightening to both neurodiverse and neurotypical people alike. Learn more.
|
|
|
 | | Click to learn more about BrainHQ! |
|
|
|
