neuroscience
You are viewing stuff tagged with neuroscience.
You are viewing stuff tagged with neuroscience.
Does Exercise Help You Sleep Better? has some pretty strong things to say about the link between sleep and exercise. A quick summary: there isn’t a link. This is my favorite part:
Radiolab: Limits (April 16, 2010). WOW. Mykala recommended I listen to this, and it has been far too long since she did so. Last night, I finally listened to the episode and it was amazing. I loved the part about the “central governor” theory — that there is a part of our minds that works all the time to tell us that we’re tired. You go running: central governor says “you’re tired”. And it’s not like a little itch you have to scratch — this is convincing, all-encompassing, total-body exhaustion. When you feel this, you apparently have between 25 and 50% of your reserve left.
Keith Jarrett and neuroscience. Sympathetically innervated sweat glands are the exception when it comes to neurotransmitters — their transmitter is acetylcholine, but you would expect norepinephrine! Whoah!
It’s the Köln Concert.
Barbara Strauch, in How to Train the Aging Brain:
Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.
Merlin Mann has some great ideas about taking back control of your life. He emphasizes not seizing control, but constructively yielding to the unknown and managing the interplay between urgent and important tasks. Now I’ve gone and made it sound boring. AU CONTRAIRE! Merlin is endlessly entertaining! In this hilarious video, he talks about some of the ideas in the book he is writing, “Inbox Zero”:
For our wedding, we received an air freshener called “Clean Linen” by White Barn Candle Company. Mykala plugged it in today, and I realized that 5 years ago, someone (Dan McKeown?) in the dorms at St. Thomas had an air freshener that had the exact same scent.
So, according to my limited memory from my neuroscience course (ha, irony!), olfactory (scent) memories are quite intense, due to the proximity of olfactory neurons to the emotionally-intense limbic system. Soo, this scent is dredging up these fond, weirdly conflicted college dorm transition memories while I am simultaneously feeling these newly wed making-a-house-a-home transition feelings.