Day 3: Remaining on the topic of chimpanzees, it seems that among their many similarities to humans is also their ability to engage in organized warfare. I find the topic quite sad, so won't expand on it here, but if you'd like to know more, I'll leave the Wiki links to two prominent chimpanzee wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngogo_chimpanzee_war

#ShyButSharing365 #behaviour #ethology #chimpanzees #war #warfare

Day 16: Similar to sleep length, your chronotype, i.e. whether you’re a night owl or an early bird, is also influenced by your genes. Chronotypes are typically distributed on a spectrum: most people fall somewhere in the middle, with a smaller number of individuals leaning toward the extremes. Research suggests that genetics play a significant role in determining your natural sleep-wake preference.

However, consistently sleeping against your natural chronotype, such as forcing yourself to be an early riser if you're a night owl, can have detrimental effects on your health. Disrupting your body’s internal clock may increase the risk of sleep disorders, cardiovascular disease, metabolic issues, and even depression. This is because your body may struggle to perform optimally when it's out of sync with its natural circadian rhythm.

#sleep #chronotype #science #neuroscience #biology #ShyButSharing365 #EarlyBird #NightOwl

Day 15: The amount of sleep you need is influenced by your genes. For the majority of the population, sleep length is highly polygenic, meaning that a lot of genes each contribute a little bit to determine how much one individual needs.

And then there’s the really lucky ones. If you ever met someone who’s fully functional after only 5 hours of sleep and thought “man, they must’ve won the genetic lottery”, you were right. This extreme trait is determined by a handful of genes and is known as “familial natural short sleep”. And as if that weren’t luck enough, it seems that people with this trait might also be protected against neurodegenerative disorders, such as dementia.

#sleep #genetics #neuroscience #neurobiology #ShyButSharing365

Day 14: There seems to be a common theme in neuroscience: start from the view that we can map things in the brain with clean, one-to-one correspondences, then find out that reality is a lot more complex and nothing works in isolation. Again. And again. And yet again.

Here are some concrete examples:
the “one gene - one psychiatric disorder” model: it turns out psychiatric disorders are complex conditions caused by an interplay of multiple genetic, environmental, developmental, and social factors. Even the same genetic variants can lead to different outcomes depending on context.
the “one brain area - one function” idea: while some brain regions are more involved in certain functions (like the hippocampus in memory or the amygdala in emotion), the brain operates as a network. Functions are distributed, flexible, and often supported by overlapping regions depending on the task, context, and individual experience.
the “one brain rhythm - one function” idea: oscillations like theta, alpha, and gamma have been linked to various behaviors (attention, memory, perception, movement etc.), but there’s rarely a unique match. Instead, rhythms seem to support general organizing principles, like timing, communication, gating, that get reused across many cognitive and behavioral processes.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #brain #science #complex #psychiatry

Day 13: Pain is essential for survival. As annoying as it is when you sprain your ankle and it hurts, that pain forces you to rest until the ankle heals. People who can't feel pain often face serious risks, as they may not realize when they're injuring themselves, and their bodies don’t get the necessary signals to stop harmful actions. In a way, pain is the body's natural alarm system, keeping us safe even when we don’t want to listen.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #pain #perception

Day 12: Simply showing an image of a brain scan with "activity" overlaid can make people trust neuroscientific results more, regardless of whether the results actually make sense. I came across this study in undergrad, and I still find it mind-blowing how much of a difference such a small detail can make.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #data #DataViz #brain #science

Day 11: The longer you spend thinking about falling asleep, the more difficult it will be to do it. If you find yourself tossing and turning in bed, it’s better to get up and distract yourself for a while rather than stress about how many hours of sleep you’ll manage to get.

Might seem trivial, but it stuck with me because of an interaction I had with a friend who suffers from chronic insomnia: “If I had known this when my sleep troubles started, I wouldn’t have ended up in this situation.”

#ShyButSharing365 #sleep #insomnia #neuroscience