Mastodawn

Neurofrontiers Sep 6, 2025

I usually don’t share anything online unless I’ve ruminated on it over and over and over again until words lose their shape. But it’s occurred to me that it’s not the healthiest attitude. (What a shocker, right?)

I’d like to grow out of it, and what better way to make sure I stick to it than a public commitment? So I hereby challenge myself to share one random neuro factoid a day for 365 days. That seems like a good number.

No polishing, no checking and re-checking and digging through 20 papers until I’m sure that’s the consensus. And most importantly, finding a way to get rid of that pressure in my chest that makes me think my whole life will collapse if I’m *whispers* wrong.

So here goes nothing.

Day 1: synapses don’t just go in the direction axon -> dendrite, but they can also be between dendrite -> soma, dendrite -> dendrite, and even axon -> axon, among others. Might seem trivial, but I remember casually mentioning this in a conversation with a physicist and it completely blew their mind. *small nod to domain expertise*

And because community activities are usually more fun, if anyone else wants to do a similar sharing challenge, feel free to use the hashtag #ShyButSharing365

#NeuroFactoid #neuroscience #introvert #facts

Neurofrontiers Sep 7, 2025

Day 2: The classical, textbook view is that information from the senses gets processed in dedicated areas of the brain and only then gets integrated somewhere upstream. But that’s not quite accurate.

The primary visual cortex, for example, also processes information from other senses, from the motor system, and even from motivational systems. Although less studied, other primary cortices also appear to process multiple types of information.

As someone who loves order, it’s a bit disappointing that the segregation between modalities is not so neat after all. But it’s also pretty cool to think about the brain as a network where information is constantly integrated from the very early stages of perception, and to consider how prior experience could shape it at such a low level.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #perception #network #integration #science

Neurofrontiers Sep 8, 2025

Day 3: Conscious visual perception is not continuous. The state of the brain fluctuates periodically and these fluctuations influence visual perception at any given time, making it more or less likely that a stimulus “breaks through”. In other words, we don’t necessarily perceive the world continuously, but more in a chunk-like manner determined by the frequency of these fluctuations.

#ShyButSharing365 #NeuroFactoid #neuroscience #science #perception #consciousness #vision #alpha #brain

Neurofrontiers Sep 9, 2025

Day 4: It seems that the mere presence of a random silent smartphone around you makes you perform worse on attention tasks. This was tested empirically, of course, but anecdotally, I can confirm my eyes wander and my hand involuntarily reaches for my phone whenever I keep it on my desk. It really takes a lot of self-control not to pick it up and check some random app, just to feel I’ve done something.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #attention #smartphone #interrupted #distraction #neuro #FunFact

Neurofrontiers Sep 10, 2025

Day 5: White matter in the brain significantly changes with age. Axons, the connections between neurons, are usually surrounded by an insulating layer called myelin. But not all the myelin is present at birth.

Instead, neurons become myelinated as we get older, with the prefrontal cortex being the last area to myelinate in young adulthood. That’s what people tend to refer to when they say your cortex matures around 25 years old.

Unfortunately, things go downhill from there. Myelin starts to degenerate towards later adulthood. That works on the last-in, first-out principle, with the prefrontal cortex being the first one to go.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #myelin #neurodegeneration #science

Neurofrontiers Sep 11, 2025

Day 6: If you want to remember something you’ve learned, a good night’s sleep is your best bet. That’s because during sleep, the brain consolidates memories and transfers them into the long-term storage. There are still details missing from the scientific picture, but this happens through a dialogue between the hippocampus (short-term storage) and the neocortex (long-term storage), mediated by the thalamus.

So instead of cramming those extra hours before the exam, do yourself a favor and sleep.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #sleep

Neurofrontiers Sep 14, 2025

A lot has happened over the last days, so this challenge hit a bit of a snag, but no matter, will keep it going however possible.

Day 7: Forgetting is actually crucial for memory. It sounds counterintuitive and it’s definitely annoying when important stuff accidentally gets caught in this, but forgetting helps reduce interference from outdated or irrelevant information, which in turn makes it easier to remember what matters. It’s also useful in emotional regulation because it softens unpleasant memories. And it helps the brain generalize by getting rid of unnecessary details.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #memory #forgetit #forgetting #brain

Day 8: Still on the topic of memory - a lot of people want to have a “better” memory. Improving memory is also an active research topic, as it has tremendous potential in disorders that affect memory, such as dementia. One method that is currently being studied is transcranial stimulation - basically applying small currents to the scalp. The results are still somewhat mixed and a lot more research is necessary to optimize such protocols, but that hasn’t stopped the development of commercial applications that claim unproven benefits. Yet here’s the kicker: when tested in the lab, some of these commercial devices actually had negative effects, leading to worse memory performance.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #memory #transcranial #stimulation #BrainStimulation

Neurofrontiers Sep 16, 2025

Day 9: Your pupil size can offer information about your cognitive load, making it a seemingly accessible marker for tracking mental effort. But using that information outside of the lab is more challenging than it sounds.

The pupil also changes size in response to light. The type of light itself can also influence how much the pupil dilates. And changes in lighting can cause much larger pupil responses than cognitive load itself, making it difficult to isolate mental effort without careful controls. As if that weren’t enough, other factors like emotion, fatigue, what you’re looking at can also affect pupil size, adding more noise outside the lab.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #attention #pupil #MentalLoad

Neurofrontiers Sep 19

Day 10: Retrotransposons are genetic elements that copy and insert themselves into other parts of the genome, virtually increasing genetic material. They are highly active in the hippocampus, a region crucial for learning and memory. Their activity is particularly noticeable during neurogenesis, as the hippocampus is one of the few areas in the adult brain where new neurons are formed.

Their exact role is currently unclear, but after learning tasks, retrotransposition events appear to increase, suggesting a link to memory formation. Retrotransposons might help neurons adapt by altering gene expression or facilitating functional diversity within neural networks, supporting the flexibility needed for learning and memory.

#ShyButSharing365 #neuroscience #learning #memory #dna #retrotransposon #genome

Neurofrontiers Sep 21

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

Neurofrontiers Sep 22

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

Neurofrontiers Sep 24

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

Neurofrontiers Oct 3

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

Neurofrontiers Oct 21

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

Neurofrontiers Oct 22

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

yopp Sep 16, 2025

@neurofrontiers this is amazing thread! Thank you very much!

What research says about “training memory” by constantly memorizing different stuff? Poems, numbers, faces and so on

Neurofrontiers Sep 17

@alex @alex Thank you so much!

That’s a really good question! It’s a bit of a mixed bag: if you’re constantly memorizing stuff, your memory for such tasks will definitely improve over time. Also, depending on what you're memorizing, it might make it easier to learn other things since you have more knowledge to connect new information to.

But the transfer of skills is a bit debatable. For example, if you train yourself to memorize longer and longer strings of numbers, how much of that will transfer to other types of tasks? Probably not very far.