PBS_Braincraft

Creativity depends on the cooperation of two competing networks: one that generates spontaneous thoughts (the default mode network) and the executive control center of the brain that governs everything else. Our random, free-flowing thoughts that are worthy of further exploration pop into our consciousness when they're recruited by the executive control network.

What's the key to happiness and life satisfaction? One study followed a group of people for more than seventy years to find out. Watch this video and find out what they discovered! Can you think of one thing that could make you happy over the course of your life, which does not include tacos and Harry Potter. Think of something that could actually sustain your happiness for many years. You can say anything you like, but to measure it scientifically we would have to study your regular integrals for most of your life. Luckily, that study has already been done. The Harvard Grant Study began in 1938 and it followed 268 male undergraduate students for more than seventy years. They planned to track them over their entire lives, so they can measure a lot of psychological and physiological traits like their personality, IQ, and the function of their major organs. Because it was so huge it had so many findings like your financial success is more dependent on the warmth of your relationship than intelligence. And cigarette smoking was the single greatest factor that contributed to the men’s deaths. When George Vaillant, the lead researcher of this study for more than 30 years, was asked what was the single greatest finding from it, he said it was the capacity of the intimate relationships that predicted flourishing in all aspects of the men’s lives, concluding that happiness is <a href="https://rumble.com/v46tyd-i-love-you-do-you-love-me.html" target="_blank">love</a>. What these seventy years of research suggest is ‘love is all you need’, which is what The Beatles sang about, but it doesn’t necessarily mean having a long relationship or marriage with a partner. The study looked at the men’s relationship with their parents and how that affected them over the course of their lives. The men who had a <a href="https://rumble.com/v3ow89-5-relationship-myths-and-what-the-reality-looks-like.html" target="_blank">warmer relationship</a> with their mothers as a child earned an average of $87,000 a year more than those who had an uncaring mother. Those with an uncaring mother were more likely to develop dementia later in life. The warmth of the men’s relationship with their fathers was correlated with enjoying vacations more and having a life satisfaction at age 75. These findings are super-interesting. Of course correlation doesn’t equal causation. Watch this video and share your comments on this topic below!

The trillions of bacteria in your gut have more of a relationship <a href="https://rumble.com/v4eeep-our-brain-takes-shortcuts-all-the-time-how-to-communicate-like-a-mind-reade.html" target="_blank">with your brain</a> than you may realize. Not the one in your head but the ‘second brain’ as it is called. The second brain isn't really a brain at all. It's more of a 'brain' that happens to live in our stomach and helps regulate an amazing number of feelings and emotions. Known as the enteric nervous system, this is the mechanism behind all those ‘I'm going with my gut on this’, ‘I'm having a gut reaction’ - phrases that have become so much a part of our everyday parlance. You probably already know that we have a whole lot of neurons - nerve cells that form the basis of our central and peripheral nervous systems - in our spine, but did you know that we have the same number lining the long tube of our gut? The complex make-up of our gut means it's able to create intense cravings - why do I suddenly need a cheeseburger immediately? - without even communicating with <a href="https://rumble.com/v4luxe-its-good-for-your-brain-to-know-random-stuff.html" target="_blank">our actual brain</a>. And it's not just the neurons packed into our stomach that pretty much tell us what to do, the buzzing microcosm inside is also busy exerting its influence. Called the microbiome, this colony of bacteria is determined by many factors, such as how old you are, where you live, what you eat, and even how stressed-out you are, and it can communicate with our central nervous system to control everything from how anxious you are about a particular task, to how likely you are to approach things with positivity. Watch the video to find out what's actually going on down there, and if you happen to be craving chicken nuggets dipped in Sprite, you now know what part of you is to blame.

Imagine a world where all voices sound the same.

Can you see what I see? We all experience things subjectively, including how we perceive optical illusions. Back in the 1800’s, American psychologist Joseph Jastrow illustrated an animal. Some of them saw a duck, and some a rabbit- but not both at once. The image itself allows for both interpretations and switching between them involves some mental effort. And when you see the duck, do you see the same duck we see? Researchers suggest the differences in our subjective experiences are tied to the different sizes of a certain area in our brain. It’s difficult to say why exactly the size of one brain area leads to people being more easily tricked by optical illusions. It could have to do with the concentration of chemical messengers inside the visual cortex. Other studies have found that the magnitude of optical illusions differs in people with <a href="https://rumble.com/v4de91-simple-weaving-shapes-for-children-with-autism.html" target="_blank">autism</a> or in people from different cultures. Things can be constructed in many different ways. When children were shown the duck-rabbit illusion on Easter Sunday (rabbit season) more children saw the rabbit, where on other Sundays they were more likely to see the duck (duck season). Sure, what you see is what you get, but remember that things may be preserved through different lenses. <a href="https://rumble.com/v3dd3p-10-best-optical-illusions-that-will-bend-your-brain-a-listicle-of-mind-tric.html" target="_blank">Optical illusions</a> don't “trick the eye” nor “fool the brain”, nor reveal that “our brain is not working”, but they are fascinating! They also teach us about our visual perception and its limitations.

The act of reading actually has proven impacts on your intelligence.

Try to solve this famous thought experiment.

We all know that exercise is good for your health. That is no great secret. But what about our mental health? Can exercising help us with our emotional problems, our intellectual problems or our addictions? The answer to all of these is a resounding YES. Exercising is one of the best things you can do for yourselves, not only for the sake of your physical body, but for your mind as well. In this video you will be provided with a couple of clues as to why exercising a few times a week will help your overall your mental health. If you happen to be one of those people that just cant seem to make them self get off the couch and do something that evolves physical progress, you might want to take a look as to how important <a href="https://rumble.com/v42fhd-improve-your-memory-with-simple-exercises.html" target="_blank">exercise</a> actually is. Not only that it provides you with a healthier life and a more fit looking body but it also has a big effect onto your mental capacity. This video is bound to show you a very interesting example of this girl explaining her <a href="https://rumble.com/v2zukb-extreme-human-achievements-break-records.html" target="_blank">achievements</a> and upgrade if you will before and after exercise. So, yes it might be a stretch some days to get out of bed or even find the time to exercise, but this video may change your mind no matter what kind of job you work. Take a look as here is one of the amazing powers of exercise.

We are sure you all have experienced jet lag before. Studies have shown that people experiencing jet lag have trouble learning and recalling memories. A study suggests that jet lag is simply a math problem and you can solve it by controlling your exposure to light or darkness. <a href="https://rumble.com/v3bqqk-bye-bye-jetlag-3-travel-comfort-necessities.html" target="_blank">Jet lag</a> is a question that comes out of biological rhythms. You have probably heard of circadian rhythms before - the roughly 24-hour biological rhythms that influence when you sleep or wake up. The lady in the video, Olivia, developed a schedule of exposure to light and darkness that allows your circadian rhythms to adjust to new time zones as quickly as possible. She figured this out by thinking of us as robots and it is connected to your body temperature. Your alertness and body temperature parallel each other. When your body temperature is rising you become more alert and when it is falling, you are getting closer to the bottom and you become less alert. When you travel to a new time zone, you can speed up the process of entrainment - a scientific term for fully adjusting to a new <a href="https://rumble.com/v47q00-flat-earth-proof-time-zones.html" target="_blank">time zone</a> by timing your exposure to light. In your eyes, cells sense a light and send that information to your brain’s internal clock. To adjust the clock you have, you need to experience one block of the brightest light and one block of the dimmest darkness each day. What you really have to worry about is dawn and dusk. Now, you don’t have to do the math since there is an application for that called “Entrain” available on AppStore and you can use it to see your light and dark schedules. The app was developed in collaboration with Danny Forger from University of Michigan and Kirill Serkh from Yale.

The science behind procrastination.

Do you know brain facts from fiction?

Being a human isn’t an easy task. We often focus only on our exterior shell, but we forget about the wonders hidden on the inside. The human body is more complex than a computer. It is made out of tiny particles that form the cells that later form the tissues and organs to create the perfection that is the human organism. But in reality, we’re not all that perfect. What makes us different than just a random plastic object is that every second in our body there are a million of things happening all at once. Deep within our cells, the nucleus communicates with other organelles to keep the cell functioning. On a higher level, cells communicate with the ones surrounding them, organs communicate between themselves via blood and above everything else, the brain communicates with each and every particle in the body through hormones. Hormones give the orders to move a muscle, create a new cell, to <a href="https://rumble.com/v3noad-how-exercise-improves-your-mental-health.html" target="_blank">feel happy and to feel sad</a>. It is constantly happening, so the brain has devised a few shortcuts based on experience. Basically, what this means is that if something happens, we jump to the conclusion based on what our <a href="https://rumble.com/v3bet9-3-techniques-to-train-your-brain-like-a-mental-athlete.html" target="_blank">brain</a> tells us that has happened before and is the norm. But what if that’s not the case? What if those shortcuts lead us to misinterpret situations and make faulty decisions? Take a look at this video to understand why the human mind is imperfect.

Sometimes bad things happen to good feedback.

Surprise! You're more optimistic than you think.

It seems like some people have so many great ideas - like <a href="https://rumble.com/v31hih-did-einstein-know-the-truth-about-aliens.html" target="_blank">Albert Einstein</a>, who apart from changing everything we know about the whole of space and time, he also took a stab at fashion. Rest assured there are ways that the rest of us can be more creative, too. We explore some practical tips for boosting your creativity and generating ideas. Why do some people have so many great ideas? And how can the rest of us be more creative? Creativity is the result of large brain networks that interact with each other to generate random thoughts, change them and merge them and this happens through three mental skills: bending, breaking and blending. Bending is when we imagine things in new ways, breaking is when we take an idea and break it into pieces and blending is when we mix few things together. In 2017 study, researchers found those who score high on creativity tests have more connections between brain hemispheres and stronger communication between brain networks, and the people who come up with many original answers to a question possess a skill called divergent thinking. Remember that you are not stuck with the brain you have, your brain networks are flexible and you can practice creativity. So read more, pay more attention, visit a <a href="https://rumble.com/v45fql-museum-of-selfies-to-open-january-2018-in-glendale.html" target="_blank">museum</a>, and travel to feed your imagination. Keep generating ideas and come back to the ground with fresh eyes and hopefully fresh ideas. Don’t forget to surround yourself with interesting people. We need humans and our society for creativity to flourish.

If you were sleep deprived, could you just fake that you got more sleep the night before? Science has some interesting answers. Imagine you wake up thinking you had a wonderful night’s sleep, you feel fantastic and you are going to wake up immediately. However, no matter how much sleep you get there is always that niggling voice inside your head that you need more sleep and you are the thing about how tired you are. But, with simply thinking about how good sleep you had can improve your brain function. In a recent study, researchers told participants that those who spent more than 25% of their time asleep in REM sleep have better cognitive functioning. Simply believing that you had a good night’s sleep, even if you didn’t, it improves performance. But can you really fake sleep? Not really. But if you could stop thinking and talking about how tired you are, and plan a nap you could improve your sleeping. Researchers say that an afternoon nap is an ideal remedy for fatigue from sleep loss. But, that’s kind of unrealistic for us who have jobs and are not as brazen as George Constanza. One solution is active rest or progressive muscle <a href="https://rumble.com/v4hhw1-uwm-class-teaches-students-the-art-of-relaxation.html" target="_blank">relaxation</a>. You focus on one muscle, make it tense and then release. This will really help. While it’s really hard to tell what the quality of our sleep was actually like, you should snooze less and nap more. Or active rest. It’s almost <a href="https://rumble.com/v39z0j-power-napping-pug-snores-through-her-doggy-dreams.html" target="_blank">napping</a>. So it seems the key to fake sleeping is actually… Fake sleep.

Is there a limit to the number of relationships we can maintain?

Can You Solve This Riddle? This riddle first appeared in Grossman, Howard (1945). Scripta Mathematica XI TedED have a similar riddle that's beautifully animated: https://youtu.be/tE2dZLDJSjA

This sleep cycle is a good average: your circadian rhythm can shift somewhat depending on your sleep/wake schedule. If you wake consistently at 9am, then your blood pressure with go up closer to 8:45am and everything else will be shifted as well. It's tied to sunlight A LOT but since we have artificial light, there's wiggle room within that.

Humans are complicated: a tangled web of amazing biology and bad behaviours. This illustrated field guide will equip you with the necessary tools to navigate the lying, jealous and judgmental tendencies of your fellow humans. This week we explore blame-shifting

How is our brain put together? And where do these 'pieces' come from?

Do you remember the times when you had to remember the phone number of your best friend in order to call her? There was no such thing as speed dial and there was no virtual phonebook on your phone. If you wanted to remember a number, you either had to write it down in an address book or try to dial the correct number time and time again. Do you even remember a phone number right now? Chances are, the only phone number you do know by heart is your own because you’ve had to repeat it time and time again when giving out information. Well, the same thing applies to your relationship with search engines. There are two types of <a href="https://rumble.com/v3265p-test-your-memory-with-this-quiz.html" target="_blank">memory</a>, nondeclarative and declarative one. The first type is basically muscle memory, it’s remembering all the steps you need to do in order to ride your bike or let’s say dial your best friend’s phone number. Declarative memory is basically remembering all of that non-material information, like your best friend’s number. What’s happened in the age of <a href="https://rumble.com/v4bwab-10-cool-google-searches-that-will-blow-away-your-mind.html" target="_blank">Google</a> and search engines in general, is we’ve been expanding our declarative memory. We learn new things, but we don’t store them in our brain as we did before. Instead of keeping them in our memory, we just remember the path to finding them on the internet. This is both good and bad because we can obtain even more information than before and we are always thirsty for more, but we do it at the expense of not being able to store it in our mind and reach it in the events when we don’t have access to a search engine. This makes us even more dependent on the Internet.

Can we subconsciously "catch" emotions from other people?

Could a slight rise in narcissism from increased use of social media actually make us better, more self-aware people?

And how is dog sleep different than our own?