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The Motivational Paradox

The Motivational Paradox

We may think that high motivation is a good thing, and it is. But there are a number of paradoxes such as how motivation can lower ability, increase stress, and lose broad focus, and be difficult to manage . . .

 

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Brain Cells Adapt to Help You Stay Awake

Brain Cells Adapt to Help You Stay Awake

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

sleep brain

Falling asleep is a funny thing – you don’t need to think about it when it happens but can cause many people who can’t incredible frustration, not to mention the negative cognitive and health impacts that ensue from lack of good sleep.

You may know of the brain chemicals that help you to sleep, specifically melatonin, that you can also buy at your local drugstore to help you sleep. But as with all things in the brain it is never quite that simple. I reported previously on how toxins build up and genetic rubbish also that makes you tired. But recent research into fruit flies has given us some more fascinating insights.

You may think fruit flies are not really a good proxy for us human beings, but they are commonly used in research. They have simple brains, ethically it is unquestionable, but they also have a lot of similarities when it comes to daily patterns to us human beings.

Fruit flies are active in the day, sleep at night, and like to take a little nap in the afternoon, particularly on hot days. Caffeine keeps them up, and drugs that put us to sleep work on flies, too. So all in suitable to research.

They researchers around Stephane Dissel at Washington University of Medicine zoomed in on 24 neurons that help regulate sleep in these flies and particular the chemical reactions between them which include dopamine that promotes wakefulness, and something called allatostatin A, plus glutamate, a transmitter that in this area promotes sleep.

The researchers looked at two scenarios that are similar to human beings. One is that learning or intellectual challenge makes us tired, this can be through holding meetings, studying or bashing through business case studies. The subsequent sleep helps us consolidate this learning.

What they noticed in the flies is that when flies were in a crowded social environment or learned a new behaviour this changed the responsiveness of the neurons to dopamine (less responsive) therefore making them sleepier. This is in itself already fascinating because it isn’t he build-up of toxins which we would assume could make us tired but a change in responsiveness of a neurons to the chemical transmitters in the brain.

The second scenario involved stressing the flies, translating into stress or fear reaction in human beings. In flies simple, shake the vile you are keeping them in to stress them out. In this situation the flies’ brains produced both allatostatin A and glutamate – actually opposing signals but this helped the flies to stay awake.

This shows that it is the chemicals in the brain allowing alertness to stress or fear that can keep you awake.

The research however, discovered a few other fascinating features that could apply to use human beings also. They also identified naturally insomniac flies those that slept a lot less – their brain cells had abnormal reactions to those chemicals that influence sleep. This therefore suggests there is a genetic disposition to insomnia.

But a surprising answer to help this problem is that of time-restricted feeding. When the flies could only eat between 8 am and 5 pm the sensitivity to dopamine changed in their neurons. The flies still slept less but they didn’t show signs of tiredness therefore suggesting that their sleep quality was good. This effect also persisted for weeks after they returned to normal feeding routines.

So, there you go – your brain cells control sleep in ways we hadn’t considered. Stress and fear will keep you awake, no surprise, but if you’re having trouble sleeping time-restricted feeding might help sleep quality.

Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Stephane Dissel, Markus K. Klose, Bruno van Swinderen, Lijuan Cao, Melanie Ford, Erica M. Periandri, Joseph D. Jones, Zhaoyi Li, Paul J. Shaw. 
Sleep-promoting neurons remodel their response properties to calibrate sleep drive with environmental demands
PLOS Biology, 2022; 20 (9): e3001797
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001797

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Dad Brain is Real

Dad Brain is Real

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

father dad brain

We know that mothers go through multiple physical and psychological changes after birth (and before) including change in brain structures. That may sound surprising to the uninitiated – and it is fascinating. But that has been reasonably well researched.

What, however, has not been well researched, barely at all is that of the father. There have been some psychological studies showing that men do become more caring, but also that their testosterone does also drop. Presumably to help prime the body and brain for more caring – though I reported previously on the complicated role of testosterone.

But is this matched by changes in the brain – here at leading brains we know that if there is a behavioural change there will be a biological, brain, change. And this is precisely what a group of Spanish and US researchers around Magdalena Martínez-García have found out and described in a recently published paper.

The findings are interesting also because they do not show change to some regions we might expect. For example, in mothers changes in the brain limbic regions has been noted. This region is considered our emotional centre so unsurprising. But this region did not seem to change in fresh fathers.

What was, however, seen are small changes in the prefrontal regions, particularly in areas that are associated with something called the default mode network. This is a region that is active when doing nothing but also is involved in so-called mentalizing tasks i.e. being able to think about what other people think – this could be seen as an increase in ability to empathise. Similarly, some of the changes in the prefrontal regions are in regions that are associated with social functions in human beings.

Another area that showed changes was in the visual area – this suggests a change in visual capabilities maybe referring to sensitivity in responsiveness to different visual cues i.e. of a little baby rather than hunting for deer.

The study involved 20 men whose brains were scanned before or after the birth of their first child and a control group of 17 childless men. So, it wasn’t a large scale study but gives us our first glimpse into the changes that men’s brains go through with the birth of their first child.

This hints at increased empathy, changed sensitivity to visual stimuli, and increased social functions. All in pretty good.

On a different note, in case, any of you men are worried, is that men are seen as more positive as fathers, and interestingly “manly” traits (such as strength) are still associated with fathers but also in addition with more caring traits – and this shows in the brains.

Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

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References

Magdalena Martínez-García, María Paternina-Die, Sofia I Cardenas, Oscar Vilarroya, Manuel Desco, Susanna Carmona, Darby E Saxbe,
First-time fathers show longitudinal gray matter cortical volume reductions: evidence from two international samples
Cerebral Cortex, 2022;, bhac333
https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhac333

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Mask-Wearing Makes You Better Behaved

Mask-Wearing Makes You Better Behaved

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Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

mask wearing behavior china

This is a fascinating study that shows that wearing masks changes behaviour in subtle but important ways. There were reports at the start of the pandemic that mask wearing increased social distancing most likely because there is a physical reminder of hygiene.

This study in China focused on how wearing masks influences so-called deviant behaviour. That’s not as bad as it sounds, it just means going against norms and rules such as running red lights, violating parking rules, but also cheating for money.

There is, however, an argument that wearing masks increases anonymity and therefore could increase this deviant behaviour. The researchers from MIT analysed this in 10 separate studies.

First off, they analysed data from traffic cameras to see how motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians with and without masks behaved. They noticed that pedestrians and cyclist who wore masks were less likely to run red lights compared to those who were maskless.

However, this could be down to those who wear masks being more cautious and safety conscious – so further experiments were carried out to see if they could find causality.

One of these was focused on parking spaces for bicycles – something that does not affect safety. They found that those wearing masks were more likely to follow the rules and park in the formally assigned spaces.

Another experiment was also conducted with participants randomly assigned to mask-wearing and non-mask-wearing groups and played games for small amounts of money – with an ability to cheat to win. Those wearing masks cheated less.

This was a large-scale study with 10 experiments with about 68’000 observations, so the results are pretty clear that wearing masks increases following rules and norms to a small but significant degree.

Obviously, this was only focused on China so this may not generalise to other countries particularly where mask wearing has become a political statement such as in the USA. The researchers note that in China mask-wearing is seen as a moral behaviour.

Nevertheless, fascinating that there is a positive knock-on effect in society – I’d certainly be interested in data from other countries.

Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

twitter / LinkedIn

References

Jackson G. Lu, Lesley Luyang Song, Yuhuang Zheng, Laura Changlan Wang. 
Masks as a moral symbol: Masks reduce wearers’ deviant behavior in China during COVID-19
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022; 119 (41)
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2211144119

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Coffee Can Help You Live Longer

Coffee Can Help You Live Longer

Quick Hits
Daily brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

coffee aging health

Yes, that is good news for you (us) coffee drinkers. This supports plenty of more recent studies which have shown the health benefits of coffee which is still overcoming a bad reputation.

So, what did these researchers actually find?

This was a large-scale observational study spanning a time period of 12.5 years and following 449’563 participants: coffee drinkers were compared to non-drinkers for the incidence of arrhythmias, cardiovascular disease and death, after adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, obstructive sleep apnoea, smoking status, and tea and alcohol consumption.

The coffee drinkers were categorised into different groups depending on their daily consumption.

What the researchers saw is that all coffee drinkers were inked with a reduction in death of any cause. This includes those who drank only decaffeinated coffee (14% reduction).  There also differences between ground and instant coffee with the largest effect seen in group coffee (a dramatic 27% reduction) and those who drank two to three cups a day.

Similarly cardiovascular disease is lower in those who regularly drink coffee of any sort with the same pattern as above: ground coffee (a 20% reduction) and two to three cups a day had the lowest correlation.

Interestingly arrhythmia was correlated only with caffeinated coffee with the largest impacts again in those with ground coffee (a 17% reduction) but here more coffee seemed to be better with the strongest correlation seen in those who drink four to five cups a day.

Though much research has focused on the nature of caffeine in coffee it must be noted that coffee has many biologically active compounds, as a natural product, and similar to many other pulses, beans, and fruits. It is likely that these compounds are the reason behind these positive correlations.

So, all in there is certainly no need to feel guilty at your coffee consumption, or rather, it may be recommendable to drink coffee if you don’t already – as a health measure. And fresh ground coffee seems to be the most potent. Happily, I have been doing that for nigh on 40 years – hopefully that will also help me!

Andy Habermacher

Andy Habermacher

Andy is author of leading brains Review, Neuroleadership, and multiple other books. He has been intensively involved in writing and research into neuroleadership and is considered one of Europe’s leading experts. He is also a well-known public speaker, speaking on the brain and human behaviour.

Andy is also a masters athlete (middle distance running) and competes regularly at international competitions (and holds a few national records in his age category).

twitter / LinkedIn

References

David Chieng, Rodrigo Canovas, Louise Segan, Hariharan Sugumar, Aleksandr Voskoboinik, Sandeep Prabhu, Liang Han Ling, Geoffrey Lee, Joseph B Morton, David M Kaye, Jonathan M Kalman, Peter M Kistler. 
The impact of coffee subtypes on incident cardiovascular disease, arrhythmias, and mortality: long-term outcomes from the UK Biobank
European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, 2022
DOI: 10.1093/eurjpc/zwac189

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