Samer Siwani
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Swedish News, A Swedish study, published in PLOS ONE, investigated coffee consumption habits of ~30,000 middle-aged individuals and observed whether there was a correlation with sleep and sleepiness. They found that individuals with higher coffee consumption reported sleep quality similar to low coffee consumers, with differences being minimal and potentially negligible. Factors such as BMI…
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Interview, Part of The Hypothesis Dump’s Swedish Neuroscience series. “Just imagine that improving sleep could potentially help reduce the risk of disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease or support brain health more broadly. That is a fascinating possibility and one that deserves much more research attention.“, Prof Christian Benedict. A year ago I became a father,…
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Religious traditions tend to rest on a dualistic basis with some variations. They posit an agent that is independent of the body but temporarily resides within it. This accounts for the human soul and a God that does not always have a body. While the gods are usually also bestowed with higher powers (however defined).…
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News, Could our urge to fight actually feel rewarding? A study published in Nature Communications suggests yes, and serotonin may hold the key to stopping it. Most of us know that dopamine is involved in reward because of addiction research, and we know that serotonin can regulate emotions, as evidenced by the effects of antidepressants…
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News, A recent study out of Dortmund, Germany has found that transcranial stimulation of a brain region in the prefrontal cortex can change the brain’s view of a perceived danger as safe. In this study, researchers recorded brain activity in healthy individuals with an MRI machine, while they underwent a conditioning task. In the task,…
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Opinion, As I have previously discussed in a recent article, memories are highly dynamic and can be affected by external stimuli (Link).They can adapt to novel contexts and even be modified by others, to the extent that they become false, or inaccurate (Fandakova and Dennis, 2024). Sometimes, memories are formed that are associated to high…
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Our memories can be highly unreliable. We easily forget and false memories can form very rapidly or be complete fabrications. The main hypothesis describing the possible evolutionary mechanism, giving rise to this effect is: Memory formation is a highly energy draining function and only memories that increase fitness might be prioritised by the nervous system.…
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News, In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, researchers in Egypt trained a deep learning model to predict brain age. They applied a spatial and temporal analysis on MRI datasets to map anatomical features and how they change over time. This model, they report, outperforms others in error margin, achieving a lower Mean Absolute…
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Opinion, Within neuroscience, I have taken part in the practice of reductionism during my work studying the hippocampus, trying to link circuit mechanisms to behaviour. Now that’s all well and good, but here is the question: How deep can we dig until we get lost in natural variation no longer relating to function? Let’s say…
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Opinion, As humans, we are not objective when investigating the capabilities of other species, especially regarding mental faculties. There is a tendency to view ourselves in a superior position. But the question remains: Is this due to our innate egocentric view, or is it an actual reality? I once had a casual conversation with fellow…