Mindframe

Hoarders are an interesting lot.  Some contend that it’s a form of mental illness: the compulsive need to hold onto a wide variety of items—or occasionally, animals— far exceeding their possible utility. There are the classic cases, the houses reduced to a series of claustrophobic tunnels through floor-to-ceiling piles of magazines, broken televisions, commemorative lunch-boxes, and so on. And once those pathways close up with the overflow, the logical move? Rent a storage unit. The explosion of storage units across the county seems to only be rivaled by new nail salons and Starbucks. I’m not suggesting that storage units are only frequented by hoarders, but undoubtedly it does allow a hoarder a kind of unlimited opportunity to continue their calling. To the non-hoarder, this behavior seems unfathomable. Why would anyone collect so much stuff that they’re clearly never going use? I don’t pretend to answer that question. But what if the hoarders among us aren’t really out...

Have you ever wondered why some people—and maybe we’re talking about you—are so adamant about some things? It might be a political position or your thoughts on diet and exercise, music, drunk drivers, tuna fish—the list goes on. And if you were asked what informed your particular stance, answers might include your spiritual faith, personal life experience, and/or what you’ve learned from others through a wide variety of sources. Your belief system is subjective, and like your fingerprints, unique to you. As far as storage and access go, you hold the keys. But although the system is subjective, what’s less subjective is the architecture it’s built on, according to many neuroscientists. The thought is that the brain attaches emotional meaning to some events, in the form of memory markers. The outrage that accompanies your feelings of hearing about a hit-and-run drunk driver on the 10 o’clock news helps to both inform your opinion and store it in your memory for recall later. C...

The structure of the brain is often described as an immense tangle of electrochemical connectors called neurons. These neurons number around 100 billion in the average adult, and their ability to connect and disconnect lets us drive a car, gargle after brushing, watch TV, read Shakespeare, play chess, and a myriad of other things including playing the piano, if indeed you play. Even if you don’t play, just thinking about playing the piano is making your neurons work. Their activity is frequently compared to a series of switches flipping on and off. They do this at amazing speed, sometimes firing in clusters of 10,000 or more at a time. This image—a myriad of switches, waiting obediently and dronelike for activation—is something we can wrap our minds around. The sheer numbers and speed of neural operation is difficult to contemplate, but this concept certainly seems easier to picture than say the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics.  After all, that’s how computers op...

  What do behavioral traits and infectious diseases have in common? According to researchers James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis, quite a bit.  Let’s suppose that in your thirties, you become obese. We might assume that your jelly donuts and lack of exercise has finally caught up with you. Fair enough. What might surprise you is the contagious effect your new weight is having on your peer group. Your friends are 57% more likely to gain weight as a result of hanging out with you.  Not only that, but their friends, the ones not in your immediate circle, are 20% more likely to gain weight as well. The same contagious effect seems to be true about smoking. According to Massimo Pigliucci in Answers for Aristotle , quitting smoking means “your friends have a 67% chance of quitting too, and their friends a 36% chance; this is also true of alcoholism, depression, and the effect is even present for happiness (meaning subjective well-being) itself!” ‘Wait a minute,’ ...

Are you sleep-deprived? If you’re a working adult in America, I can probably answer the question for you: yes. Or at least, statistically, you have an 80% chance, according to a January 11 New York Times piece by Maria Konnikova. On the fence about whether or not you qualify? Well, do you constantly feel tired during the day, or do you often find yourself falling asleep within five minutes of lying down? Chances are you’re not an efficient sleeper; you’re just not sleeping enough. That’s not just murder on your coffee budget, it’s bad news if you’re planning on learning anything. According to a 2011 UC Berkeley study, sleep is an essential part of holding onto memories. That's when bursts of brain waves called “sleep spindles” network up to shift fact-based info from the hippocampus, which has limited storage, to the more long-term storage of the prefrontal cortex. The more spindles, the more learning is enabled. Unfortunately, these spindles are much more active during t...