Learn about a simple brain-training task that may reduce motion sickness, what parasites found in medieval human remains can tell us about eradicating them today, and the two main reasons why everything takes longer than you think it will.
Learn about a simple brain-training task that may reduce motion sickness, what parasites found in medieval human remains can tell us about eradicating them today, and the two main reasons why everything takes longer than you think it will.
A Simple Brain-Training Task May Reduce Motion Sickness by Kelsey Donk
Parasitic Worms Found in Medieval Human Remains May Hold the Secret for Eradicating Them Today by Cameron Duke
The 2 Main Reasons Why Everything Takes Longer Than You Think It Will by Anna Todd
Follow Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Ashley Hamer and Natalia Reagan (filling in for Cody Gough).
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/a-brain-training-task-to-reduce-motion-sickness
ASHLEY HAMER: Hi. You're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity.com. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIA REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today, you'll learn about a simple brain training task that may reduce motion sickness, what parasites found in medieval human remains can tell us about eradicating them today, and the two main reasons why everything takes longer than you think it will.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Everyone gets motion sickness from time to time. For most of us, it's manageable. We look out the window, breathe some fresh air, or maybe even take medication.
But as self-driving cars get closer to reality, researchers think motion sickness will become a much bigger problem. But, luckily, there may be a fix. A new study suggests that for most people, a simple brain training task could reduce motion sickness.
The trick centers on something called visuospatial training. Visuospatial skills refer to a person's ability to understand spatial relationships between objects. They're the skills you rely on when you catch a ball or put a puzzle together.
Past research has shown that people who play video games or use driving simulators tend to have better visuospatial skills. Video games force you to track things through space, time your movement, and visually rotate objects in your mind. For this study, researchers asked participants to take a ride either in a driving simulator or in a real car as a passenger. They wanted to get as close as they could to the experience of driving around in a driverless car so they could measure the participant's baseline motion sickness.
They had to report their nausea, stomach problems, and overall discomfort every minute of the ride. Once they were back on solid ground, the visuospatial training began. For 15 minutes a day, over two weeks, participants did a series of visuospatial training tasks.
For instance, one test gave them a shape and asked them to name which of three other shapes was a rotated version of the original. Others involved paper folding, block counting, and image identification. After the training period was up, they went back to the lab, and they took another ride.
Amazingly, the participants who completed their training saw their motion sickness reduced by half. The researchers aren't sure why this worked so well. But they think it may have to do with reducing people's reliance on visual cues to track motion. Whatever the reason, it's big news.
If we could reduce motion sickness enough for people to read and work in autonomous vehicles, some experts say the boost in productivity could be worth as much as $500 billion a year. So this is a super valuable finding. And at a minimum, this research could make road trips a lot more pleasant.
NATALIA REAGAN: In many parts of the globe, worms are a huge health concern, intestinal parasites that wreak havoc in the developing world. New research reveals that medieval Europeans wrestled with these worms and may have stumbled on the secret to defeating them. Usually, we like to keep things light around here. But roundworm infections are a serious problem in many parts of the world.
In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that 880 million children worldwide are in need of treatment for these parasites. Roundworm infections can cause potentially life-threatening intestinal problems, like diarrhea and dysentery. Parasites like roundworms and whip worms enter the body as eggs. They pass through the stomach, just a hatch, and live out their lives in the intestines, where they siphon nutrients from undigested food.
Because these parasites disproportionately affect regions where sanitation and access to clean water is poor, it's easy to assume that hygiene would be a simple fix. But since the 1960s, our best defense against them has been antiparasitic drugs. That's how South Korea and Japan eradicated their parasite problems in the late 20th century.
Europe, on the other hand, doesn't have a problem with intestinal parasites. But we know it used to. Scientists have seen the parasites in archaeological evidence. They just didn't know how widespread they were.
If the parasites were rare, you could assume that they died out on their own. But if they were widespread, that says something very different. It would mean that ancient Europeans were able to eradicate the parasites without drugs and maybe with simple fixes, like sanitation.
To find out, a recent study involved a bit of forensic grave spelunking. Researchers collected soil samples from nearly 600 grave sites in three European countries, each dating from 6 AD to 1700 CE. Specifically, they looked at soil samples from where the grave occupants' intestines would have been and analyzed the samples for the presence of DNA from two types of roundworms.
If they spotted the DNA, they examined the sample under a microscope to confirm the presence of the parasite's eggs. They found that, depending on the species, medieval infection rates were between 25% and 45%. That's on par with the infection rates in underdeveloped countries today.
This means, without drugs, sanitation and hygiene were able to solve an epidemic a lot like the one we see today in some populations. It's a simpler fix than some people thought, albeit with the proper resources. So let's prioritize it and make it happen.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's Thursday. You know what that means. It's time to satisfy that Cody fix. I do miss him so. And since it's almost the end of the week and you might be feeling the pinch to get all your work done, here's a story to help you understand why everything takes longer than you think.
CODY GOUGH: If you've ever wondered why everything takes longer than you think it will, then you've come to the right place. There are two main reasons why you haven't finished that thing you thought you'd be done with yet. Ready for a productivity wake-up call?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, this is so real. This is every Monday. It's like, OK, I'm going to get into work. I'm going to do a million things, and I'm going to get them all done by 5:00. And, of course, I get two of them done. And I don't know why.
CODY GOUGH: Here's why. The first major thing in your way is called Parkinson's law. It came from a 1955 article in The Economist by Cyril Northcote Parkinson. And it goes like this, quote, "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Unquote.
This law says that psychologically speaking, you can make the same amount of progress in four hours that you can make in 30 minutes. You've just got to have deadlines and clearly defined time frames. This means, don't give yourself a week to complete a task when you just need one productive afternoon because you'll just end up filling most of that week with unnecessary angst and wasted energy.
Lifehack recommends making a to-do list, then taking the time slots you've allowed yourself for each task, and slashing them in half. Don't work harder. Work smarter by avoiding time sucks.
But what happens when a job seems to take forever, even when you give yourself the perfect amount of time? Enter the second law, Hofstadter's law. Douglas Hofstadter is a cognitive scientist and author. And his law from 1979 reads, quote, "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law." Unquote. Yes, it's self-referential.
In other words, people tend to underestimate how long a task will take, even when they know about this flaw. It's a planning fallacy. If you gave yourself an hour to do your taxes last year but it really took you four hours, you might blame the delay on outside forces, like saying maybe your kids kept interrupting you. So it's not your fault.
Then instead of setting a realistic time frame, you generously give yourself two hours instead of one. Yeah, that doesn't work. Psych Central says the best way to fight this is to work on whatever will give you the most positive impact. Resist the temptation to clear up those smaller, easier tasks on your to-do list first. Good luck.
ASHLEY HAMER: We are happy to announce that Curiosity Daily is a finalist in the 2020 Discover Pods Awards. Yay!
NATALIA REAGAN: Yes, you helped us get here. And now we need your votes to win. Please head to awards.discoverpods.com/vote and then vote for Curiosity Daily under best technology and science podcast. You can also vote for a bunch of other great shows while you're there. But you don't have to. You do you.
ASHLEY HAMER: Either way, it should only take a minute. We really appreciate it.
NATALIA REAGAN: Let's do a quick recap of what we learned today. Well, we learned that simple tasks or puzzles can help alleviate motion sickness since these tasks might be reducing people's reliance on visual cues to track motion.
I don't know. It reminds me when I was a kid. And you used to play with your Gameboy on driving trips. And that never bothered me. But reading in the car, oh, boy, gets me.
ASHLEY HAMER: Really? Your Gameboy didn't bother you, but reading did? I didn't really have a Gameboy for that long. So maybe I didn't have that comparison. But that's interesting.
Well, that's right. We learned that archaeologists discovered that parasitic worms were present in medieval Europe, and the people living there didn't eradicate them by using drugs but through improved hygiene and sanitation. I mean, this is what the World Health Organization has been calling for in places affected by these parasites. So, hopefully, this will mean that more resources and efforts will be put toward improving sanitation in developing nations so they can eradicate these awful parasites.
NATALIA REAGAN: Absolutely, yeah. Clean water initiatives are where it's at. I mean, if we played Oregon Trail, we know what was going on.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, you did not want to die of dysentery.
NATALIA REAGAN: No, and that's still a problem all throughout the world. Cholera is a problem. And, yeah, a lot of it can be fixed with better sanitation and clean water. So let's get to it.
And, lastly, we learned that everything takes longer than it seems because of Parkinson's and Hofstadter's laws. Parkinson's law charges that you will take as much time as you allow yourself to finish a task. So it's important to set strict deadlines to avoid doomscrolling in a time suck result.
They said even slash the time in two. If you think it's going to take an hour, give yourself 30 minutes. Just get it done. But Hofstadter's law says it still might take longer than you think if you don't set realistic deadlines.
So if you're mindful of both laws, hopefully, you'll be able to check everything off that to-do list and still have time to watch paint dry on the walls. Today's stories were written by Kelsey Donk, Anna Todd, and Cameron Duke and edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan and [INAUDIBLE] Today's episode was edited by Natalia Reagan, and our producer is Cody Gough.
NATALIA REAGAN: Be sure to set some proper deadlines and join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes or possibly longer, definitely longer.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.
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