Learn about why researchers are developing new GMO foods like golden rice; why you underestimate how often others are thinking about you; and how your brain knows when you’re uncomfortable and you need to change your position. FDA's Feed Your Mind website: https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/agricultural-biotechnology You regularly underestimate how often someone else is thinking about you by Steffie Drucker Liking gap episode: https://www.curiositydaily.com/road-to-the-8-hour-workday-the-liking-gap-shocking-tomatoes/ Actually, Everyone Is Thinking About You. (2021, September 16). Vice.com. https://www.vice.com/en/article/epx43m/actually-everyone-is-thinking-about-you Cooney, G., Boothby, E. J., & Lee, M. (2021). The thought gap after conversation: Underestimating the frequency of others’ thoughts about us. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001134 Cuncic, A. (2012). Spotlight Effect: Not Everyone is Looking at You. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-spotlight-effect-3024470 How the brain tells us to change position by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Constanza in Mexico City) Why do we roll over when we're asleep. (2014). Why do we roll over when we’re asleep? › Ask an Expert (ABC Science). Abc.net.au. https://doi.org/https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/01/28/3861788.htm Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Pain, Disability, and Chronic Illness Behavior, Osterweis, M., Kleinman, A., & Mechanic, D. (2015). The Anatomy and Physiology of Pain. Nih.gov; National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK219252/ Bedsores. (2021). Hopkinsmedicine.org. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/bedsores Resnick, B. (2016, June 6). Ever wake up to a numb, dead arm? Here’s what’s happening. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11854588/numb-arm-sleep Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Learn about why researchers are developing new GMO foods like golden rice; why you underestimate how often others are thinking about you; and how your brain knows when you’re uncomfortable and you need to change your position.
FDA's Feed Your Mind website: https://www.fda.gov/food/consumers/agricultural-biotechnology
You regularly underestimate how often someone else is thinking about you by Steffie Drucker
How the brain tells us to change position by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Constanza in Mexico City)
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/future-gmo-foods-the-thought-gap-how-your-brain-knows-youre-uncomfortable
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about GMO foods that are currently in development, with help from Dr. Patrick Cournoyer; and why you regularly underestimate how often others are thinking about you. We’ll also answer a listener question about how your brain knows when you’re uncomfortable and you need to change your position.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Yesterday, we featured a guest who gave you a pretty comprehensive primer on the science of GMOs. And today, he's going to tell us about a few GMOs coming down the pipeline that are worth getting excited about. Dr. Patrick Cournoyer is a regulatory scientist at the FDA who works to ensure the safety of food from genetically modified plants. We asked him which GMOs were in development that he was the most excited about.
[CLIP 2:06]
Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Again, that was Patrick Cournoyer, a regulatory scientist at the FDA. You can learn more about GMOs at the FDA's Feed Your Mind website. You can find a link to that in today's show notes.
We’ve talked before about the feeling that you like your friends more than they like you — that’s called the “liking gap,” and we covered it in September. A recent study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found something along the same lines: You regularly underestimate how much a recent conversation partner is thinking about you. They call it the “thought gap.”
This is pretty relevant, because we spend more than half our waking hours in conversation with others. A lot of us will replay those interactions in our heads later on — often right when we’re trying to fall asleep. The team behind this study was interested in how our self-perceptions in conversations compare to our metaperceptions, or the way we believe the other person sees us.
To test this, scientists ran eight experiments involving nearly 2,300 participants. Several experiments required students to rate how much they’d thought about the last person they’d spoken with, whether a friend or stranger, and how much they believed that person thought about them. In each scenario, students believed they thought about their conversation partner more than the other person thought about them.
And this so-called “thought gap” grew wider as the hours wore on. The longer it had been since their conversation, the less participants believed their conversation partners thought of them. Scientists say that’s because they could access their own thoughts but had no idea about their partner’s thoughts or experience over the course of the day.
But this doesn’t mean that people are always thinking about us more than we believe they are. When people are feeling particularly self-conscious — maybe about something they’re wearing or something silly they said — they can fall prey to the “spotlight effect,” where they believe everyone is noticing and thinking about them more than they actually are.
In this case, though, the idea that someone you had a nice conversation with has you on their mind? It seems to be a good thing. When researchers asked participants how it’d feel to learn their conversation partner was thinking of them, more than 40 percent said they’d be pleasantly surprised.
Hopefully, knowing that someone is thinking about you more than you realized can make you feel a little less alone.
We got a listener question from Constanza in Mexico City, who asks, “How does your brain know when you are uncomfortable and must change your position? What exactly happens to let it know?” Great question, Constanza!
While there’s very little research on this question specifically, we know enough about how the brain and body work together to come to some pretty likely conclusions. So think about what happens when you remain in one position for a long period of time — say, when you’re sitting in the front row of a movie theater and you’re craning your neck to see the screen.
That position puts pressure on your cervical spine and on your neck muscles, and it’s liable to start feeling pretty uncomfortable — painful, even. Physical discomfort and pain are really just two points on a spectrum, and they’re both usually caused by stimulation to pain receptors. Those receptors send a message along peripheral nerves to the spinal cord, where it heads up to the brain. Pain is often a sign of damage, so it’s in your brain’s best interest to put a stop to that pain as soon as possible. So it sends a signal back down to your motor neurons to change your head position — and maybe give your neck muscles a quick massage while you’re at it.
This system isn’t just nice to have — it can literally prevent long-term injury. For example, you know how when you’re in bed, you’ll feel the urge to just roll over into a new position every so often? That’s your brain preventing pressure injuries. People in bed who are unconscious, unable to sense pain, or just can’t move can often get pressure injuries called bedsores, where the skin’s blood supply is cut off for several hours and, as a result, a big ulcer forms as the skin begins to die. These sores can even extend down into the muscle and bone. That’s why attendants in hospitals and nursing homes need to physically adjust their patients in bed every so often. Same goes for when you’re lying on your arm and it falls asleep — that happens because your nerves are compressed, and your brain can sense that signal disruption and force you to move. But when someone is unconscious, say from drinking too much, their brain can’t make that call and they can end up causing damage to the nerve’s protective coating. That can cause numbness that takes days or even months to heal.
So that momentary shift in your chair? That’s just your brain keeping your body safe. Thanks for your question, Constanza!
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, I just wanted to quickly remind you to take another look at your podcast app, because a full episode of “Dogs 101” just dropped in your Curiosity Daily feed. It’s a brand-new podcast from Discovery, and we think you’ll like it. So check it out! But right now, let’s recap what we learned today!
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ASHLEY: The writer for today’s story about other people thinking about you was Steffie Drucker.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer and audio editor on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and lead audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great weekend! [AD LIB SOMETHING FUNNY] Then, join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!