Let’s talk about a recent study that shows children are more likely to be honest with their emotions when talking to a robot, a revolutionary new way to make single-use coffee pods from seaweed, and, trigger warning, how deep brain stimulation might help those suffering from eating disorders.
Let’s talk about a recent study that shows children are more likely to be honest with their emotions when talking to a robot, a revolutionary new way to make single-use coffee pods from seaweed, and, trigger warning, how deep brain stimulation might help those suffering from eating disorders.
Mental Health Robot
Seaweed Coffee
Brain Stimulation for ED
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Calli and Nate — for free! 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 transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/mental-health-robot-seaweed-coffee-brain-stimulation-for-ed
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about how children are more likely to be honest with their emotions when talking to a robot, a revolutionary new way to make single use coffee pods from seaweed, and, a bit of a trigger warning here, how deep brain stimulation might help those suffering from eating disorders.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Forget blankies or stuffed animals. The newest comfort toy for children is a robot.
CALLI: So, like a furbee? Are those things coming back?
NATE: Ugh, no, absolutely not. But there was a recent study where researchers found that children were more comfortable telling a child-size robot about their mental health than they were with their own parents. Sometimes, they’d even tell the robots things they’d never told anyone before.
CALLI: They’d tell these things to a robot? Was it a familiar figure to them? What did it look like?
NATE: It looks pretty much like your standard little robot, vaguely human looking but definitely like a robot you’d see on tv. Researchers used a robot they named Nao. It's about two feet tall and has a childlike voice. Researchers programmed it, but it functioned on its own. Children could even talk to it, or respond to questions it asked by silently touching different buttons on its feet. They also gave the robot sensors to track children’s heartbeats, and how their heads and eyes moved.
CALLI: Wait but why were researchers asking children questions through a robot in the first place? Why not just use a human to ask the questions?
NATE: Well, some previous research found that children were more likely to share info with a robot than an adult, especially for more private, sensitive things, like their experience with bullies. So, the researchers created a study to see how a robot might be used to help assess children’s mental health.
CALLI: Ok, how old were the children? I feel like I might have been terrified by a robot as a three year old.
NATE: They were a bit older than that. The study included 28 children between the ages of 8 and 13 who each had a 45 minute one-on-one session with Nao.
CALLI: Were they just chatting with it? Hey robot, do you need any…oil? Or do robots just run on batteries now? How do these conversations go?
NATE: Well it kind of started that way to be honest, the sessions opened with a casual chat, even a human-to-robot fist bump to make the interaction feel friendly. But then, the robot asked kids questions about their feelings and moods, or if they had sad or happy memories from the past week. They even did a more official questionnaire to see if they had any anxiety.
CALLI: And the kid’s actually talked to the robot? Told it how they really felt?
NATE: Not only did they talk to it, they shared more information with the robot than they had to an adult and were more likely to talk about their negative experiences. But every single child in the study said they liked talking to the robot!
CALLI: I will say talking to a robot does sound pretty fun. Kind of like Star Wars coming to life with a droid. But do researchers have any idea…why... The robot was so much more effective?
NATE: They can’t be entirely sure, but the robot was kid-sized, and researchers say that may have helped kids see it as more a friend or confidant who they felt better telling their true feelings to. Researchers say these same children might just tell parents or psychologists what they thought they wanted to hear, whereas the robot got the truth!
CALLI: That is really encouraging. We can all use a confidant, especially on our bad days. But what does the future look like? 21 kids isn’t many, are we going to see these in elementary and middle schools all over the country soon?
NATE: Well, they aren’t a substitute for real mental health support. But they could help screen more kids in schools and hopefully catch some of these mental health issues at an earlier stage.
CALLI: Huh, it's funny to think, robots helping us feel better about our very real human problems.
NATE: Absolutely, researchers say one of the biggest takeaways is that we have to consider that robots could play a much larger role in dealing with mental health issues, especially for children.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, I know you’re not a big coffee drinker, but do you ever use those plastic K-cups to make tea or anything? Can you even imagine how much waste that creates?
NATE: Oh I do like those cups, they’re so convenient. I still use them for hot cocoa sometimes, but I always feel kind of bad that you use all that plastic for just a single hot drink
CALLI: We have thrown enough plastic K-cups out to wrap around the world 10 times!
NATE: Holy cow that’s a lot of cups! Especially considering how small they are!
CALLI: You’ve got that right! But a new Swiss company is trying to end all the waste, while keeping all the convenience. They have created a one-serving coffee machine that works like a Nespresso or Keurig. The system uses balls of compressed coffee, much like those other systems, but instead of being wrapped in metal or plastic, they’re wrapped in…seaweed.
NATE: Wrapped in seaweed?! What is this, sushi coffee?
CALLI: No, no, no, your cup of hot chocolate won’t be umami at all. The covering is just made from sea-weed, it’s not like it’s an actual leaf! The coating is thin, flavorless, and colorless. All you’ll be thinking about is your coffee, or your hot chocolate, not sea plants, when it comes time for a morning brew.
NATE: Why did they start trying to make a plant version of these cups? Why not focus on making what we have recyclable or something like that?
CALLI: Well manufacturers have, but it's still not enough. Tons and tons of plastic from k-cups end up in the landfill each month, and only a small fraction of recycled pods are actually recycled, and even then recycling is an energy intensive process and it takes a lot of work to get the coffee grounds out of the pods. And after all that, the coffee is composted most of the time! Even the compostable pods that some companies make often have to be composted in an industrial composting facility, you're not just tossing them in your garden.
NATE: Say compost again.
CALLI: I don’t think I can I said compost so many times.
NATE: What about those refillable pods?
CALLI: Well those eliminate all the convenience of these single-use coffee makers! You don't get much of the benefit if you are always having to load up your single cup coffee maker! But you avoid all of this with…seaweed!
NATE: Ok ok, so how does it work?
CALLI: Well you take your seaweed-encased compressed coffee ball, toss it in your machine, and let it start brewing! The machine pokes holes in the casing and runs hot water through the grounds to make coffee! When you’re done, pull the pod out and you can compost it AND the coffee within. HAH I said compost again.
NATE: And how's the coffee?
CALLI: The company who makes the system, Migros, says the seaweed is tasteless, so you’ll just be tasting whatever coffee is inside! And you can already get decaf and other coffee roasts, all of which are either Rainforest Alliance or Organic and Fairtrade certified. And the company offsets 100% of their carbon by donating to climate projects.
NATE: Wait, these are already on the market?
CALLI: Yeah, in a few European countries, and the distribution continues to grow.
NATE: I can’t wait until they make it to the states!
CALLI: I know! Me too! All the convenience, none of the guilt! And a delicious cup of coffee. Thanks seaweed!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Hey Calli, I’ve got some exciting news for those who suffer, or have loved ones who suffer, from eating disorders, and it's got to do with a recent study looking into the effects of deep brain stimulation or DBS.
CALLI: Okay so that is exciting. I know that conditions like anorexia nervosa and obesity are huge issues around the country, so this could have the potential to help a lot of people. Before we get into it though, mind reminding me and letting our listeners know what are the actual definitions of these types of disorders?
NATE: Well, anorexia nervosa is a debilitating disorder where someone intensely restricts their calories. In most severe cases, people consume almost zero calories per day, which, as you can imagine, results in an insane amount of stress on the body. It actually has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder: nearly six percent of people who suffer from it will die. Obesity, on the other hand, is a little more complex. It’s a series of diseases that come up when someone has too much body fat. So it’s not just being overweight, it’s also the health problems that pop up from being overweight. So deep brain stimulation is being used to try and address the underlying psychiatric conditions of these disorders.
CALLI: That would be great. A “one size fits all” treatment. But uh… what’s deep brain stimulation? It actually sounds horrifying.
NATE: DBS involves getting electrodes implanted into certain parts of the brain that produce electrical impulses and they watch to see if there are any abnormal impulses or chemical reactions in the brain worth checking out. It’s usually controlled by a pacemaker-like device placed under the skin in your upper chest, with a wire traveling under the skin to your brain.
CALLI: Okay, so… that’s not relaxing. What is it about DBS that could help anorexia and obesity?
NATE: Even though DBS sounds intense, it’s actually been shown that it can help rewire the dysfunctional circuits within the brains of people with eating disorders. It stimulates the brain when it needs a reminder of a more “healthy” behavior, and weakens the signal whenever behavior occurs that reinforces the disease. For example, DBS can stimulate the brain during regular meal hours for people with anorexia, but it can lower food cravings during non-meal hours for people struggling with obesity.
CALLI: How big of a difference did DBS make?
NATE: So, for patients with anorexia, there was an overall increase in their body mass index, or BMI, by nearly 25 percent over the span of 17 months. For patients with obesity, there was a decrease in BMI by an average of 4 percent. That might not seem like a lot, but as anybody who’s ever tried to lose weight knows, it’s a lot easier to put on weight than it is to lose it.
CALLI: That’s great. So are we going to start seeing DBS as a treatment option for people coping with anorexia or obesity?
NATE: Not immediately. It’s a promising solution, but more studies are needed to confirm its usefulness. Especially for obesity; even though the four percent BMI decrease is a big deal, it’s not substantial enough when compared to other methods, like diet and exercise. What makes this whole ordeal more complicated is that many obesity cases are considered “intractable,” or impossible to treat. For those with intractable cases, their worst case scenario is that it doesn’t help, but there’s a great deal of people who can benefit from DBS. I think if anyone suffering from an illness has the opportunity for a better life because of this treatment, then it’s as good a start as any!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. When it comes to dealing with mental health in children, our next big tool is a two-foot tall robot named Nao. Researchers found children were more likely to share their true feelings with the robot than their own parents.
CALLI: A new coffee machine promises all the conveniences of K-cups with none of the waste. A Swiss company has created seaweed based coffee pods that are flavorless and compostable.
NATE: Contrary to popular belief, anorexia nervosa and obesity are psychiatric disorders. This has scientists wondering - could there be a psychiatric treatment for these conditions? And it turns out that with deep brain stimulation, both ailments could receive more proper treatment! It’s still too early to say if DBS will act as a cure-all, but if the experiments go well - we could see the end of both for good.