Learn about why you get brain freeze, just how advanced neural networks are these days, and a science-backed trick for learning a new language. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Why Do You Get Brain Freeze While Eating Icy Treats? Neural Networks Have Advanced Beyond Our Understanding, and That's Kind of Terrifying Spaced Repetition Is an Effective, Science-Backed Way to Learn a New Language 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 you get brain freeze, just how advanced neural networks are these days, and a science-backed trick for learning a new language.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
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.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/neural-networks-why-you-get-brain-freeze-and-a-science-based-trick-for-learning-a-new-language
CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn why you get brain freeze, just how advanced neural networks are these days, and a science-backed trick for learning a new language.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Ice cream is delicious, but brain freeze is not. Brain freeze is the throbbing pain you get when you eat an icy treat, and there's an actual scientific term for it. More importantly, there's a way to stop it. Ashley, does this happen to you?
ASHLEY HAMER: Of course.
CODY GOUGH: I don't experience it a lot.
ASHLEY HAMER: Really?
CODY GOUGH: Maybe I just don't eat it quickly or--
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh. I'm ravenous. So now, you know more about me than you needed to.
CODY GOUGH: Or maybe I'm unconsciously doing the trick that you're about to learn.
ASHLEY HAMER: Maybe.
CODY GOUGH: The scientific term for brain freeze is, ready for it? sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. Rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? It's named after a bundle of nerves near the back of your mouth, which is the reason we have to deal with brain freeze. When something ice cold comes into contact with your soft palate, it touches that group of nerves also called SPG. It's sensitive to changes in temperature. So when you eat an icy treat, you get a headache.
But to be fair to your SPG, the brain freeze is actually a biological reaction to keep your brain at the right temperature. The SPG is right next to a couple of pretty important arteries, like the one that feeds blood to your brain. And when you eat or drink something really hot or cold, the temperature shock causes those arteries to rapidly expand and contract. That triggers your SPG and sends a message to your brain through the trigeminal nerve, to let it know that you're experiencing pain.
At the end of the day, the SPG is there to help protect the brain from slipping out of its optimal state, but it can handle the shock for a little while. If you can deal with the brain freeze, then go to town on that pint of Ben & Jerry's. But here's a tip. The best way to treat brain freeze once you have it is to press your tongue or thumb on the roof of your mouth. The heat from your tongue or thumb will warm up the SPG pretty quickly, which then tells the brain to stop the pain response.
You can also cover your mouth and nose and breathe into your hands to circulate warm air, which can also raise the temperature of your soft palate. And if you want to avoid brain freeze in the first place, then just try eating the cold food near the front of your mouth away from the SPG. Or enjoy it more slowly, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: Never.
CODY GOUGH: To give your palate time to adjust. Now I really want a milkshake.
ASHLEY HAMER: Me too. Artificial intelligence is getting smarter and better every day. So you should probably be familiar with neural networks. Those are the complex systems of electronic neurons that power everything from lab experiments to your phone's facial recognition software. They can learn things on their own. And like I said, they are very smart. Well, they're so smart that they've actually advanced beyond our understanding. Kind of scary, right? So today, we're going to take a look at where the technology is, and where it might be headed.
CODY GOUGH: Are we talking like Terminator 2, Skynet, other machines coming?
ASHLEY HAMER: Kind of.
CODY GOUGH: Uh-oh.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you give a bunch of data to a neural network, it will eventually figure out how to identify pictures or find distant galaxies. But after the first step and before the last step, AI engineers don't actually know what happens. Neural networks are a mystery, just like human brains. That's because they don't work the way computers work.
A neural network is built out of artificial neurons, which can fire in response to certain features in the data they're fed. Let's say you give a neural network millions of pictures of dogs. Those neurons are arranged in layers. And those each process more and more abstract details. From the broad outline of the pup in the first layer, for instance, to the colors of its fur and the shape of its eyes in later layers. And then the network eventually comes up with a final product, like the dog's breed.
A neural network isn't very good at this right away. But it gets to compare its work with the right answers, and it eventually learns where it went wrong. Only we don't see the improvement. We just see the results. So when a neural network screws up, engineers don't know exactly why. Maybe it's a little fluke, or maybe it's a huge programming flaw. Shrug.
Oh, and the networks sometimes come up with stuff they aren't programmed to do at all. One time, an AI that was trained to recognize objects started to recognize human faces. And another time, two bots trained to negotiate with each other came up with their own language. We're not trying to freak you out, so don't worry. Skynet isn't here quite yet.
Right now, engineers are working on new networks that are more transparent in their decision-making. Some are having the networks explain their decisions to humans, and others are using multiple AIs with one doing a task and the other just interpreting the reasoning of the first. So there's hope for the future. But yeah, the future is kind of already here. Pretty advanced.
CODY GOUGH: I'm just waiting for a Commander Data's emotion chip. Don't worry about it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Today's episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
CODY GOUGH: Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash. People could get hurt or killed. Let's take a moment to look at some surprising statistics.
ASHLEY HAMER: Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That's one person every 50 minutes.
CODY GOUGH: Even though drunk driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk driving crash has still claimed more than 10,000 lives each year.
ASHLEY HAMER: Drunk driving can have a big impact on your wallet too. You could get arrested and incur huge legal expenses. You could possibly even lose your job.
CODY GOUGH: So what can you do to prevent drunk driving? Plan a safe ride home before you start drinking. Designate a sober driver, or call a taxi. If someone you know has been drinking, take their keys, and arrange for them to get a sober ride home.
ASHLEY HAMER: We all know the consequences of driving drunk. But one thing's for sure. You're wrong if you think it's no big deal. Drive sober, or get pulled over.
CODY GOUGH: Ashley, when you were in music school, were you ever told if you practice 30 minutes a day, seven days a week, that's much more effective than practicing 4 hours a day on a Saturday?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. That was generally something that people said. Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: OK. I learned that in a couple of different classes growing up, but I'm not sure how commonplace it is. But today, we've covered some research that kind of bears that out in terms of learning a new language. Now, there are lots of ways to learn a new language, but all methods are not created equal. And now that the school year is here, we've got the perfect study hack for you if you're signed up for a language class.
And research shows that spaced repetition is a great study technique for learning a new language. This idea came from German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus more than 100 years ago. And a 2013 study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience showed some real benefits. It showed that spaced repetition stores information in your long term memory in a matter of minutes, where rapid repetition did not.
Here's how you do it. First, make flashcards with your vocabulary words, either digitally or by hand. Then review your cards once a day. Every time you get a card wrong, put it in a section of cards you need to review frequently. When you get a card right, put it in a section for cards you need to review less frequently.
You can even score each card for how well you remembered it, and place it in a scale from zero to five, where zero means you should review it tomorrow, and five means you can wait to review it until next month because you know it so well. Follow your schedule, and adjust as needed. You can learn more about why exactly this is a better way to remember things in our full write-up today on curiosity.com and on the curiosity app for Android and iOS.
ASHLEY HAMER: You could use this for all sorts of things. You could do it for SAT words. You could do it for musical scales. Anything you need to remember over a long term.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Space it out. Always better than cramming.
ASHLEY HAMER: Definitely. Before we go, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our awesome listener Draka Flega for giving our Alexa flash briefing a five-star review. She wrote, my 10-year-old daughter loves curiosity.com. We enjoyed the stories and the host. Part of our morning routine we look forward to every day. Thank you for taking a minute out of your busy day to write us a review. And thanks to both you and your daughter for staying curious.
If you're listening to this podcast as a flash briefing on your Amazon Echo device, then please give our skill five stars. We really appreciate it. Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily, and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
ANNOUNCER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.