Learn about when you’re most likely to feel hangry (and how to avoid it); what scientists can learn from watching the human brain jiggle; and how a fitness class shook an entire skyscraper — with help from stand-up mathematician Matt Parker.
Learn about when you’re most likely to feel hangry (and how to avoid it); what scientists can learn from watching the human brain jiggle; and how resonant frequencies helped a fitness class shake an entire skyscraper — with help from stand-up mathematician Matt Parker.
Scientists Determined When Hanger Is Most Likely to Strike by Annie Hartman
https://curiosity.com/topics/scientists-determined-when-hanger-is-most-likely-to-strike-curiosity
What can scientists learn from watching the human brain jiggle? by Cameron Duke
Additional resources from Matt Parker:
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-skyscraper-shaking-fitness-class-w-matt-parker-when-hanger-is-most-likely-to-strike-and-studying-the-human-brains-jiggle
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about when you’re most likely to feel hangry and how to avoid it; what scientists can learn from watching the human brain jiggle; and how a fitness class shook an entire skyscraper — with help from stand-up mathematician Matt Parker.
CODY: Let’s shake up some curiosity.
If you sometimes find yourself unreasonably angry for no apparent reason, you might have been struck by hanger and not even know it. Well get this: it turns out that not being aware that you’re hungry is exactly the time hanger can strike. Fortunately, researchers have found some ways to avoid that hangry feeling.
A study published last year in the journal Emotion set out to find out what triggered hangry feelings. The researchers theorized it wasn’t due to just hunger alone.
The first part of the study involved some participants who were hungry and some who weren’t. They looked at images designed to evoke positive, negative, or neutral emotions. Then, they were shown a Chinese character and asked to guess whether it meant something positive or negative. Everyone who saw negative images throughout the survey judged the final character as negative — but the hungrier they were, the more negative they judged it to be. But surprisingly, hungry people who saw positive or neutral pictures rated the final character no differently than the non-hungry people. This suggests that hanger isn’t just about hunger — it may need a negative situation in order to strike.
The same researchers then got two groups of participants (some hungry and some not) to write a story. Some participants’ story prompts were designed to make them focus on how they were feeling, while others didn’t involve their emotions. Afterwards, everyone was assigned a difficult computer task — but the researchers had secretly programmed the computer to crash during the task. The participants were then blamed for that diabolically planned crash, and had to redo the task. Pretty surefire way to make anyone frustrated!
The researchers found that participants whose story hadn’t focused on their emotions reported — and showed — more signs of being hangry. This suggests you're most likely to feel hangry when you're less aware of how you’re feeling. You may not even realize your mood is caused by hunger. Instead, you blame the world around you.
Obviously, the best way to avoid being hangry is to avoid getting hungry in the first place. Pay attention to your body, eat regularly and plan ahead. But that’s not always possible. In that case, if you suddenly find yourself angry, take a minute to reflect on how you are feeling. Do you have a legitimate reason to be angry right now, or do you just need a snack? Check in on yourself, and you might just be able to stop hanger in its tracks.
Did you know that your brain jiggles with every heartbeat? Recently, scientists figured out that those jiggles can help them better classify different types of neurons. And that’s important because having a clearer picture of the brain’s structure will help scientists better understand how it works! Who knew scientists could learn so much from watching the human brain... jiggle?
And scientists didn’t discover this by looking at brain jiggling itself — at least, not at first. They started by looking at the brain’s electrical activity. Neurons use electrical and chemical pulses to communicate with each other. By placing electrodes in or near the brain, scientists can monitor that electrical activity. Each time a neuron fires, they record its unique firing pattern as a waveform, kind of like the audio waveforms that our recording software is creating as I speak. Typically, neurons are classified by the shapes of the waveforms that they produce. But this isn’t a super precise method, since that shape can change based on the kind of electrode you use, what’s in and around the neuron, and even the brain’s current state. It gives us some rough classifications, but it’s a messy way to do things.
A team of neuroscientists recently noticed that brain waves change their firing pattern every time the heart beats. When they looked at this more closely, they realized that the neurons weren’t actually firing differently. Instead, they were ever so slightly moving. They don’t even move the full width of a human hair, but that’s enough to change the waveforms coming from the neuron.
At first, they thought of this as distortion, or noise, around the neural signal. The “aha!” moment came when the researchers realized that this distortion changed in predictable ways with every heartbeat — but that change was different with different types of neurons. That meant that by focusing on the distortion, they could learn a lot more about the type of the neuron they were listening to.
This has allowed them to classify neurons in living brains much more precisely than ever before. So far, they’ve only done this for neurons in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory, but they may be able to apply it to other regions. By learning what different types of neurons there are and how they interact, scientists will be able to better understand how our brain’s physical structure gives rise to thinking, learning, and experiencing the world.
It’s nice to start off your week with a little bit of fun. So starting today and over the next few weeks, we’re gonna liven up your Mondays with some Math Mishaps with Matt Parker. He’s a stand-up comedian, YouTube personality, and best-selling author, with a new book called “Humble Pi (Pi as in P-I): When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World.” The book is a #1 international bestseller — even though, yeah, it’s about math. That’s because the book is full of FUNNY stories about math, which both educate and entertain. Here’s Matt with one of those stories.
[CLIP 1:37]
Ashley in-line (original audio is distorted): So that’s sort of like — I mean, you’re saying the resonant frequency — that’s sort of like, if you were to hum the same note as a guitar string, that guitar string would start to ring… that was kind of what was happening to the building?
[CLIP 0:53]
Who knew resonant frequencies mattered so much? Remember, kids: math is important. Tune in next Monday for more Math Mishaps with Matt Parker. Or if you’re looking for a good book to read right about now, you can find a link to his book “Humble Pi” in today’s show notes.
CODY: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Annie Hartman and Cameron Duke, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!