Learn about how hoarders’ brains see their belongings; why dolphins consciously lower their heart rates; and what scientists think happened before the big bang.
Learn about how hoarders’ brains see their belongings; why dolphins consciously lower their heart rates; and what scientists think happened before the big bang.
How Hoarders' Brains See Their Belongings by Ashley Hamer
Dolphins consciously decrease their heart rates before diving by Grant Currin
What Came Before the Big Bang? originally aired September 3, 2018: https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/what-came-before-the-big-bang-diner-designs-and-th
Powers of Ten (1977): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/what-came-before-the-big-bang
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 how hoarders’ brains see their belongings; how dolphins can consciously lower their heart rates; and what came before the big bang.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Have you ever wondered why excessive hoarding happens? Well, people with hoarding disorder have an uncontrollable urge to accumulate possessions, and they experience mental anguish at the thought of parting with them. That might sound like obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, and until nearly 10 years ago, that’s what psychiatrists thought, too. But in 2012, a brain-imaging study showed just how different this disorder really is — and that paves the way for new treatments.
The study included about 100 participants. Roughly a third were diagnosed with hoarding disorder, another third had OCD, and the final third were normal controls. The participants brought a few pieces of their junk mail to the lab, with the assurance that they'd get it back at the end of the experiment. Their mail was labeled “Yours” and shuffled in with junk mail from the lab that was labeled "Ours." The participants went in a brain scanner and then had to decide whether to keep or shred each piece of mail.
Unsurprisingly, the people with hoarding disorder chose to keep more of their own mail than the other two groups. But it was the activity in their brains that fascinated the researchers; the anterior cingulate cortex is a region associated with decision-making — especially in times of uncertainty — and it was more active than that of the other groups. Same with the emotion-monitoring center known as the insula. This suggests that when someone with hoarding disorder has to decide whether to get rid of a possession, they obsess on the uncertainty and experience heightened emotions surrounding the decision. At the same time, those same brain regions showed unusually low activity when the hoarders considered stuff that wasn't theirs. And that might explain why patients with hoarding disorder also tend to have trouble staying motivated and making good decisions.
It's easy to dismiss a newly classified disorder as giving into a fad or just playing semantics, but that's just not the case. This research shows that people with hoarding disorder aren't slobs or overenthusiastic collectors; they're people who have difficulty with the decision to get rid of things. This new classification also makes it easier for them to get effective treatment. Treatments that usually help people with OCD haven't worked on those with hoarding disorder, and identifying it as its own illness could open the door to new approaches. Knowledge leads to understanding, and understanding leads to compassion — something everybody needs, no matter your condition.
We’ve known for a while that marine mammals lower their heart rates when they swim underwater. But new research suggests that, in dolphins at least, this isn’t just a reflex: these animals can consciously control their heart rates.
This research involved three dolphins who live at Siegfried and Roy’s Secret Garden Dolphin habitat in Las Vegas. The dolphins’ handlers trained them to hold their breath for various lengths of time, and used special equipment to measure their heart rates in the process. The results were pretty impressive: the longer each dolphin knew it needed to hold its breath, the more it reduced its heart rate.
These results suggest that dolphins probably have more control over their heart rates than humans do. It seems like they control their heartbeat as easily as humans can control their breathing rhythm.
Why would evolution have endowed dolphins with this very cool ability? The researchers point to two reasons. The first one is pretty obvious: a lower heart rate lets them conserve oxygen and make longer, deeper dives.
The second reason will be familiar if you’ve ever scuba dived: it helps them avoid decompression sickness, also known as “the bends.” You see, the air you breathe is a mixture of different gases: there’s oxygen and carbon dioxide, but also a whole lot of nitrogen. As a diver goes deeper, the pressure in their lungs gets higher, which can make some of the nitrogen gas in the lungs dissolve into the blood. When the diver swims back up to the surface, that dissolved nitrogen turns back into gas — and if they surface too quickly, it forms bubbles in the blood that can cause life-threatening symptoms.
How do dolphins avoid the same fate? Their ability to deliberately regulate their heart rate might be part of the answer. It’s possible that it helps them manipulate which blood goes to the lungs and other tissues and prevent that dissolved nitrogen from doing damage.
But there is something that does cause dolphins to get the bends: sudden, loud noises. Think blasts from undersea oil exploration. That can make it pretty hard to keep their heart rates low, and a spike in heart rate can lead to decompression sickness. But the researchers say there’s an easy solution. Slowly raising noise levels over time should make it easier for dolphins to maintain their heart rate when they have to put up with an underwater racket.
CODY: We’re not afraid of asking the big questions here on Curiosity Daily, and that includes the origins of the entire universe. It’s been a while since we talked about the big bang, so we remastered this classic clip from 2018.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Today’s episode was 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!