Learn how a man wrote sentences using only his mind; how popular song lyrics got simpler; and the bitterness of Bitrex. Brain-computer interface lets people communicate by imagining they're writing by Grant Currin Composing thoughts: mental handwriting produces brain activity that can be turned into text | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. (2021). Nih.gov. https://www.ninds.nih.gov/News-Events/News-and-Press-Releases/Press-Releases/Composing-thoughts-mental-handwriting-produces Willett, F. R., Avansino, D. T., Hochberg, L. R., Henderson, J. M., & Shenoy, K. V. (2021). High-performance brain-to-text communication via handwriting. Nature, 593(7858), 249–254. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03506-2 Sample, I. (2021, May 12). Paralysed man uses “mindwriting” brain computer to compose sentences. The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/12/paralysed-man-mindwriting-brain-computer-compose-sentences Timmer, J. (2021, May 12). Neural implant lets paralyzed person type by imagining writing. Ars Technica; Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/neural-implant-lets-paralyzed-person-type-by-imagining-writing/ Popular song lyrics have gotten simpler over time by Kelsey Donk Rigg, C. (2021, May 17). Newer generations prefer simpler song lyrics. PsyPost; PsyPost. https://www.psypost.org/2021/05/newer-generations-prefer-simpler-song-lyrics-60800 Varnum, M. E. W., Krems, J. A., Morris, C., Wormley, A., & Grossmann, I. (2021). Why are song lyrics becoming simpler? a time series analysis of lyrical complexity in six decades of American popular music. PLOS ONE, 16(1), e0244576. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0244576 Bitrex Is The Most Bitter Substance In The World by Anna Todd Denatonium- The most bitter compound known. (2021). Scienceofcooking.com. https://www.scienceofcooking.com/denatonium.htm Just how bitter is Bitrex? (2012, September 18). Bitrex - Keeping Children Safe. https://www.bitrex.com/about-bitrex/how-bitter-bitrex The Bitrex Taste Test. (2014, May 20). Bitrex - Keeping Children Safe. https://www.bitrex.com/taste-test US4479889A - Compositions and method for degrading foodstuffs - Google Patents. (1968, October 9). Google.com. https://patents.google.com/patent/US4479889 SciShow. (2018). What’s the Most Bitter Chemical? [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xl_inefbHE CONSUMER’S WORLD; Mother Fights to Ruin the Taste of Poison (Published 1989). (2021). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/20/style/consumer-s-world-mother-fights-to-ruin-the-taste-of-poison.html 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 how a man wrote sentences using only his mind; how popular song lyrics got simpler; and the bitterness of Bitrex.
Brain-computer interface lets people communicate by imagining they're writing by Grant Currin
Popular song lyrics have gotten simpler over time by Kelsey Donk
Bitrex Is The Most Bitter Substance In The World by Anna Todd
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/why-song-lyrics-are-getting-simpler
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 technology that helped a paralyzed man write sentences with his mind; why popular song lyrics have gotten simpler over time; and how you can try the most bitter substance on Earth.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Researchers have made a huge step forward in service of people with spinal cord injuries and neurological disorders. In the first successful demonstration of its kind, a man who was paralyzed in 2007 wrote more than 200 sentences using only his mind.
This isn’t the first system devised to help paralyzed people communicate. A French magazine editor blinked his entire memoir after a stroke in the 90s, and Stephen Hawking used muscles in his cheek to pick letters using a cursor.
In the newly proven method, researchers implanted two small computer chips on the left side of a research participant’s brain in a region responsible for fine motor movement. For privacy, the researchers call the participant T5. The pair of chips contained about 100 electrodes that eavesdropped on the neurons controlling T5’s right hand.
Once the chips were in place, the researchers brought T5 into the lab and asked him to imagine holding a pen above a piece of paper and writing each letter of the alphabet. While he was doing that, the researchers recorded a ton of data describing the patterns of electrical activity in his brain while he quote-unquote “wrote” each letter.
Even though it had been more than a decade since he’d been able to move his hands, T5’s brain showed distinct patterns for each of the letters he imagined writing. Some of the letters were really easy for the researchers to tell apart, but it was harder to distinguish letters that look similar and require similar actions to draw. I’m looking at you, lower-case r, h, and n.
The researchers took that data and used it to train a type of artificial intelligence algorithm, called a recurrent neural network, to match the brain activity with the letters.
But all of this is just the setup. Here’s the real story: after quite a bit of practice, T5 was able to write sentences at 18 words per minute, just by imagining he was drawing the letters! The accuracy was pretty good, too. The algorithm managed to guess the correct letter about 94 percent of the time. Accuracy rose to 99 percent with autocorrect. That’s a big ducking deal. [CODY LAUGH HERE]
This is a huge step, but the tech won’t be available for regular patients anytime soon. Technology like this has to be proven to work for a lot more people before it’s considered clinically viable. The researchers also hope to increase the number of characters the system can recognize. Right now it’s limited to lower-case letters and a couple of punctuation marks. But hey, it sure beats blinking an entire memoir.
If you’ve noticed that pop music sounds a lot simpler than it did in the past, it’s not just you. It’s science. That’s according to a new study of music lyrics over six decades. That study may have found a reason for this trend toward simplicity — and it’s not that kids these days have no taste.
The researchers behind this study measured how simple songs were based on how compressible they were. They compressed songs like Zip files — every time an element like a chorus repeated, that element was replaced with a link back to its first appearance. The more compressed a song could get, the simpler the researchers considered it to be.
Other studies have come to similar conclusions about music getting simpler over time. But this team wanted to know why. They figured that maybe, it’s because there are more songs being made every year.
They had a few reasons for this hypothesis. One comes down to the mere exposure effect, or the fact that we like something the more we’re exposed to it. Hear “all the single ladies” enough times, and you kinda can’t resist singing along! Research has also found that when we’re faced with a lot of choices, we tend to prefer the simplest ones so we can give our brains a break.
Sure enough, the team found that the more new songs there were in a year, the simpler those songs were on average. And those simpler songs got more and more popular as the landscape of new music got more crowded in any given year.
Of course, the researchers realized there could be other factors at play. Other studies have shown that as social and ecological factors shift, song lyrics shift, too. For instance, when resources are scarce or when disease is rampant, people tend to be less creative and more interested in conforming with others. So the researchers looked into changes in a ton of different factors ranging from infectious disease and climate change to rates of conservatism and collectivism. They looked into just about every social factor that could influence songwriting over 60 years. None were as strongly linked to simplicity in song lyrics as the number of new songs was.
So if we like simpler songs better when we have more songs to choose from, that suggests that our preference for how simple our media is isn’t something inherent to us as consumers. It changes over time. But if there are more podcasts to choose from every day, then that means…
ASHLEY: Simple good?
CODY: Yes. Simple good. Next story.
What's the most bitter thing you've ever laid your tastebuds on? Coffee, an IPA, or maybe even dark chocolate? Imagine that pungent flavor multiplied by infinity — that's Denatonium Benzoate (Bitrex®). It was coined the "bitterest substance" in the world by the Guinness World Records. And it exists for a very good reason.
Bitrex was originally discovered by scientist Macfarlan Smith in 1958 when he was trying to make a more effective version of the anesthetic known as Lidocaine. But instead of blocking pain signals, his new concoction glommed onto bitter taste receptors — and turned the heat up to 11. This chemical compound is so bitter that if you dropped a thimble-full of the stuff into an Olympic swimming pool, the bitterness could still be detected in the water. The U.S. Army even reported that this substance could be used in chemical warfare to make food supplies inedible. And yet, this stuff is actually pretty popular. It's currently being used in at least 60 countries.
While the substance was rejected as an anesthetic, its extreme bitter taste was perfect for adding to dangerous products to make them less appealing to children and animals. Accidental poison ingestion was a big problem in the 1980s, so concerned mothers advocated for Bitrex to be added to dangerous household products. The compound itself is harmless — it just tastes really, really horrible. In 1995, Oregon passed a law requiring Bitrex to be added to antifreeze and windshield wiper fluid. Now you can find Bitrex listed as a prominent ingredient in several common poisonous products, ranging from perfumes to household cleaners. This bitter accident is helping to save lives!
And get this: you can actually try Bitrex for yourself, through the manufacturer. They encourage people to order a taste test, then share photos of your reaction on social media with the hashtag #BitrexTasteTest. I’m not even joking — you can find a link in the show notes. One review says, quote, "I took a tiny taste of Bitrex and my mouth tasted like a place where old spiders go to die.'' end quote. Good luck.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Grant Currin, Kelsey Donk, and Anna Todd.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!