#this is a huge yap

[zenkindoflove]

Give me your top 5 weird facts about the brain (this ask is payback)

Hahahha, okay but I LOVE this. I can yap forever.

Sorry I will put this all under the cut because it's going to be long. This is what happens when you ask someone with a PhD in neuroscience about their favorite facts about the brain.

"Bird brain" or "smooth brain" meaning stupid is based on some old school theories about intelligence and it's relationship to brain shape and size. Mammals have what is called a "neocortex" or just the cortex which is the "wrinkly" part of the brain that you see in larger animals that gets more wrinkly as you increase in "intelligence" such as primates. The purpose of the wrinkles is to increase surface area to pack more neurons (which is correlated to higher cognitive functions) so that head size doesn't get too big. Now, for a long time it was assumed that mammals had higher intelligence than other animals like fish, lizards, and birds whose brains do not have a cortex. However, studies in the last 10 years have shown that if you actually measure the number of neurons and control for overall size and volume, many birds, especially corvids (crows, ravens), parrots, and songbirds have neuron densities similar to or just below primates, and certainly more than many species of mammals. We have known for a long time that these types of birds have higher levels of intelligence, we just didn't really have a reason/mechanism to explain why. It seems birds have evolved an alternative way to building dense but small brains, which is that they actually pack their neurons close together, much closer than what you see under the microscope of a mammalian brain. Some of my research in graduate school was characterizing what we called neuron "clusters", and they basically look like a bushel of grapes together. So what to take away is that not every "smooth brain" is a dumb brain. It's really about how many neurons you got in there to make up the billions/trillions of connections needed for higher order cognitive processing.

Your brain is able to make all of the "sex steroids" such as testosterone or estrogen (which is really a class of hormones at the one people often mean is known at 17-beta-estradiol). Every steroid hormone is derived from cholesterol, and your brain has all of the enzymes that are necessary for making progestins, androgens, and estrogens. When they are made in the brain, they are often acting as "neuromodulators" which means unlike a hormone (which is a chemical signal that travels long distances through the blood) they are acting locally within synapses (the small spaces between neurons) and controlling how that neuron functions. Outside of the ovaries/testes, the brain is the biggest producer of sex steroids and it's especially true for fish and birds.

The chemical that makes foods taste hot - capsaicin - does so by "tricking" your brain into thinking the temperature has literally changed. You have receptors throughout your body called TRP receptors which are activated whenever there is a change in temperature (either a drop or an increase). Capsaicin binds to the ones that sense heat (an increase in temperature), activates them as they would be when you touch something hot, and that is why spicy foods make you feel hot and hurt you (as pain receptors are also triggered).

I think the "you only use 10% of your brain" is widely known to be a myth. I think it's probably pretty clear you obviously use all of your brain. It doesn't make sense to build such a energy expensive structure to not use most of it. But do you know why this number came about? It's actually from a real, very old study that tried to estimate the number of neurons compared to glia (another cell in the brain that is considered a "support" cell but actually has tons of really important functions. It's called glia because it literally means glue). This old estimate counted that for every 1 neuron there was 9 glia cells, or 10% of the brain was made up of the "functional" cell-type. That has also since been debunked with more sophisticated techniques for estimating ratios and the number of neurons to glia is actually more like 50-50.

Brains are really plastic - meaning they are susceptible to change. There are a lot of reasons for this, one of them being because the primary mechanism for memory is the flexibility in neuronal connections. I won't bore you with all of the details of that though it is cool if you really like cellular biology. But one thing I think is cool is that brains are so flexible, that depending on when in life a brain injury happens (or developmental malformation), you can maintain a lot of function by the brain rewiring its connections to use other regions to make up for the loss of that region. For example, the cerebellum, which is the "tiny brain" that sits below the cerebrum and over the brain stem is incredibly essential for coordinating all movement as well as learning and memory. If this structure is damaged in an adult, that person can have some pretty severe disabilities. However, there has been a case of a woman who was born without a cerebellum - as in it does not exist and is completely gone, and the last time I saw reports about her, she does not have any loss of functions that medical professionals were able to measure (this was about a decade ago so this could have changed). It seems because she was never born with it in the first place, her brain used other structures to control those functions as she was a baby learning to move in the world.

[somewhereincairparavel]

“jason is so cold and inconsiderate” his natural instinct when he found out nico was staying at camp was to hug him tightly but he restrained himself because nico mentioned to jason ONCE that he doesn't like being touched. consent KING

[ratbugs]

ants are genuinely so chill.

i don’t understand where this immense fear of ants we have in our society comes from. ants, wasps, bugs in general.

literlly slow down and take two seconds to allow them to exist in your world and you’ll see how wonderful and sweet and curious they are.

i have a whole bunch of twig ants in my room. no idea where they came from - but we don’t use pest control so we have lots of bugs around.

they are the sweetest gentlest babies in the entire world. they come and hang out with me while i’m at my computer, running over my hands and my mouse. i give them drops of water and they sniff out the juice in my cup if i have any.

what is so interesting to me, is that in the past few years i’ve spent seeking out bugs as much as i can - i’ve been bitten by an ant maybe… three times? and each time was when they had gotten caught in my clothing and got scared.

there’s this table on my campus that is always covered in ants. hardly anyone sits there because of it. but they just like…. don’t do anything?? i sit there all the time and i’ve only ever been bitten ONCE sitting at that table, when a poor little ant got stuck under my sock and was scared.

don’t get me wrong, i completely understand fearing wasps or ants due to allergies. that i understand.

it’s when it’s just the simple fear of them existing, that i don’t understand. seriously, when you don’t put your whole damn foot in their nest or spray their hive with a hose, they’re just chill.

they’re so sweet, they’re so curious, they’re so chill.

ants and wasps and all bugs deserve so much more love than they get. Please PLEASE PLEASE give your local buggies some love today 🐜🐜

[emeraldcrs]

it's almost the size of my head

♡tags: @soldiersgirl @figthoughts @briiverse @bejeweledinterludes @littlesoulshine @cowboysandcigarettes @soangelbaby @sugardean @angelblqde @sunsbaby @soldierboysdoll @scrmqwn @1967barracuda @thekhloediary @hischrrypie @pieandflannel @jays-bonnie-on-the-side

[queeniehostapasta]

Uh oh! Looks like a squabble is happening between them! How will they ever settle their dispute?

…Literally five minutes have passed, I mean…it’s one way to do it!

[1o1percentmilk]

marimo diplomacy..........

[killthelawyer]

L'amica geniale 2.03 "Scancellare"

[nekrosmos]

My NikPrice ref sheet is getting way out of hand

[phosphophillight]

shes my favorite character forever… some mahiru doodles i made while i watched a show with a friend. still trying to figure out how to draw her bc theres an animatic i want to make with her rlly bad.. maybe in a few months

[emeraldcrs]

there's something in the roman air...

[gammija]

ig another annoying thing about the 'this transcends language 😲😱' comments about the most obvious of cognates and literal english loanwords, is that it's another example of how native english speakers (and, by virtue of their population size, mostly USamericans) are the arbiters of what gets seen as 'universal' vs what's weird and foreign on the anglophone internet. cause to me as a dutch speaker, a lot of german compound words would '''transcend language''' - but the tweets that go viral about those kinds of words are about how they're silly little nonsense words to laugh at, can't be a real language, can you believe anyone speaks that!

[peacockrulz]

N tries to tell another joke (gone wrong)

Sequel to This

[mirensiart]

The chain in a modern au like

wind: sending twilight a "this kitty was alone and lost in a cardboard box until this couple found him, what happens next will warm your heart" type of video

twilight, sobbing while watching the video: oh god he's so cold oh my god he's so tiny ooough they're putting him in a blanket burrito 🥺🥺

wild: recording twilight sobbing and uploading it to the group chat and on tiktok

[queeniehostapasta]

Honestly completely forgot I gave Z Broly those big ass goofy horns at one point (mmm blue raspberry flavor..)

[knotboy-dean]

It is truly crazy to me that you can see the exact moment that Dean’s view of Cas changes in 9x22.

Like imagine you’re Dean. Imagine your best friend has been continuously making questionable (and even bad) decisions and keeping them from you either to “protect” you or to keep from hurting your feelings. Imagine that you’ve begged him not to do this but he feels so genuinely that he’s right and he begs YOU to trust him, only for you to be right like you thought and for the cycle to continue. Imagine caring about him so much that you keep trying and trying to forgive him and put your faith in him, but a lifetime of trauma and disappointment keeps you from fully being able to forget.

Now imagine that guy has gone and done it again. He’s making questionable decisions and he’s not telling you about them but you’ve discovered it, and now he’s forced to explain himself and let you in on it. Imagine thinking huh, this seems too good to be true, idk about this but maybe I can help him, maybe I can be trusted enough to help do this? And then the guy’s new best friend says she doesn’t like you, you can’t be trusted, the only way to save everyone and keep their loyalty is for your guy to kill you.

In your mind you beg him not to, but deep down you know he’s never chosen you, not completely. He’s always chosen family, which you can sort of understand because you’d always put family first too. And the betrayal and hurt is so clear on your face.

But then he doesn’t. He refuses to hurt you, even if everyone is telling him that it’s the only way, even if he’ll lose their trust and support, because he’s already broken his trust with you and it’s not worth doing again. For once he trusts YOU. He chooses you.

He chooses you, and he doesn’t even say that he’s sorry.

[blueberry-obsessed]

Oh my god guys look it's bubbles and buttercup!!