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When people sleep more they also eat less sugar…

and 2 other news we found for you.

 

When people sleep more they also eat less sugar and carbs

Want to eat better? Sleep more. Increasing the amount of sleep a person gets has been linked to eating fewer sugary foods, and making better nutritional choices.
Wendy Hall, at King’s College London, and her team enlisted 42 volunteers to help them investigate the link between sleep and diet. Half the participants were given advice on how to get more sleep – such as avoiding caffeine before bed, establishing a relaxing routine, and trying not to go to bed too full or hungry. This advice was intended to help them boost the amount of sleep they each got by 90 minutes a night. The remaining 21 volunteers received no such advice.
The team found that, of those who were given the advice, 86 per cent spent more time in bed, and around half slept for longer than they used to. These extended sleep patterns were associated with an average reduction in the intake of free sugars of 10 grams a day. People who were getting more sleep also ate fewer carbohydrates. There were no significant changes in diet in the control group.

Read article on newscientist.

 

A reboot for chronic fatigue syndrome research

Research into this debilitating disease has a rocky past. Now scientists may finally be finding their footing.
After decades of pleading, people with the condition have finally caught the attention of mainstream science — and dozens of exploratory studies are now under way. Scientists entering the field are using the powerful tools of modern molecular biology to search for any genes, proteins, cells and possible infectious agents involved. They hope the work will yield a laboratory test to diagnose ME/CFS — which might have several different causes and manifestations — and they want to identify molecular pathways to target with drugs.
Read article on nature.

 

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing review

– timely guide Daniel H Pink’s engaging book reveals the best times of day to make optimum décisions.

In 2011, two Cornell researchers, Michael Macy and Scott Golder, began an unusual project. They gathered approximately 500m tweets that had been posted by more than 2 million users in 84 countries over the previous two years. Then they subjected these tweets to careful analysis.
The sociologists’ aim was straightforward. The pair wanted to measure how people’s feelings varied from morning until night and, by using an analysis program called Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), they attempted to measure the emotional states revealed by individuals in the electronic texts they sent. The patterns that were uncovered were striking.
Macy and Golder found that with remarkable consistency – and regardless of time of year – people’s positive emotions rose in strength as the morning progressed and then fell significantly in the afternoon, before climbing back in the evening. “Whether a tweeter was North American or Asian, Muslim or atheist, black, white or brown, it didn’t matter,” Daniel Pink tells us. “Across continents and time zones was the same daily oscillation – a peak, a trough and a rebound.”

Read article on theguardian.

 

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2018: From now on, I shall hold my good resolutions!


 

1 year. It is the time required by the Earth to turn around the Sun. The time for the seasons to pass, as well as the twelve Zodiac constellations. And then the Earth, with us, returns to its starting point. Almost. Because the cosmic hazards infer an approximation, the Earth, every year, does not begin its new revolution from the same starting point than the year before. Every new cycle is different from the precedent. Also, we too, every year, take a new start again. Better than the precedent if it is possible. With new good resolutions to hold, just to move forward in life.

The good resolutions are a projection of what we want to be. Therefore, they are halfway between the artless wish and the proactive initiative. And if the dream is essential to make us rise to our aspirations, the action is also necessary. Without action, we shall live the same solar cycle each and every year. But, as human nature is lazy, most of the time the wish takes it over on the action. Everyone can take good resolutions, but not everyone manages to hold those! Indeed, every year we all would like to change our lives. And every year, the long-awaited important change does not occur, for lack of organized strategy and self-discipline.

The trick I give you in order to hold your good resolutions of the year, it is to CHEAT! To cheat against your too big and thus paralyzing expectations, but without denying them and choosing only small insignificant resolutions. To cheat against your laziness which says you to wait that an event arises because you aren’t able to achieve yourself a change as big as the one that you wait for in your life, but without minimizing your expectations toward the life. The trick I give you to succeed to act rather than to wait, it is to not take good resolutions for the year to come, but to take good resolutions for the two next years!

Begin by identifying the change that you wish to see arising in your life, two years later from now on. Then work on finding an intermediate objective to carry out during the current year. Not everything in your life will change when you’ll have reach your intermediate objective, but then you will be closer to the state you try to achieve.

There are multiple psychological advantages to proceed like that. To begin with, defining an intermediate objective forces you to think about what you need to change before aiming straight forward for the change. That forces you to define a methodology to reach your final goal. And building a strategy is the beginning of the action. To think in that terms is already putting the process of fulfillment on the way: you’re no more going to be different later on, you right now begin to change. And you can’t change what you are without changing your mind. What is actually painful. Yet if you don’t make the effort to think about the work you have to undertake in order to change yourself, then you have no chance to succeed in that task. Now, to validate a good resolution over two years forces you to accept this established fact.

Then the second thing which throws you into the action is that the intermediate objective doesn’t particularly make you dream: therefore, the work to be done will be conceived as work. No more time loss building castles in the sky, no more waste of time passed to daydream in “what life will be good when I’ll have reached my goal …”. Defining an intermediate objective to reach is also a way to think in terms of “movement” rather than in terms of “state”: we are not thinking anymore like “My life is just crap right now… what a loser am I…” and “That is going to be so great when …”. We are not anymore in the magical change of state, but in the transformation of present to build future. And that’s actually exactly how things work.

Finally, besides psychological tricks, the intermediate objective also is a real help, it is like to add a step between two floors: then you can use your legs to push you upward, not only your arms to pull you. As the intermediate objective is easier to reach than the final goal, you will be less afraid to undertake the task, you will be less tempted to say “later”. And then, when it has been reached, as you already have invested time and energy to change, you will be more motivated to end the work the next year!

Having said that, I can hear some whispering at the back of the room, as somebody begins discussing with his neighbor: ” yeah, well, all this stuff is cool, but the guy isn’t really in a hurry, is he? Two years, can you imagine? While all the others hold their good resolutions in a single year? Better trying to motivate ourselves and then go, shouldn’t we? ” And his neighbor, answering: ” what the guy said is still not stupid, but why not trying to reach the intermediate goal AND the final one during the same year? ”

Well, if they had asked me their question, I shall have answered them: ” it is better to move forward two times slower than not at all by taking good resolutions to hold in one year only and not to do what is required to make it happen … And then, does two years really seem so long to you? Please, let’s be serious just one moment: over the last 20 or 30 years, how many good resolutions in the year did you really hold? So, what are you really risking taking a shot with this method, besides losing only one more year? Besides, I agree with you. Two years is long. But as a result, that also gives you responsibilities: at first in the objectives you set, and then in their realization. Imagine all the life time lost if you head for useless objectives or if you don’t finally achieve them after two years? The issue with the idea of setting the final goal the same year than the intermediate one is that this tactic cancels a part of the psychological hack. Doing so, you remain focused all the way on the final goal, instead of focusing on the intermediate objective … In the proposed method, the good resolution of the year is to begin to change. To achieve the change is the good resolution of the next year. ”

And then, if you really are in a hurry, nothing prevents you from heading for twice more achievements over the two years to come than you would have over a single year (which means defining two intermediate objectives, one for each of the good resolutions you take) … But then again, there is a psychological limitation: having reached the intermediate goal of the first resolution, you will tend to say yourself: ” that’s it, I made the job. ” And thus, to forget a little bit the other one … There is no magic: changing a lot request a lot of effort. But in the end, it is better to change a little that not at all. To help you to take action, you have full of resources on the web as anti-procrastination hacks.

Last thing I wanted to evoke with you about this trick is that we could think it is more designed to hold a certain kind of good resolutions than another. For example, it’s cool if we wish to manage to jog, by deciding the first year to walk gradually further and further, and next year to run. The method seems far more complicated to apply if we wish for example to go parachuting. In fact, there is always a way to approach the problem indirectly, in a symbolic way. We can for example begin by taking climbing lessons and going on roller coasters in amusement parks the first year, in order to become used to emptiness and fall feeling, then take address and phone number of a center that can make you go parachuting the next one.

 

 

You now have enough material to develop your strategy to face the future. The NeuroHack-Learning team wishes you an excellent year 2018. Could it let your dreams begin to come true!

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Motivation – Beyond the limits


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“Nick” (Nicholas James) Vujicic was born without arms nor legs in 1982 in Melbourne (however he has two feet, one of which with two toes). He is the director of Life Without Limbs2, a Christian non-profit organization dedicated to the people living with a handicap. He is requested in particular by the American schools to intervene in public awareness campaigns on the tyranny of the other people’s opinion and the persecution of certain children by their schoolmates1.

What’s impressive with Nick is his energy and love of life… and that’s just STUPEFYING! When we know that he almost committed suicide when he was 8 years old and that he inspires now a lot of people, that’s impelling!

Just imagine as life can be complicated when we have no limbs. Everything becomes a challenge! Nick had to learn how to brush his teeth with his feet! And also to type despite his handicap … Besides, he is an accounting and financial planning graduate. In brief, he’s a man who not only succeeded to integrate socially in spite of his enormous handicap, but moreover who contributes to improve society via the association he created!

With his association, he travels the world to give conferences, in particular at le Havre (France) in 20173 in which he talks about his life, his questionings, his doubts and his hopes, and what allowed him to move forward, not to lose heart during harsh times. Among others, he explains that his parents always taught to him to be grateful “for what life had given him”. He also explains that it is to see a newspaper article showing a man facing a severe handicap that made him perceive the others’ pain1. Finally, he tells that he realized that the others also were attentive to his efforts and that he was de facto a source of inspiration, of motivation for them1.

Nick with his wife and son

Nick also has a Facebook page, which allows him to pursue the work of his association4. He is the author of several books (see below).

The last thing we’ll say in this article is Nick’s main message: say to yourself that if HE was able to overcome his handicap so much that he transformed it into an asset to meet an exceptional fate, YOU are able to face the difficulties you encounter in your life!

Look further / Useful link(s)

Notes

1■ Wikipedia Article about Nick Vujicic

2■ Nick Vujicic’s association website

3■ Nick Vujici conference at le Havre on 07/14/2017

4■ Nick Vujicic’s facebook page

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We ARE what we EAT!


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WHAT

Nowadays, science verifies more and more this old proverb. Indeed, we begin to realize the enormous influence that our food has on our physical and mental health, on our feelings and our way of thinking.

 

WHY

Why? Because the food we gulp down has contact with our digestive system, which is a kind of … a second brain. That could sound strange, but sometimes reality does: not only our digestive system contains neurons, but it contains nothing less than 100 milliards of them1! Connected between them and also with the brain, the one which stands in the head, via the vagus nerve, of which between 80 % and 90 % of fibers are none-reciprocal, and let information pass from the stomach (in particular the small intestine, around which it is rolled up) to the brain2. So it is our digestive system which tells our brain how to behave, and not the opposite!

We thus very well understand that what we eat influences our digestive system, and thus our brain: our feelings, our reflections, etc.

Furthermore, our food also has a direct effect on our intestinal flora, these 100000 billion of small bacteria which develop in our digestive system. But this intestinal flora, which has a very important effect on our body, depends naturally on our food. And from its composition can ensue cardiovascular risks4, anxiety and dépression2, autism4, obesity4, neurological diseases (as the Parkinson’s disease5), diabetes4, cancer4, as well as disorders in our hormonal and immune systems 2.

HOW

  1. A research team led by Mark Kahn, of the university of Pennsylvania, showed that the risk of developing cavernomes (vascular malformations resulting in risks of brain haemorrhages) depended on the intestinal flora of an individual. To prove that, they identified certain bacteria of the intestinal flora of mouse freeing a toxin susceptible to cross into the body and to generate cavernomes. By preventing the fixation of this toxin in the body of mice, they managed to reduce of 90 % the development of cavernomes in the population of studied mouse, proving the direct link between intestinal flora and appearance of cavernomes.3
  2. Researchers showed the link between intestinal flora and Parkinson’s disease by transplanting the intestinal flora of sick mice in healthy mice, what made reveal the symptoms of the disease in the sane mice. On the other hand, by isolating sick mice in a sterile environment or by treating them with antibiotics (and doing so by eliminating their intestinal flora), the researchers managed to reduce the intensity of the symptoms of the disease.5
  3. A research team led by Floris Fransen identified that the intestinal flora of young individuals differed from that of the old ones. And by transferring the intestinal microbiote of old individuals in young individuals, and vice versa, they managed in a case to generate disorders to the guinea pig and to reduce them in the other one.4
  4. Professor P. Holzer, neuro-gastroenterologist from Graz’s Hospital, was able to observe during large-scale epidemiological studies led on volunteers, that food has an effect on the humor of people, as they eat healthily or not.3

WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH IT

 

These discoveries are a real revolution: they actually allow to envisage in the future to handle a lot of complex diseases simply by modifying the intestinal flora of the sick person, using for example antibiotics or probiotics.

Well, as prevention is better than cure, pay attention on what you eat!

Look further / Useful link(s)

Notes

1■ Documentaire “Les super-pouvoirs de l’intestin” de Juliette Démas, diffusé sur France 5

2■ Article “Intestin grêle – le cerveau de notre cerveau”

3■ Article “Quand l’intestin agit sur le cerveau”, magazine La Recherche Juillet-Août 2017

4■ Article “Un lien a été trouvé entre l’état de la flore intestinale et plusieurs maladies liées à l’âge”, Medical Xpress, 2 novembre 2017

5■ Article “La maladie de Parkinson commence bien dans les intestins”, magazine Science & Vie de février 2017

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From lullabies to military songs (Part 2)


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Hi Neurohackers! Previously we saw a cool introduction to the powers of music. Here is another one about applications of the concept!

Social applications are unlimited: we find of course the track of music in every religion, where texts must be precisely memorized, and where the rites referred to magic stuff. We know moreover from now on that this phenomenon was already present during prehistoric areas! Cro-Magnon men preferred the caves having the best acoustic properties and we found in the cave of Portel (Ariège, France), a testimony of this statement: two red points were drawn on the ceiling, and by standing between both, if we speak, the echo of the cave sends us back our voice “transformed”, “hollow”, “as if we were communicated with the spirit of the cave” according to the suggestion of Michel Dauvois.1 Thus we know that sounds and voices in particular has always been associated always to the divine world.

 

We still understand the interest of the military fanfare: it generates a protection bubble of sound, preventing the sounds of the enemy from reaching the troop, and thus let the men think that all is good so far! Furthermore, when we sing with the others, there is a form of “dissolution of the subject” into the population: everyone is an actor of his sound landscape, but he does not distinguish his voice from that of the others, if he sings in rhythm and in tune. And if it is the case, the impression of power is moreover multiplied tenfold (physical phenomenon of resonance). Thus we understand that we can generate a solid group spirit by this way.

The notion of ” sound landscape ” evoked above was created by Pierre Schaeffer (pioneer of the electronic music). It allows to bridge the gap between sound and music, by the means of ” the sound atmosphere “. If we saw that the psychology of man is modelled by the sound, we understand that his sound environment partially defines him… That is why the discipline of ” sound archaeology ” begins to be developed, trying to understand and then to reproduce the sound atmospheres of the past, and doing so trying to obtain information on the people who preceded us. But we also perceive here the ill-being of our time with all the problem of noise pollution…1

When we see the degree of importance that sound has for the man, we can finally raise the question: is sound essential to man’s development? Well, in fact, we notice that it is rather important for building himself: we saw in the first part of the article (lien html) that the sound connects the individual with the world which surrounds him, it erases the barrier which separates him from this one. Yet unsurprisingly, we know nowadays, that deafness has huge consequences on the development of psychomotor capacities of the children.2 In the same order of idea, we shall still note the use of ” the inner ear ” in the representation of the vertical posture for the individual

 

And finally, also interesting: the laboratories of Orfield, in Minneapolis, created, mainly for the NASA, a “anechoic room”. This place, said “anechoic” (without echo), absorbs 99,9 % of sounds. And we notice that to stay more than 45 minutes in such a chamber drives us crazy, because it breaks the balance between our inner physiological noises and the outer foreigner ones: the man is not made to hear only the beatings of his own heart!3 He is not alone in the universe, and maintains an intimate link with the outside world, a sound link.

And on these words ends this second part of article. But they say: all things come in threes! The next part and the end of this article is coming in the next episode.

Look further / Useful link(s)

Notes

1■ Article “Searching for lost sounds” from 01net, 02/08/2017

2■ Website of the Service de Soutien à l’Education Familiale et à la Scolarisation des Pupilles de l’Enseignement Public du Vaucluse

3■ Article on the anechoic chambers

 

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Long live the sleep

 

I recently read an article about the lack of sleep and its consequences. And it appears that it’s far more devastating than I could imagine!

 

The article is taken from The Guardian and is an interview of Mattew Walker, neuroscientist and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California Berkeley.

If you sleep less than seven hours a day (eight are recommended), you’re suffering sleep deprivation, which is increasing your risk of cancer, heart attack, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, obesity and poor mental health. In fact, Matthew Walker’s researches showed that « no aspect of our lives is left unscathed by sleep deprivation ». It appears, among others, that there are relations between lack of sleep and development of certain subtypes of dementia and that after only one night of only four or five hours of sleep, the killer cells that your organism produces every day and clean cancerous cells or external toxic agents, drops by 70 %! Another effect of the lack of sleep is the lack of creativity, as the dream state is connected to it, and that it helps to overcome psychological shocks (you look about it better the next morning, due to the sleep), so the lack of sleep makes you psychologically vulnerable.

Bad news is that nowadays, accordingly to Matthew Walker, « We are in the midst of a « catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic », the consequences of which are far graver than any of us could imagine. » He thinks about that a lot and the result of his observations is that our lack of sleep is due to our environment and our civilization’s philosophy. It appears that in fact, only 8 % of population was trying to live with six hours of sleep or less by night in 1942, as in 2017, half of the population is concerned. Reasons are that we electrified the night (light dramatically degrades sleep), we don’t want to spend less time at work and with our family, we fear to be described as lazy by the others if we admit that we need to sleep and people are lonelier, more depressed and drink more alcohol and caffeine than in the past. Accordingly to Walker, « Humans are the only species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep for no apparent reasons ». And as no one, accordingly to his researches, can survive on five hours of sleep or less without any impairment (or that an adult sleeping only 6h45min a night is predicted to live to his early 60s only without a medical intervention), then logically, it is observed that the sleep loss costs the UK economy more than 30 billion £ a year, or 2 % of GDP.

The advices of Matthew Walker to sleep well are:
– to go to bed and to wake up every day at the same time (put an alarm to warn you 30 minutes before to go to sleep!)
– to have a dark room to sleep well
– to not have computers or smartphones in your bedroom when you sleep
– to resist to the injunctions of society to sleep less (he noticed as a warning that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher who both claimed that they didn’t need to sleep a lot developed each other an Alzeihmer’s disease).

So, sleep well baby !

 

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Further to a compromising photo

Axelle loses her job in L’Oréal, or how big data and social networks catch you up! 

There are numerous similar cases. We cannot list all of them here, but we chose this one which is a little bit old on purpose, so it lets you imagine what can happen nowadays as the social networks have grown. Then remember that all that you publish on social networks stays on the Internet (despite you erased the content).

Axelle Despiegelaere, 17-year-old student, had got a contract with Professional L’Oréal to realize beauty tutorial videos.

But meanwhile, Axelle published on her Facebook page a photo of her, large smile, next to the corpse of an oryx, a rifle against her shoulder. The following legend accompanied the cliché: “To hunt is not only a question of life or death. It is more than that … This was one year ago, but today, I am ready to hunt Americans, hahaha”. The young woman posted this image just before a match between Belgium and the United States. Nowadays she has erased the image and deleted her Facebook page.

At that time, the Internet community felt deeply outraged by the photography published on the social networks. Axelle tried to calm things down by declaring “I did not want to offend anyone … it was a joke. Thank you for your understanding.” But too late: Professionnal L’Oréal Belgium immediately reacted by declaring in the newspaper ” The Independant ” that the video realized with Axelle would be the first one and the last one.

Read full article in French here.

 

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An algorithm won a tournament of poker…

 

The consequences for humanity are colossal… says the L’Express magazine.

A group compound of some of the best players of poker of the world did not succeed in beating a robot during a tournament marathon of 20 days. The program of artificial intelligence (AI) Libratus developed by the University Carnegie Mellon which participated in the marathon of poker “Heads Up (1 vs. 1) No-Limit Texas Hold’em'” against 4 of these champions of poker, took away 1 766 250 dollars.

It is not the first time when the world elite of a particular game is beaten by an AI. An IBM computer overcame the chessmaster Garry Kasparov already 20 years ago, whereas AlphaGo, developed by the subsidiary of Google, DeepMind, gained 4 parties of Go against the best player of go of the world, last year.

But this victory in the poker marks a new milestone, because this card game is more complex than other games as the chess or the Go, because we cannot see the game of the opponents, that means we do not have all the information.

And this is what can result from it:

The computer can deceive us!

« We can imagine that this technology could thwart financial markets, surpass the human researchers regarding inventions, manipulate the human leaders, and develop weapons which we cannot even understand.».

Furthermore, the boss of Tesla, Elon Musk announced repeatedly its concerns concerning the development of the AI, which he judges “more dangerous than nuclear weapons”, and he declared that it was about “the biggest existential threat”.

Read full article in French.

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Man In a Vegetative State for 15 Years Stirs After Brain Stimulation

…But He’s Not Awake Yet.

Reviving unresponsive patients has long been a dream of humanity, and an oft-talked about part of the human condition.

A French patient received a traumatic brain injury fifteen years ago, putting him into a vegetative state. After stimulating a part of the brain, scientists were seemingly able to restore some of the patients’ consciousness. But no, we’re not quite at Awakenings yet.

A vegetative state is not a coma. Instead, the brain-damaged patient is awake but unaware and conscious-less. A paper in BMC Medicine describes the condition as “only showing reflex movements without response to command.” Put very simply, researchers are pretty sure the condition has something to do with brain damage altering how electrical signals travel between the inner and outer sections of the brain, as well as around the outer layer. Some patients recover from vegetative states, but others don’t.
The scientists hypothesized that perhaps stimulating the vagus nerve, the longest nerve connected directly to the brain, would help rewire parts of the brain and allow for higher levels of consciousness. They implanted a stimulator to the nerve and applied a current, slowly ramping it up over a month. Afterwards, they noticed the patient had increased brain activity and observed him move from the vegetative to a minimally conscious state—as one paper describes, “a condition of severely altered consciousness in which minimal but definite behavioral evidence of self or environmental awareness is demonstrated.”

Full article here.