Lifelong habits like musical training, reading, and handwriting help the brain stay efficient and resilient as we age.
Category: neuroscience – Page 34
The Brain’s Best Defense Against Aging Could Be Your New Favorite Hobby
Getting older means losing things. Some are fine, like any f**ks you have left to give or your tolerance for cheap tequila. Others, like the ability to follow a conversation in a loud room, hit harder.
But scientists now think there’s a way to fight back. And it might start at a piano bench.
Researchers publishing in PLOS Biology found that older adults who have played music for decades have brains that function more like those of someone half their age, at least when it comes to understanding speech in loud environments. In brain scans, they showed cleaner, more focused activity while listening to spoken syllables buried in background noise. Their brains weren’t scrambling. They already knew what to do.
The Physicist Who Says We’ve Already Quantized Gravity
Professor John Donoghue explains why quantum physics and gravity actually work perfectly together. He tackles quadratic gravity, effective field theory, and random dynamics, arguing that grand unification and naturalness aren’t required for a theory of everything.
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- 00:00:00 — Limits of Quantum Mechanics
- 00:06:35 — Effective Field Theory
- 00:12:24 — Gravity: Geometry or Force?
- 00:18:46 — QFT and Gravity Tension
- 00:24:59 — Quadratic Gravity Theory
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- The Renormalization Group and Critical Phenomena [Paper]: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/20…
- Anthropic Considerations in Multiple-Domain Theories [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract…
- Old “Ghost” Theory of Quantum Gravity Makes a Comeback [Article]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/old-gh…
- Unitarity, Stability and Loops of Unstable Ghosts [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.02416
- An Effective Field Theory of Gravity for Extended Objects [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0409156
- Not Quite a Black Hole [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1612.04889
- On Quadratic Gravity [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.01974
- Quadratic Gravity [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.09944
- Renormalization of Higher Derivative Quantum Gravity [Paper]: http://www.weylmann.com/stelle.pdf
- Quantum Theory in a Nutshell [Book]: https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Field-?tag=lifeboatfound-20…
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Crazy: Scientists Compute With Human Brain Cells
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Human brains are roughly 100,000 times more energy-efficient than current AI systems. So why don’t we build computers using human brain cells? Don’t worry, researchers are one step ahead of you there – different teams across the globe are racing to develop neuron computers; processors that integrate living brain neurons into their chips. Let’s take a look at how this technology is developing and when we might see brain cells chips in the future.
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#science #sciencenews #tech #neuroscience
This New Tool Lets Scientists Watch the Brain Think
Scientists have turned brain cells into tiny light sources, revealing the brain at work like never before.
Ancient Priests Hacked Consciousness With Sound
Let’s travel back in time. We are in Malta, deep beneath the earth, inside a chamber, where the only light is that of torches. We hear a low hum that reverberates through the stone walls. A priestess enters, chanting a mantra, resonating within the walls, and her voice echoes with unparallel precision, while rhythmic drumbeats pulse like a heartbeat. The participants are entranced, they feel their minds slip from this mundane world into realms of heightened awareness. Suddenly, visions of spirits, out-of-body journeys, and profound insights interfere with the very nature of reality. Do you think this is fantasy? Absolutely not. This is the essence of the ancient rituals where sound and vibration served as gateways to altered states of consciousness. As we go deep into the mysteries of sacred sounds, we will uncover how mantras and drums were instruments of rebellion against the illusions of the material world, where mystics challenged the tyrannical grip of false gods through transcendent practices.
In this fascinating exploration, we will travel through time and cultures, and we will examine the scientific and spiritual foundations of these auditory phenomena. We will move from the shamanic drums of indigenous tribes to the mantras of the Vedic sages and the hymnic invocations of ancient Greece. And we will find a common thread: the “sound”. The universal key to unlocking the mind’s hidden potentials. We’ll also venture into archaeoacoustics, the study of sound in ancient sites, and connect these old practices to modern research on binaural beats, revealing how vibration continues to bridge the ancient and the contemporary in our quest for cosmic liberation. And as usual, we keep reinventing ancient knowledge of thousands of years before us.
