Foundations of neurotechnologies BCIs.

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Seizures come suddenly, triggered by stress, fever, flashing lights, or even just feeling tired. Some cause the body to jerk and shake while others can produce strange sensations, make one lose a sense of awareness, or faint. They can happen when the person is awake or asleep. When they pass, after a few seconds or minutes, they leave people tired, confused, and disoriented.

The brain usually maintains a certain level of inhibition that keeps neurons from firing uncontrollably. But during a seizure, one part of the brain starts firing too frantically and can’t stop, resulting in a spike of electrical activity and a seizure.

Fortunately, neuroscience can help — both to reassure you that you’re normal, and to provide support for the idea that there are specific habits and practices people can learn in order to improve memory when they need it most. Here are 8 of the most interesting I’ve found over the last couple of years:

Let’s start with this one, because it’s oh-so-easy. Michigan State University researchers studied whether Nile grass rats exhibited better memory when they were kept in an environment where the lighting resembled a corporate office (think dim fluorescent lighting), or where the lighting resembled a sunny day outside.

Sure enough, the study found that rats in dim lighting “lost about 30 percent of capacity in the hippocampus, a critical brain region for learning and memory, and performed poorly on a spatial task they had trained on previously.”