brain

Science has calculated the real impact of reading books on your brain. And it has a very simple recipe: 30 minutes a day

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It is well known that a sedentary lifestyle It is one of the great enemies of public healthespecially at advanced ages where muscle loss is a great danger. However, there are sedentary activities that are really beneficial and that we sometimes stop, such as reading books. Its benefit is such that science has shown that immersing yourself in the pages of a good book It not only feeds the intellect, but also lengthens life. The demonstration. One of the most important studies who wanted to focus on the benefits of reading, beyond the cognitive benefits or the richness of vocabulary for everyday life, analyzed a group of 3,635 nationally representative participants in the United States over 12 years. And as a result, they saw that the longer the time spent reading books, lower risk of mortality. The results. To understand the magnitude of the discovery, the researchers followed all the patients until 20% of them died and only 80% remained. There they put the cut and began to draw conclusions. The first is that non-readers reached this point at 85 months, while book readers reached this same threshold at 108 months. This is something that translates into a 23-month survival advantage for those who had the habit of reading books, or in other words, readers reduced the risk of mortality by 20% throughout the 12 years of follow-up. Furthermore, this protection was maintained regardless of a person’s gender, wealth, education, or health status. The format matters. Although you may think that any type of reading is appropriate, even the back of a shampoo, the reality is quite different. In this case, the study explicitly compared the impact of reading books versus reading the newspaper or a magazine. The findings here demonstrated that reading books contributes to a significantly greater survival advantage than that seen with newspapers or magazines. While magazines offer short articles that we often skim, books require a higher level of concentration. Something that is enhanced above all because the authors constantly present themes, characters and topics and that is essential to be able to follow the thread of the story that is being presented to us. Because? Here science is quite clear that the key is in the brain, since the “cognitive score” functioned as a complete mediator of this survival advantage. This means that reading books improves cognition and it is this cognitive improvement that prolongs life. Here reading books activates different specific neural processes that create this advantage. Among the most notable points, we find that active reading of books improves skills such as reasoning, concentration, critical thinking and vocabulary. But it also promotes social perception, empathy and emotional intelligence, which can lead to better health behaviors and stress reduction. Fundamental things when we talk about extending life. It’s backed up. In addition to the original study published in 2016, science has wanted to continue investigating the benefits of reading with a study published in 2024 where the complexity of reading in older adults pointed to less cognitive decline. But it has also been decided to analyze even the cultural level of the citizens, where it has been seen that low literacy increases mortalityonce again making the act of reading books stimulate our brain and protect our cognitive reserve. Although it is not necessary to be reading all day to guarantee having a better brain, studies specifically point out that with about 30 minutes a day It is enough to start reaping these advantages and obtain more years of life in which to continue reading. Images | Blaz Photo In Xataka | The problem is not that we are reading fewer books: it is that the books we read are much simpler and easier

When a mountaineer experiences extreme experiences on the mountain, his brain begins to imagine something: a “third man”

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Not all adventures have to be successfully resolved to become epic. It happened with what is known as Imperial Transantarcticthe expedition that left England in August 1914 under the orders of explorer Ernest Shackleton with an enormous purpose and not for the faint of heart: cross Antarcticafrom Vahsel in the Weddell Sea to Ross Island at the other end. Due to the harsh conditions at the South Pole, the ship Endurance ended up trapped between ice and Shackleton saw how his plans became complicated until they dragged him into a real feat that took his endurance and that of his colleagues to a limit level only achievable between icebergs, glacial temperatures and extreme exhaustion. The explorer’s feat also served something that he probably did not even suspect: coining the expression “third man factor or syndrome”. Well known by mountaineers and which is, even today, a fascinating phenomenon. “Who is the third person walking beside you?” Ernest Shackleton (left) with Robert Falcon Scott and Edward Wilson in Antarctica, 1902. The phenomenon was described by Shackleton when he recalled the very hard two and a half days during which he advanced—along with Frank Worseley and Tom Cream—towards a whaling station located on the northern coast of South Georgia. The group walked 36 long hours between terrible conditions, with hardly any material and avoiding death. On their shoulders they also carried the responsibility of having to help the rest of their companions from the ill-fated Imperial Transantarctic. Only the three of them, Ernest, Frank and Tom, wandered through the desolate Antarctica, although if someone had asked them how many people made up that desperate entourage, they would probably have answered something different: that with them was another person, a fourth member, nameless, faceless… but undeniable. “I know that during that long and stormy march over nameless mountains and glaciers, it often seemed to me that there were four of us, not three,” the explorer wrote. That common feeling, precise Guardianoverwhelmed the three men who undertook the journey: the presence of a “fourth” that accompanied them. Such an expression must have surprised the poet. T. S. Eliotwho some time later, in 1922, after reading Shackleton’s story, picked up the idea to capture it in his popular poem The Waste Land: “Who is the third one who always walks by your side? When I count, there is only you and me together, but when I look ahead on the white road there is always another walking at your side.” Eliot’s license, which changed Shackleton’s “fourth” man for a “third” was successful and since then we usually talk about the “third man syndrome” to refer to that: the feeling of a ghost companion, a presence that in a way comforts people who face a borderline sensation. Shackleton was not the only one to describe it. Several years after his death, in 1933, Frank SmytheBritish and explorer like him, recounted an experience similar while trying to summit Mount Everest. “The whole time I was climbing alone I had the strong feeling that I was accompanied by a second person. It was so strong that completely eliminated all the loneliness I might otherwise have felt,” the explorer wrote in his diary. So vivid was the sensation that, Smythe explains, at one point during the ascent he searched in his pocket, took out a piece of Kendal Mint Cakebroke it and turned to offer one of the halves to that companion who felt so close. He didn’t see anyone, of course. You don’t have to go back that far in time. Not that far. The Madrid mountaineer Fernando Garrido wrote in his notebook the feeling that came over him when, at the beginning of 1986, he spent more than two months on the lonely summit of the Aconcaguaat almost 7,000 meters, to achieve the altitude survival record. “Today, like other times, I woke up with the feeling that there was someone outsidenext to the store. Have you spent the night there? Why didn’t he call me to let him in? (…) —said the mountaineer in statements collected for him The Confidential—He’s my brother, my brother Javier! Javi, wake up, come on, wake up! I turn it towards me. “He is dead, his head is a skull.” “A solid science” A good handful of articles and references have been written about the phenomenon, some in media within the reach of Guardian either NPRand in 2008 the writer John Geiger dedicated a monographic book to him, ‘The Third Man Factor: Surviving the Impossible’ after spending five years tracking down similar stories. It is more complicated than collecting experiences, however, to give them a plausible explanation. Years ago, during a chat with the journalist NPR’s Guy Raz, Geiger reported that there are those who turn to spirituality, although he insists that the syndrome can be explained by “a solid science”. “Many skeptics and non-believers have had this experience and attribute it to other causes,” claims the author, who in his volume even includes the case of a 9/11 survivor. In 2009 Geiger pointed out explanations such as biochemical reactions or simply failures in brain activity. “If we understand that the third man factor is part of us, like adrenaline is… then we can access it more easily. It is not a hallucination in the sense that hallucinations are disordered. This is a very useful and orderly guide,” he reflected. Years ago, researchers Ben Alderson-Day and David Smailes commented on the phenomenon and they explained that “strong feelings of presence” do not occur only in dramatic circumstances. Cases have been recorded after bereavement, during sleep paralysis or in cases of neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease or brain damage. “The different contexts in which they occur give us some clues about what could be happening,” they say. “Understanding more about how and why felt presences occur has the potential to tell us many things about ourselves: how we react under intense mental or physical stress, how we deal with danger and threat, … Read more

The cell phone on the nightstand is not “frying” your brain, but science is beginning to understand why it prevents you from resting

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It is practically a ritual today: connect your phone to the charger, set the alarm and leave it on the nightstand just 30 centimeters from the pillow to sleep. According to the data, for 95% of adultssleeping with your phone within reach is a logistical necessity; For a growing stream of longevity experts, It’s a biological miscalculation. because we rest less. To do this, we have analyzed the bibliography to know exactly the effect of having your cell phone next to you. The culprit confirmed. Before entering the swampy terrain of the possible problems that radiation can generate when it is around us, we must point out the “elephant in the room.” The most solid evidence we have today does not blame antennas for having a bad sleep, but to the screens and what we do with them. To give us an idea, a meta-analysis over 36,000 participants concluded that excessive use of smartphone increases the risk of having poor quality sleep by 228%. The double responsible. The first is the suppression of melatonin, since the blue light emitted by the LED panels of mobile phones tricks our brain making him believe that it is still day. This delays the release of melatonin and fragments the architecture of sleep. But not only the blue light is information, since responding to a WhatsApp or doing doomscrolling on TikTok before bed keeps the brain alert. A study of medical students suggested that nighttime cell phone use corresponded to poorer sleep. The radiation debate. It has always been a mantra for many: having your cell phone nearby is having a large source of radiation that causes many health problems. In this case, organizations such as the WHO or ARPANSA have traditionally maintained that evidence of damage from low-level electromagnetic fields is “insufficient.” However, it does not mean that it is non-existent. The most recent studies They are beginning to see the non-thermal effects that mobile phones have. One of the most interesting was done with baby monitors that have a frequency of 2.45 GHz, similar to Bluetooth or Wifi, to simulate environmental exposure. The result was that the exposed group, compared to the placebo, showed a worse subjective quality of sleep and alterations in heart rate variability, suggesting that sensitive people do notice the invisible “presence” of the electronic device nearby. Brain wave modulation. Other research on 5G signals found that exposure to 3.6 GHz waves affected sleep spindles during N2 phasethat is, light sleep that accounts for 50% of the total rest time. The curious thing about this study is that the effect depended on genetics: only carriers of certain variants of the CACNA1C gene showed alterations in the electroencephalogram. This qualifies the warnings of some experts, since radiation may not affect us all equally, but for a genetically predisposed subgroup, sleeping next to a continuous emission source could be fragmenting their N2 phase, crucial for memory consolidation. The habit factor. It is often cited Sinha’s studio to demonize radiation, but what this study really measured were habits in a sample of 566 participants. In this case, it was seen that those people with high mobile phone use took longer to fall asleep, their sleep was less efficient, and 22.6% reported worse quality of sleep. In this way, the conclusion was not that the waves prevented them from sleeping, but that the habit of having their cell phone nearby inevitably leads to using. If it’s on the table, you look at it. If you look at it, you become active. It is a behavioral rather than a radiological vicious circle. Hygiene protocol. The question in this case is inevitable: should we wrap the room in aluminum foil? It’s not necessary. In this case, physics works in our favor thanks to the inverse square law: the intensity of the radiation falls drastically with distance. That is why the most important thing is to move the device at least one meter away from the bed, since at this distance the exposure falls to negligible basal levels, making Sleeping with your cell phone under your pillow is the worst possible decision. If we want to go a little further, we can put it in airplane mode, although the best advice, as the Spanish Society of Neurology points out, is to have a sacred hour, where the recommendation is to leave the screens an hour before going to sleep. Images | Nubelson Fernandes In Xataka | We thought insomnia was just not being able to sleep. Now we know that there are five different disorders

Snacking between meals is not a lack of will, but a battle that we lose in our brain

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A fairly typical scene in the lives of some people can unfold in the middle of the afternoon or even after dinner, where an inner force drags us to the pantry or the refrigerator to have some chocolate or some small pecking. And although this is something that we try to justify within a “lack of will”the reality is that our brain and hormones are fighting a battle with us in which we usually lose. And to understand what is happening here, you have to look at the scientific literature. A sleep problem. Blame lack of sleep of an imbalance in our hormones is undoubtedly one of the most solid pillars of current metabolic medicine, and the truth is that it is not any type of myth. This is something that was evidenced in a study published in 2004 which showed that when healthy young people restricted their hours of sleep, an endocrine disaster occurred. Here, your levels of leptinwhich is the hormone that sends the satiety signal to the brain so that we stop eating, plummet, while ghrelinwhich is the hormone that tells us to keep eating, it shoots. Greater intake. The result here cannot be other than consumption of 328 extra kcal per day through snackslooking almost exclusively for quickly absorbed carbohydrates because our brain is telling us that we need foods that provide us with energy quickly. Although in truth it is something that is not needed, so these foods directly end up forming more fat deposits. A more recent review goes further and confirms that even a single night of bad sleep is enough to disrupt insulin and orexin, physiologically preparing us for a day of uncontrollable cravings. Eat dinner early. This is something that in many countries, such as France, is totally normal, but not in Spain. Here the science is pretty clear because it has been more than proven that our body does not process food in the same way at 2:00 p.m. as it does at 10:00 p.m. Here the different trials suggest that aligning our meals with circadian rhythms drastically modulates appetite hormones, so eating while our central biological clock is active reduces the average daily germin levels and increases satiety hormones in the evening. This is the same as what a study published in 2023 which confirms that eating at times aligned with sunlight improves the synchronization between the central biological clock and the peripheral clocks in the different organs. The message we should take home here is that eating early literally turns off the physiological desire to eat at midnight because the body understands that the eating cycle has ended and the repair cycle begins. Protein to calm satiety. In this case, the field of nutrition has stopped focusing only on calories to focus on the hormonal response that each food generates in our body. The different reviews suggest that eating around 25-30 grams of high-quality protein per meal not only optimizes muscle protein synthesis, but also suppresses appetite in the long term and, therefore, reduces the temptation to snack between meals. A 2020 meta-analysis corroborated Likewise, seeing that this amount of protein in a meal reduces ghrelin levels and increases the production of hormones that inhibit appetite, such as famous LPG-1 on which medications such as Ozempic. Stress and cortisol. Snacking has an important emotional and brutal stress management component, since it has surely happened to you that when you have more things on you that’s when you eat the most. This is where scientific literature defines hedonic hunger as the strong desire to eat for pure pleasure, in the total absence of physical need for calories in our body. And the blame lies in the extra production of cortisol, which is the hormone classically related to stress. But the most interesting thing here is that in people who eat because of an “emotional” desire and not because of a physiological need, it was seen that when they already saw that a stressful situation was going to come (such as exam time for students), ghrelin levels increased. In this way, if you are nervous, bored or mentally tired, the brain will ask for food rich in fats and sugars, such as sweets, as a dopaminergic compensation mechanism. And here it is not that you are hungry, but that there is great stress. Images | Madalyn Cox Denny Muller In Xataka | We believed that a vegetarian diet guaranteed longevity. In extreme old age, the data says just the opposite

Spain has started its most ambitious defense program. It is not a tank or a drone, it is the brain to control Europe’s troops

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Spain built its land defense looking outward, integrating into foreign programs and adapting doctrines from when the tank symbolized power, deterrence and industrial sovereignty. From joining NATO in 1982 to the missions in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army was accumulating operational experience, but always with one constant: the key technology came from outside. Today, the debate no longer revolves around how many vehicles you have, but rather What role do you want to play? now that the war changes again. From cannon to code. The Ukrainian experience has finished burying the idea of ​​the battle tank as an isolated and self-sufficient platform, pushing Spain to rethink its land doctrine from the roots. Instead of investing in more armor and weight, the Ministry of Defense has opted for a conceptual leap: prioritizing information, connectivity and speed of decision as key factors of survival in a “transparent” battlefield, saturated with sensors, drones and smart munitions. In that context PAMOV is bornnot as a new tank or a combat drone, but as the nervous system that must govern all those that come after. PAMOV, the brain. The Superior Ground Combat System program, awarded to Indraseeks to define the digital architecture of the future Spanish armored combat beyond 2040. We are talking about an initial investment around the 45 million euros and a strong R&D component, one whose objective is not yet to manufacture platforms, but design and mature subsystems that will allow the integration of manned and unmanned vehicles, sensors, weapons and command and control into a single cooperative tactical network. The tank, therefore, stops being the physical center of combat and becomes just another node within a distributed “system of systems.” INDRA The tactical cloud. One of the pillars of PAMOV is the creation of a combat tactical cloud capable of fusing in real time information from on-board sensors, aerial and ground drones and external sources. As? Through artificial intelligencethe system detects, classifies and prioritizes threats, reducing crew cognitive overload and accelerating decision-making in high-pressure environments. The 360 degree visionsupported by AI and augmented reality, allows you to “see through” the armor and regain freedom of maneuver against the proliferation of drones and loitering munitions. Less tons, more platforms. Plus: the lessons of Ukraine have highlighted the limits of the continued growth in weight of battle tanks, some already close to 80 tons, with enormous logistics costs and restrictions of mobility. In this sense, Indra’s approach is committed to distribute capabilities between multiple lighter platforms, many of them unmanned, that operate in tandem with the main tank. Here are names that are common today in the Ukrainian war, such as UGVs and UASwho would advance ahead “taking on the most exposed missions and acting as extenders of ISTAR capability“, in addition to (obviously) reducing human risks. Modularity and weapons of tomorrow. The PAMOV is conceived as an open architecturemodular and scalable, one capable of being integrated into different present and future vehicles. This allows on paper to progressively incorporate new technologies, from advanced active protection systems to directed energy weapons and, in more distant phases, even future hypersonic systems without having to redesign the entire platform. Hence, it is emphasized that the key is not in the specific weapon, but in the system being able to govern, coordinate and exploit it within the tactical network at the right time. Technological sovereignty. The concept is going to be repeated more and more in the old continent. In the case of Spain, with a 95% of national developments and the participation of SMEs, startups, universities and technology centers spread across several autonomous communities, PAMOV is presented as a strategic commitment for the country. As we remembered yesterday, the nation seeks to stop being just a simple buyer or late integrator to become technology provider criticism in European programs like MARS and, in the long term, the MGCSseeking to be on par with France and Germany. The final objective is that the Spanish contribution to the European car of the future is not only steel, but intelligence that governs it. Another way to fight. Finally, and if you will, beyond technology, the impact of PAMOV points above all to doctrinal. For the Army it means moving from individual platforms to cooperative networkschange the way we command, train and operate, and prepare for high-intensity scenarios with fewer personnel and greater dependence on software. From that perspective, the future Spanish battle tank will not be defined by its caliber or its weight, but by its capacity. to connect systemsdominate the information and decide faster than the opponent. Image | Rheinmetall Defense, Oscar in the middleIndra In Xataka | Spain has been a weapons exporting power for decades. Now he has made a decision: keep them In Xataka | Ukraine has found what it needed in an unexpected ally. Spain had the missing piece against the shahed drones

The brain asks for ultra-processed foods when it has nothing to do and science thinks it knows why

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There is a fairly classic scene in the lives of many people: not being hungry but wandering around the kitchen, opening the refrigerator, looking and closing it. Minutes later, this operation is repeated. The final result? End up eating something we probably didn’t needwhich is what can be popularly known as ‘gluttony’, but nutrition science has a more precise term: emotional eating. Investigation. Reference researchers in Spain such as Dolores Corella and Jordi Salas-Salvadó from CIBERobn, have focused on how factors more than calorieslike emotions or genetics, determine our weight. And the conclusion is quite clear: boredom is as real a metabolic risk factor as sugar. The boring brain. When we get boredthe brain detects a stimulation deficit that it tries to compensate with the fastest route to pleasure. And this is where the ultra-processed darlings come in. In this case, science indicates that these foods not only nourish us poorly, but activates dopaminergic reward circuitsin a very similar way to how certain addictive substances do. In this case, we have, first of all, a stimulus that is boredom that causes our mood to drop. Here the brain looks for a quick peak of dopamine and an apple is usually not enough, but rather it looks for fats and refined sugars, since their consumption causes a peak of pleasure followed by a sudden drop. Something that promotes excessive consumption and therefore favors gaining weight. The danger of getting bored. Not having things to do during the day or even at night, the truth is that it can be the ideal seed for consuming more calories than necessary. And above all, boredom tends to attack more strongly at the end of the day, when obligations end and this is where “boredom eating” collides head-on with chrononutrition. Researcher Marta Garaulet has shown that the moment in which we eat is critical, since snacking out of boredom after 9:00 p.m. is metabolically disastrous, especially in Spain. Why Spain. We Spaniards have a much worse time eating for boredom beyond 9 at night due to a genetic load in half of the population related to the MTNR1B gene. In this case, whoever has this gene and eats late, the consequences are quite clear: the body secretes less insulin and tolerates the glucose that we are introducing less well. The result here is that what is eaten due to nocturnal boredom it makes you fatter and more inflammatory than if you eat during the day, due to the desynchronization of circadian rhythms and the enzymes necessary to process food. How to counter it. If boredom is the trigger for this situation and ultra-processed foods are the gasoline, the solution to break this vicious circle is in PREDIMED studies. In this case, they pointed out that increasing fiber intake through fruits, vegetables and legumes improves glucose regulation. Something that enhances the reduction of glucose drops that can encourage the brain to eat some sugar urgently. In addition to this, the PREDIMED study confirms that the Mediterranean diet Supplemented with extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) or nuts, it reduces anxiety about eating. Unlike ultra-processed foods, which leave you wanting more, a handful of nuts activates long-lasting satiety mechanisms that prevent us from falling into eating a muffin or chocolate ice cream during the night. Routine vs. chaos. Since intermittent fasting lacks solid long-term evidence, experts like Salas-Salvadó suggest focusing on marked routines: bringing forward dinner to extend your overnight fast naturally. Having a fixed schedule reduces moments of “down time” where hunger attacks due to boredom. With all this, what has been achieved is that the brain does not adapt to situations with high levels of dopamine, such as a time of large, very copious late-night dinners. That is why the strategy is not about prohibiting, but about understanding that when you open the refrigerator at eleven at night without hunger, it is not the stomach that speaks but the brain looking for the entertainment it needs. Images | Toby Towfiqu barbhuiya In Xataka | Scientists have found the key to obesity in a protein: mice that do not gain weight even if they consume a fatty diet

positive thoughts can “hack” your brain and improve your immunity

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For decades, science has looked askance at the famous placebo effect with medications. We know it exists, we know it worksbut he as exact has always had gray areas that have prevented us from exploiting it to the fullest. Its presence is such that in scientific studies it must be kept in mind in order to be able to avoid your bias. Discovering it. Now, a recently published study in Nature Medicine has just shed light on this mechanism, and the conclusion is fascinating: training your brain to have positive expectations can physically boost the immune response. Something that can cause a drug or vaccine to work with great effectiveness thanks to having ‘positive thinking’. And a team of researchers led by Nitzan Lubianiker has shown that there is a direct biological connection between the brain’s reward system and the body’s ability to generate antibodies after a vaccine. A training. The experiment, which sounds like something out of a white science fiction novel, recruited 85 healthy participants. The objective was not to give them drugs, but to subject them to neurofeedback sessions using functional magnetic resonance imaging. That is, activating a part of your brain to generate an organic response. Specifically, the goal is to activate the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA)a key deep brain region in the reward circuit and motivation. The same one that ‘turns on’ when we eat something very delicious or receive a ‘like’ on the last published reel. In this way, during four sessions the participants learned to increase the activity of this area by evoking pleasant memories or positive mental strategies. They were literally flooded with Mr. Wonderful quotes. A vaccine. After doing this training with the brain to activate the reward zone, the participants received a vaccine against hepatitis B. The researchers’ objective was to see if having previously received good motivation with positive thoughts had an influence on the effectiveness of the vaccine. The result. A week after receiving the vaccine, blood tests revealed a key fact: those subjects who achieved greater activation of the VTA showed higher levels of antibodies. That is, they had developed a greater body response against the virus. Something that would offer better resistance in the event of being exposed to the hepatitis B virus. A missing link. What this study puts on the table is solid evidence for psychoneuroimmunology. It’s not magic, it’s biology: the brain’s reward circuits seem to have a “direct line” with the immune system that until now we had not had controlled. Ignacio J. Molina Pineda, professor of Immunology at the University of Granada, highlights the importance of the discoveryor by pointing out that it demonstrates how positive expectations modulate immune potency. It is the other side of the coin nocebo effectsomething we already saw during the COVID-19 vaccine trialswhere fear of side effects caused real symptoms in patients who had only received saline water. But there is fine print. Although in this study there was a correlation between brain activation and the presence of more antibodies, there were no large differences in the average total antibody concentrations between the trained and control groups. It must be taken into account that the antibodies were only measured a week later, meaning that we do not know if this ‘super protection’ lasts months or years. Something that also adds to a very small sample of 85 people that could require replicating the study on a large scale. Future applications. This is undoubtedly the most important thing we can think of with these results. And if it ends up being confirmed, we could be facing the birth of complementary therapies where, before an immunological treatment or an important vaccination, the patient goes through a brief mental training to maximize the effectiveness of the drug. Images | Robina Weermeijer Tim Mossholder In Xataka | Adolescents up to 32 years old: neuroscience explains why the brain takes much longer than we thought to mature

science already knows what happens to your brain

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after one night intense partya phrase that can become common is “yesterday I drank so much that I have blackouts.” For years, popular culture has treated these episodes as the fact that alcohol is a kind of eraser of memories in our brain, but the reality is very different: It’s not that memories are erased, it’s that they never existed.. The notice. Our parents didn’t say it anymore: drinking a lot of alcohol and smoking controversial substances is something that can fry the brain. And they were partly right. different experts point out in connection with research and meta-analysis on alcohol consumption and brain health, which shed light on what exactly happens in our heads when we go too far. A blackout. What we usually call a ‘gap’, memory loss the morning after a drunken night, is technically anterograde amnesia, or blackout. During a blackout a person can continue talking, walking (not always straight) and even having apparently normal conversations, but your brain has stopped transferring information from short-term memory to long-term memory. The person responsible for all this It is in the hippocampus itselfa region of the brain that acts as the logistics center for our memories. They arrive here to be stored in long-term memory, which is what interests us to remember what we did the next morning. A chemical interference. When the blood alcohol concentration begins to rise rapidly, quite significant chemical interference occurs. In this case modulates NMDA and GABA receptors which alters the communication between neurons and interrupts the ‘Long-term empowerment‘ (LTP). The latter is the physical process by which neural connections are strengthened to consolidate a memory. In short: during a heavy drunk, the hippocampus is still on to store memories, but the ‘save button’ is completely switched off. Therefore, the next day no matter how hard we try: there is nothing to recover because nothing was recorded in the hippocampus. They fry the brain. If we recover the idea that our grandmothers and parents transmitted to us about the effect of alcohol on the brain, the reality is that neuroimaging studies show As in chronic users there is significant hippocampal atrophy. This does not mean that memories become like water, but rather that the volume of brain matter is decreased. As brain tissue shrinks due to neuronal and connectivity loss, the empty space is occupied by cerebrospinal fluid. And this can give us the myth that the memory turns into water or black spots appear on the imaging tests when they pass. The effect on young people. In this population it has traditionally been said that they can handle alcohol much better and with several drinks they continue to be in top shape. But scientifically a great paradox occurs: the adolescent and young brain is extremely plastic, which makes it much more vulnerable to external aggressions. This is why binge drinking in developing brains not only causes blackouts more easily, but can also generate persistent changes in brain structure. Science has shown in this case that even moderate consumption (more than 14 units per week) is linked to greater hippocampal atrophy and worse long-term cognitive performance. He doesn’t forget who he is. Excessive alcohol does not cause us to suddenly forget our names, something that would fall squarely into the realm of serious dementia. But what is clear is that the blackouts repeated are an obvious risk marker. Not only because of silent structural damage, but because of behavioral vulnerability: a person who is not creating memories is a person who has lost the ability to learn from the consequences of their actions in real time, drastically increasing the risk of accidents and dangerous decisions. Images | Nate Holland Alyona Yankovska In Xataka | Forgetting things is not a bug, it is a feature of your brain: how not remembering things makes us think better

If you haven’t trained it before, your brain will ignore any attempt to relax.

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A very typical (and frustrating) situation can certainly be in the middle of a heated discussionwith pulses racing and jaw very tight. And right at this moment someone blurts out the most irritating advice in the world: “come on, take a deep breath and calm down“. you trybut not only does it not work, but it seems to make you angrier. A reality. It’s not that you are a lost case of emotional management. It is that, according to experts and recent scientific studiesbreathing like technique Immediate help in a “rush” of anger is often a lost battle if prior work has not been done. The ‘high’ problem. Sonia Díaz Rois, coach specialized in anger management, is blunt about it: Trying to breathe to calm yourself in the midst of an emotional peak does not work because the body, in a state of maximum alert, does not recognize slow breathing as a safety signal. And it makes a lot of sense, because when anger flares, we go into ‘fight or flight’ mode. The sympathetic nervous system take command, cortisol triggers and the brain prioritizes survival over reflection. Literally all the machinery is active to deal with the ‘threat’ that has been detected. A sudden change. If at this moment of extreme peak of the organism we want to stop it suddenly with slow breathing without having previously trained, the brain can interpret this abrupt change even as an additional threat or an obstruction. In this way, the only thing that is generated is a feeling of lack of air that will increase the stress you are experiencing. That is why the solution to anger is not to turn it off, but to listen to it. But for breathing to be a useful tool, you must first train it in the calmest moments. This is what is known as creating an ‘anchor’. There are different breaths. Science has an opinion in favor of the need to train this relaxation method when you are not angry. But it has also begun to distinguish which techniques are most effective in these high-stress situations. To this end, a 2023 randomized controlled study compared various techniques of breathwork with the mindfulness medication traditional. The result was finding a very effective technique to improve mood above meditation. It is known as Cyclic Sighing (cyclical sigh in Spanish). The way to do it is very simple, since you only have to do a deep inhalation followed by a short inhalation and a very long exhalation. In this way, those who practiced it for just 5 minutes a day showed greater long-term emotional resilience. Because. Neuroscience explains that by prolonging exhalation (as in the 4-7-8 technique, where you exhale twice as long as you inhale), we directly activate the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for “slowing down” the body. Scream or breathe. For years, popular culture defended the theory of catharsis with very typical phrases such as “let it all out”, “hit a cushion” or “scream loudly and say everything you think.” However, it does not seem the most appropriate as indicated. a study published in 2024 about activities to manage anger that has totally denied it. And his reasoning is quite logical. A high-arousal activity such as boxing or literally shouting tends to increase arousal more than it should, and is something that maintains or increases the aggressiveness that you are trying to control. In contrast, low-arousal activities like deep breathing or yoga are the only ones that significantly reduce anger. Even in contexts of acute stress, as seen in studies with COVID-19 patients in 2024guided deep breathing exercises dramatically reduced anxiety and stress, although interestingly they did not have the same effect on depression. Train when you are well. The conclusion of researchers and experts like Díaz Rois is quite clear: breathing is not a panic button that can be pressed for the first time in a fire, but rather it is something that must be trained to be in full shape when necessary. To do this, you must enter when you are well, practicing the sigh technique that we mentioned before or counting your breaths. In this way, the nervous system is being trained to relate the respiratory pattern we are doing with the message that we are safe. Other important points. In addition to all this, science is quite clear that slow breathing practiced just before a negative emotional stimulus reduces its impact. This is something that we can keep in mind when, for example, we are going to enter an exam or a place where we think we are going to be very uncomfortable, where taking a few breaths beforehand can save us a bad drink. What you have to say. With all this that we have discussed, the next time someone tells you to “breathe” while you are angry, remember that they are scientifically right, but that for this trick to work you have to go through a series of training. Images | engin akyurt In Xataka | Resolving one of the most intriguing debates in philosophy: whether or not “altruism” exists among animals

It’s a warning signal from your brain.

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in a world where insomnia is the order of the dayhearing people saying the phrase ‘it’s like putting your head on the pillow and going cold’ can make you very envious. An attitude that in some cases is seen as a great skilland that certainly seems like an evolutionary advantage. However, science has a much darker reading: it is not efficiency, it’s debt. The thermometer of fatigue. In sleep medicine, the time between getting ready to sleep (such as turning off the light in the bedroom) and entering the first phase of sleep is called Sleep Onset Latency (SUN). A time that has been measured to establish how long is normal for a person, and science estimates it between 10 and 15 minutes. That is to say, between turning off the light and lying down until we start to sleep, the normal thing for an adult is that about 10 minutes pass. When we are below. If there is a range, being above or below it can trigger alarms, such as when the value in a blood test is not within the normal ranges. If it is below, the brain enters a state of “homeostatic hyperexcitability” according to research done for the Sleep Foundation. By this they mean that when the system is so desperate to recover, it ends collapsing when given the chance. And that is why we have three different stages depending on how long it takes us to sleep: The normal range is between 10 and 18 minutes. We speak of pathological drowsiness when it lasts less than 8 minutes. We refer to severe sleep deprivation when we spend less than five minutes. The brain shuts down very quickly. The idea, replicated by experts and based on principles of chronobiology, suggests that instant sleep is the response to chronic restriction. In this way, if for weeks or months you sleep less than necessary, the body accumulates a “bill” that tries to charge himself in every microbreak. Science has wanted to delve into this aspect, and that is why different studies that have been published in Nature and PMC link this ultra-short latency not only with fatigue, but with metabolic alterations and a decrease in cognitive performance. That is why the idea that falling asleep quickly is synonymous with better rest is completely wrong. In fact, research shows that people with this “short latency” often suffer from involuntary lapses of attention and accumulated fatigue which, in environments such as driving or precision work, can be fatal. A long process. The sleep debt is not erased with a night of ‘bingeing’ in bed and getting up at 3 in the afternoon, but studies suggest that this latency can persist during the day. It all depends on what sleep deprivation we have faced our body with. But logically you also have to be careful with this false belief of having rested a lot because the onset of sleep is very rapid. The quality of sleep is only measured by its phases, but in no case does the variable of how quickly I enter the sleep phase come into play. What needs to be done. In the case of a person who falls exhausted at the first yawn, the first thing is to check sleep hygiene. But also be attentive to other indicators such as a possible sleep apneasince this value of sleeping quickly or in any situation is an indication of the presence of this disease that can be really serious and difficult to diagnose. The important thing is that one of the initial symptoms What must be checked in these cases is this poor rest. Images | Shane In Xataka | We thought insomnia was just not being able to sleep. Now we know that there are five different disorders

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