Arresto Temporale

my gift to @stardust-mayor-kyra ~

happy new year

Curiosity: It Helps Us Learn, But Why? By Maanvi Singh

[…] Jolanda Blackwell,  like many others teachers, understands that when kids are curious, they’re much more likely to stay engaged. But why? What, exactly, is curiosity and how does it work? A study published in the October issue of the journal Neuron, suggests that the brain’s chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information.

Our Brains On Curiosity

"In any given day, we encounter a barrage of new information," says Charan Ranganath, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, and one of the researchers behind the study. "But even people with really good memory will remember only a small fraction of what happened two days ago."

Ranganath was curious to know why we retain some information and forget other things. So he and his colleagues rounded up 19 volunteers and asked them to review more than 100 trivia questions. Questions such as, “What does the term ‘dinosaur’ actually mean?” and “What Beatles single lasted longest on the charts, at 19 weeks?” Participants rated each question in terms of how curious they were about the answer. Next, everyone reviewed the questions — and their answers — while the researchers monitored their brain activity using an MRI machine. When the participants’ curiosity was piqued, the parts of their brains that regulate pleasure and reward lit up. Curious minds also showed increased activity in the hippocampus, which is involved in the creation of memories.

"There’s this basic circuit in the brain that energizes people to go out and get things that are intrinsically rewarding," Ranganath explains. This circuit lights up when we get money, or candy. It also lights up when we’re curious. When the circuit is activated, our brains release a chemical called dopamine which gives us a high. "The dopamine also seems to play a role in enhancing the connections between cells that are involved in learning."

Indeed, when the researchers later tested participants on what they learned, those who were more curious were more likely to remember the right answers

Curiosity Helps Us Learn Boring Stuff, Too

There was one more twist in Ranganath’s study: Throughout the experiment, the researchers flashed photos of random faces, without giving the participants any explanation as to why. Those whose curiosity was already piqued were also the best at remembering these faces. The researchers were surprised to learn that curious brains are better at learning not only about the subject at hand, but also other stuff — even incidental, boring information. […]

Read the article (via npr.org)

waiting for the first snow

About a year ago, we posted a gif of hover whales. This, however, was our original creation—at the time too big for Tumblr but now able to be posted.

from Suggestions to the keepers of the U.S. life-saving stations, light-houses, and light-ships; and to other observers, relative to the best means of collecting and preserving specimens of whales and porpoises. By Frederick W. True.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

#bologna a #view of the red #town

Flavor of the Month: Ginger

One rhizome, many tastes.

Fresh ginger gets its pungency and aroma from the flavor compound, gingerol. Chemically altering gingerol ends up tweaking ginger’s flavor profile, which helps give ginger its flavor versatility.

Heating a ginger rhizome causes gingerol to undergo a reverse aldol reaction, transforming it to zingerone, a molecule that is completely absent in fresh ginger. Like gingerol, zingerone is responsible for the pungency of cooked ginger, but it also lends a sweeter note to the flavor.

Drying a piece of ginger triggers a dehydration reaction, changing gingerol to shogaol. Shogaol is twice as spicy as gingerol. Read more…

Photo Credit: Jim Lightfoot (112095551@N02/Flickr)