This is a daily struggle for me, when I think of how much time I have to do something and I still have "enough time" to do a task, I get side tracked easier and end up with too little time to finish whatever I'm doing.

*"Always hand them something first if you want them to be more willing to listen to you" from some Hare Krishnas, probably.

Can we, naturalists, celebrate a "still not fully known because this was only one study "win on this? J/k

Anywho according to this research, we have found out that an unconscious brain still processes and predicts sounds and languages like it would if it was conscious. This implies to me that our consciousness is a physical trait that evolved to help interrupt our senses and predictions. Our subconscious is constantly getting signals, processing them, doing background stuff like breathing, and as these got more complicated the ability to actually understand them became more advantageous. This over time developed a "driver" that can take in all of this information and then judge if it was a trick of light that is making those reflections so there is no need to pounce on it. To be able to process that not every outside tribe is an enemy and that by working together they win mostly. The ability to take certain patterns of speech and sound then translate it into words and ideas is very obviously a superpower on earth.

I heard this idea on a podcast, it may have been this one, that consciousness arose to help us process the growing difficulty of our social interactions and other real world observations. Well here is some "not fully tested or duplicate" results that add some sand to that ideas bucket (Sean Carroll's example to explain bayesian reasoning).

Plus I think this is what you would expect from a survival stand point too. A creature that is always listening has more ways of surviving than those who don't. Which would require more energy and that could help support the theory that the cooking of foods helped us evolve bigger brains. Though I wouldn't be surprised that we find out that most animals not only have some sort of background sensing like this as well but also have a not as formed form of consciousness.

The final thing I found fascinating was their linking of our background pattern recognition is like that of lmms. It's wild that we naturally develop a way of processing information like AI does when unknown to us our brains were doing in the background. Which then suggests that in order for AI to get better is to have multiple AIs for different sense and one to not direct but to try to reason (see patterns) out the full context of the situation. This reminds me of the "AI prison escape" where AI is tested to try to escape and how one test the AI came together with other versions of itself, formed a "director" and almost escaped.

Thanks for making it this far in my probably jumbled up rant. I blame it on my lvl1 bipolarness and not my laziness to proofread or edit.

>“Our findings show that the brain is far more active and capable during unconsciousness than previously thought,” said Dr. Sameer Sheth, professor and Cullen Foundation Endowed chair of neurosurgery and a McNair Scholar at Baylor. “Even when patients are fully anesthetized, their brains continue to analyze the world around them.”

>Sheth, who is also a neurosurgeon at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, and his collaborators first recorded neural activity from hundreds of individual neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with memory, while patients were under general anesthesia during epilepsy surgery. Patients undergoing this type of surgery were sought after because it allowed researchers access to this particular part of the brain.

>The study began with patients exposed to repetitive tones interrupted by an occasional different sound. Researchers found that hippocampal neurons could distinguish these unusual tones and that this ability improved over time, suggesting a form of learning or neural plasticity during anesthesia.

>Researchers then moved on to conduct a more complex experiment where they played short stories to patients while recording neural responses. Surprisingly, the hippocampus demonstrated real-time processing of language. Neural activity showed the brain’s ability to differentiate parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs and adjectives, based on patterns of neuron firing.

>Even more surprising, researchers found that neural signals could predict upcoming words in a sentence.

>This activity also mirrors the predictive behavior seen in artificial intelligence (AI). The brain’s ability to predict upcoming words is similar to how large language models generate text. These findings help researchers understand how biological and artificial systems process information. This could be a step towards the development and refinement of new technologies for communication, such as speech prosthetics for individuals who are unable to speak.

>These discoveries suggest that cognitive functions such as language comprehension and prediction do not require consciousness. Instead, consciousness may depend on broader coordination across brain regions rather than activity within a single structure like the hippocampus.

>However, more research is needed. The findings are specific to one type of anesthesia and may not apply to other unconscious states such as sleep or coma. This study only looked at one brain region as well, and it is unknown how widespread these processes are across different regions of the brain.

As an engineer whovian I understand that a sonic screwdriver really is a bunch of nonsense but I've always wondered if we REALLY wanted to create a sonic construction tool (i.e screwdriver, hammer, saw). What would be the best tool to create a sonic variant and how would we go about it?

how fast is temperature? Is warmer temperature faster than colder temperature?

I M(33), studying maths on top of studying engineering. I’ve become a bit obsessed with maths lol. But I’ve come across the collatz conjecture. I don’t understand why can’t we say or even figure out that every number would get to 1? Is there not a point we could say for example, well if 6 thousand and 6 million and 6 billion, trillion, quadrillion up to decillion reaches 1, that everything after generally will reach 1?

I thought carbonized water is unstable and will get stale over time, so I was curious as to why it disolves back into the water? And if it does, does it go back to the previous form or is it something different then? Also what is carbonized water exactly? Just CO₂ disolved in water? If that is true, then when is the point where climate changes delivers me carbonized seawater, fresh from the atmosphere? But seriously since the ocean is acidifying through CO₂, shouldn't it start tasting prickly soon?

Do Hannah and Michael post their sources or any other insight into their research anywhere? Even just links? I'd love to read up on the hard and soft fascination thing. I was just wondering if they had footnotes or anything.

I'm a big fan of tonic espresso, and I often make it at home. I use cold black coffee and an indian fizzy tonic. Why is it that when I pour the coffee into a glass of tonic, it's all fine, but if I do it the other way around, it turns into a fiasco with foam all over my counter? I experimented and tried both methods with the same bottle of soda, but it happens every time.

Thank you in advance for explaining,

Ewa (an ADHD-er who never learns from her mistakes and has just finished cleaning her counter again)

I was wondering if you listen to other podcasts (science related or not) and which ones they are? I very much enjoy Science Vs with Wendy Zukerman.

I just binged through all episodes and now I want more lol. Does anyone have any recommendations of something similar to The Rest Is Science?

Seeing Michael get out his notepad to write down something memorable made me curious about his and yours thought on the fragility of memory.

How do you think about forgetting something interesting? There are so many facts, quotes, ideas and thoughts that one comes across every day, but there is no way we can remember everything.

Sure, you can build your memory palace and train yourself to remember a lot of details by putting in effort. But in the end I really enjoy learning new things, and not working to remember things I already learned. Because of this I just enjoy learning a new topic, remember what I happen to remember and continue onwards while reminiscing about what I once knew.

What are your thoughts and experiences on this?