Y2K Was Actually a Success Story, Sleeping Brains Replay Waking Experience, and Plants Can Hear When They’re Being Eaten

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Self-improvement, Science, Astronomy, Education

4.6 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about breakthrough research into what our brains do while we sleep; how plants fight back when they hear they’re being eaten; and why the Y2K bug is actually what a well-handled crisis looks like afterward.

This is the first direct evidence that our brains replay waking experiences while we sleep by Cameron Duke

Eichenlaub, J.-B., Jarosiewicz, B., Saab, J., Franco, B., Kelemen, J., Halgren, E., Hochberg, L. R., & Cash, S. S. (2020). Replay of Learned Neural Firing Sequences during Rest in Human Motor Cortex. Cell Reports, 31(5), 107581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2020.107581
Evidence that human brains replay our waking experiences while we sleep. (2020). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200505121711.htm
Memory Consolidation - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. (2012). Sciencedirect.com. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/memory-consolidation

Plants Can Hear When They're Being Eaten — and They Fight Back by Ashley Hamer

The Arabidopsis Information Resource - About Arabidopsis. (2010). Arabidopsis.org. https://www.arabidopsis.org/portals/education/aboutarabidopsis.jsp
Pollan, M. (2013, December 15). The Intelligent Plant. The New Yorker; The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant
Appel, H. M., & Cocroft, R. B. (2014). Plants respond to leaf vibrations caused by insect herbivore chewing. Oecologia, 175(4), 1257–1266. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-2995-6

The Y2K bug is what a well-handled crisis looks like afterward by Kelsey Donk

Uenuma, F. (2019, December 30). 20 Years Later, the Y2K Bug Seems Like a Joke—Because Those Behind the Scenes Took It Seriously. Time; Time. https://time.com/5752129/y2k-bug-history/
Farhad Manjoo. (2009, November 11). Was Y2K a Waste? Slate Magazine; Slate. https://slate.com/technology/2009/11/was-y2k-a-waste.html

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com.
0:06.7	I'm Cody Gough.
0:07.6	And I'm Ashley Hamer.
0:08.7	Today you'll learn about breakthrough research into what our brains do while we sleep, how plants fight back when they hear
0:15.0	they're being eaten, and why the Y2K bug is actually what a well-handled crisis looks like afterward.
0:21.4	Would satisfy some curiosity.
0:24.0	You probably know that if you got a big test in the morning,
0:27.0	it's important to have a good night's sleep.
0:29.0	Scientists have known for a while that if people sleep after learning something new, their brains will recall that
0:34.8	knowledge even better after they wake up.
0:37.5	But despite their best theories, scientists have never seen direct evidence of what exactly are sleeping brains do to make that happen.
0:45.6	Until now, a new study has the first direct evidence that our brains replay our waking experiences
0:52.0	while we sleep.
0:54.0	Scientists call the process that leads to that overnight brain boost,
0:57.4	memory consolidation.
0:59.5	That's when your brain takes what it's learned and transfers it to long-term memory by tweaking and strengthening
1:04.7	the connections between neurons. Scientists have known sleep plays an important role in this
1:09.9	process and they've made some progress in finding out exactly how.
1:13.7	But so far, no one has been able to follow the process at the individual neuron level.
1:19.1	So recently, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital did exactly that.
1:24.0	They invited two participants into their lab to play a game.
1:27.6	It was kind of like the game Simon.
	...

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