Neuroscience

The Making of a Creative Worldview

mind — moebio.com

An interactive visualization project by Santiago Ortiz (moebio.com) exploring mind/brain concepts through generative and data-driven graphics. Ortiz creates some of the most thoughtful intersection of data visualization and conceptual art.

How AI Transformers Mimic Parts of the Brain (Quanta Magazine)

Quanta Magazine's September 2022 piece on emerging research showing that transformer attention patterns converge with how the brain processes language and vision — a surprising empirical finding with implications for both AI interpretability and computational neuroscience.

How to Maximize Dopamine & Motivation — Andrew Huberman

Andrew Huberman's deep-dive on dopamine: how to maximize the molecule that drives motivation, not just pleasure. The key insight is that dopamine is released in anticipation (pursuit), not just upon reward — with practical protocols for maintaining the system.

Temporal Neural Networks

A paper on Temporal Neural Networks, architectures that encode time as a first-class computation dimension rather than implicitly through state, likely in the context of spiking neural networks or neuromorphic computing. Saved July 2022; specific paper identity unclear from the filename alone.

Disulfiram as a Potential Anti-Anxiety Drug

Tokyo University of Science research finding that disulfiram — the alcohol-deterrent drug Antabuse — safely reduces anxiety in rodents, potentially via ALDH2 inhibition affecting acetaldehyde metabolism. Drug repurposing with a well-understood safety profile.

How the Gut Differentiates Artificial Sweeteners from Sugars

Research showing the gut uses distinct neural pathways to sense sugar vs. artificial sweeteners — sugar activates both taste receptors AND a caloric-sensing gut-brain axis, while artificial sweeteners only hit taste receptors. May explain why zero-calorie sweeteners don't fully satisfy cravings.

The Overfitted Brain: Dreams Evolved to Assist Generalization

A 2020 paper proposing that dreams evolved as a biological regularization mechanism — the brain 'trains' on noisy, hallucinated data during sleep to prevent overfitting to waking experience. A striking bridge between ML theory and sleep neuroscience.

Hackers Backdoor the Human Brain

ExtremeTech coverage of researchers demonstrating that a consumer EEG headset could be used to extract sensitive information (PINs, locations) from subjects without their explicit cooperation — essentially a side-channel attack on the human brain. An early marker of privacy concerns in BCI technology.

Eigengrau

Eigengrau is the dark gray color perceived by the human visual system in the absence of light — not true black, but a specific gray around #16161d. The visual cortex generates this background noise spontaneously, which is why total darkness doesn't look fully black.

Your Body's Best Time for Everything

WSJ's guide to chronobiology and optimal daily timing — when your body is physiologically primed for different tasks. Exercise, creative work, analytical thinking, and sleep each have distinct peaks driven by circadian rhythms and cortisol/melatonin cycles.

What Happens to Our Brains When We Exercise

Buffer's synthesis of neuroscience research on exercise and mood: BDNF and endorphins explain why exercise produces mental clarity and euphoria, and timing matters more than volume — 20 minutes on the day you need it beats a missed workout in a weekly routine.

Atlas of Gene Expression in the Human Brain (Nature, 2012)

A 2012 Nature paper presenting a comprehensive atlas of gene expression across the human brain — mapping which genes are active in which brain regions across two donor brains. Foundational dataset for understanding the molecular basis of brain organization and neurological disease.

How a Protein Meal Lets Your Brain Know You're Full

2012 research showing how protein-rich meals trigger specific gut-brain signaling that reduces appetite more effectively than carbohydrates or fat. Provides mechanistic grounding for the well-observed but poorly-explained satiety effect of protein.

This Is Your Brain on Jazz: MRI Study of Spontaneity and Creativity

A Johns Hopkins fMRI study of jazz improvisation found that musicians deactivate their self-monitoring prefrontal cortex and activate the self-expression region during improvisation. Empirical support for the idea that creative flow requires disabling your inner critic.