Speaker 1: You're on the bus an hour from home in bumper
Speaker 1: to bumper traffic, creeping forward a few inches at a time,
Speaker 1: someone's kids are screaming, and suddenly your back is too. Luckily,
Speaker 1: Panadal extra film coated tablets are boosted by caffeine and
Speaker 1: they get to work in as little as ten minutes
Speaker 1: for powerful relief. That's more than just paracetamol. That's one
Speaker 1: for Pana doll speed based on absorption data contains paracetamol.
Speaker 1: Always read the label or.
Speaker 2: Leaflet get value.
Speaker 3: You can't argue with fat Tesco with their amazing club
Speaker 3: card prices. Serve up something special with our finest meal
Speaker 3: deal for two starring one main, two sides and dessert
Speaker 3: for only sixteen euro like succulent Board be approved Rush
Speaker 3: Angustriploin steaks with pepper, corn butter or delicious Firous Chicken
Speaker 3: Parmeshama served with creamy potato gratam and her mix of
Speaker 3: rainbow root vegetables. And enjoy Goozillionaire or Soldier caramel cheesecake.
Speaker 3: Can't argue with that shop in store or online.
Speaker 2: Tesco.
Speaker 3: Every little helps available the most stores, prices very in express.
Speaker 4: Oh hey, it's still the fountain at the mall that's
Speaker 4: never on. Ali Ward, you are here for part two
Speaker 4: of Nemnology Memory. Please tell me that you started with
Speaker 4: part one. Even if you don't remember it, start with
Speaker 4: part one because this is the thrilling conclusion with Professor
Speaker 4: Researcher and the director of UC Irvine Center for the
Speaker 4: Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.
Speaker 2: He's amazing.
Speaker 4: We're going to get into it, but first this is
Speaker 4: a wall twell episode of questions from patrons, and if
Speaker 4: you'd like to submit some time you two can join
Speaker 4: for as low as a buck a month, and upper
Speaker 4: tiers can submit audio questions. Thank you also to everyone
Speaker 4: getting ologies merch from ologiesmarch dot com, and thanks to
Speaker 4: everyone leaving us for reviews, which boosts the show so much.
Speaker 4: And each week I remember to read them all and
Speaker 4: I pick a just written one such as this one
Speaker 4: from Sulasang, who wrote this podcast saved my life. It's
Speaker 4: like spending an hour at the most amazing library ever
Speaker 4: where you find exactly the right book that you didn't
Speaker 4: know that you needed. Sula Sang and everyone who's ever
Speaker 4: left review I've read it and thank you. Welcome to
Speaker 4: the library. Okay, on to part two, where we answer
Speaker 4: your questions about how to remember names and faces, what
Speaker 4: causes Alzheimer's, photographic memory, short term versus long term memory,
Speaker 4: how to prevent dementia, cannabis and memory, goldfish brains, and
Speaker 4: why smelling sunscreen makes you want to cry sometimes with
Speaker 4: neurobiologists professor researcher and memory expert neemnologist doctor Michael Yassa, Oh,
Speaker 4: I have questions from listeners. Can I ask you one million?
Speaker 4: Of course you're the best, Okay, So this question was
Speaker 4: on the minds of patrons Esopardy, Elsa T. Who's a
Speaker 4: first time question asker? And face name forgetter Diana's to
Speaker 4: Red Nick Dean, LILLYB. And audio question submitter Summer wanted
Speaker 4: to know.
Speaker 5: Hi, Ellie. Some are from New Zealand here. What I
Speaker 5: find really interesting is that I remember faces, but sometimes
Speaker 5: I can't remember where I've seen that person before, even
Speaker 5: in what country I've seen them. And I'm wondering why
Speaker 5: we're so good at recognizing faces and remembering knowing a face,
Speaker 5: but knowing none of the details around that face.
Speaker 4: What is it about remembering certain aspects of a person
Speaker 4: or a connection. I know some people have total face
Speaker 4: blindness yep, as well, either evolutionarily or how do we
Speaker 4: look at faces where we blank and say who is that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a fantastic question, Summer. So you've already mentioned
Speaker 6: one version of this, which is face blindness, right, And
Speaker 6: I'm not saying that Summer has face blindness at all.
Speaker 6: In fact, I think all of us struggle with faces
Speaker 6: to an extent.
Speaker 4: So this condition is medically known as prosopagnasha. And a
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three study in the journal Cortex titled what
Speaker 4: is the Prevalence of Developmental Prosopagnasia An empirical assessment of
Speaker 4: different diagnostic cutoffs, found that developmental prosopygnasha, meaning it's lifelong
Speaker 4: and not caused by injury to the brain, is more
Speaker 4: common than previously thought, and that it lies on a
Speaker 4: spectrum of severity. And I was doing some reading on
Speaker 4: it from people who have it to try to figure
Speaker 4: out what it feels like. And I've read it described
Speaker 4: as seeing a tree and then trying to pick out
Speaker 4: that specific tree in a forest, or telling the difference
Speaker 4: between two different cows in a field. And if this
Speaker 4: sounds like you, and if you watch movies wondering, wait
Speaker 4: is that the same guy or is that a different guy.
Speaker 4: You may be one in thirty three people who have it,
Speaker 4: which is cool but also awful, So don't let anyone
Speaker 4: make you feel too.
Speaker 2: Bad about it.
Speaker 6: Now, faces are a very important piece of information. When
Speaker 6: you look at somebody's face, you can tell by their
Speaker 6: expression whether they're a threat to you, whether they're a
Speaker 6: friendly person. You can choose to approach or avoid. You
Speaker 6: can base a lot of your decision making based on
Speaker 6: a face. If somebody's face has an expression of fear
Speaker 6: and they're looking behind you, they might warn you to
Speaker 6: something and you might react accordingly. So we evolved, and
Speaker 6: not just our species. Many social species have evolved to
Speaker 6: try to always interpret faces and facial expressions. But recognizing
Speaker 6: a face and remembering whether a face belongs to a
Speaker 6: certain name is this thing that happened much later in evolution.
Speaker 6: And I don't think our brains are just very good
Speaker 6: at it yet. I think we're developing that, but we're
Speaker 6: still sort of half baked when it comes to connecting
Speaker 6: names and faces. So number one complaints that I hear
Speaker 6: from everybody is I remember faces, but I could never
Speaker 6: connect them with when did I see this person? What
Speaker 6: their name is, or sometimes I'll hear the name and
Speaker 6: I can't recall the face, but then I connect when
Speaker 6: I see it. So face names associations that they tend
Speaker 6: to be the most challenging for us humans. But one
Speaker 6: of the reasons why faces are really important is because
Speaker 6: of this evolutionary survival sort of significance. Things around fear,
Speaker 6: things around pleasure, reward, all of that. We get our
Speaker 6: cues A lot of our cues from faces.
Speaker 4: I learned a trick once on a film set where
Speaker 4: one guy I worked with. It was Adam Savage from MythBusters.
Speaker 4: He knew everyone's name on this huge set we were on.
Speaker 4: It's like, how do you do that?
Speaker 2: He was like, Okay, have this.
Speaker 4: Trick where that woman's name is Dorothy and I think
Speaker 4: of Dorothy from the Wizard of Us. That person's name
Speaker 4: is Ben, and I have a brother in law named Ben,
Speaker 4: And so as soon as they said their name, you
Speaker 4: had to pay attention.
Speaker 2: But then you made a connection.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. You know, there's lots of folks out there who
Speaker 6: try to train you on how to make your memory
Speaker 6: system better, and many of them you might know. Their
Speaker 6: memory champions out there. They're sort of memory grand masters
Speaker 6: out there, and they've learned tricks that have been used
Speaker 6: by the Greeks for a long time, ancient Greeks, I
Speaker 6: should say, like mind palaces and so on, And all
Speaker 6: of these methods are based on forming strong personal associations.
Speaker 6: So if you have never seen The Wizard of Oz,
Speaker 6: it wouldn't have made sense to you, Yes, associated, right,
Speaker 6: But if you've seen it and you can picture the
Speaker 6: dorith the in the exact movie, right, that makes it
Speaker 6: much more personal. So they tell you to try to
Speaker 6: be able to remember people's faces and names, make that
Speaker 6: something that is emotionally significant to you. But making those
Speaker 6: connections and making them as vivid as possible seems to
Speaker 6: be the trick that works for most people.
Speaker 4: So I hope that helps Clay Trover, Sarah mcckeacher, and
Speaker 4: Eric Kidzeg, Jennifer Frow at least we will Hannah Nowen,
Speaker 4: Jacqueline Church, Nomes, lorm Or, Bennett van der Bosch, Eleen
Speaker 4: lands Ken, Termine Lists, Zulika Pevic, Kelli Fon, Kelly Larson,
Speaker 4: Carleen dh and Connor. They them, all of whom say
Speaker 4: that they are garbage at remembering names. It's okay obviously,
Speaker 4: based on that list, you are not alone, and patron
Speaker 4: Jackie G said that a tour guide shared this tip
Speaker 4: with them that you introduce yourself first. Then you can
Speaker 4: actually listen when other people say their names instead of
Speaker 4: mentally rehearsing your own introduction, and Jackie G says it's
Speaker 4: amazing and has worked wonders for me, So perhaps that'll
Speaker 4: make some of you less anxious. Oh, speaking of anxiety
Speaker 4: and trauma and emotions in general, many many of you
Speaker 4: Little miss particular Camilli Gimino, Susan Singley, Mattie Cake's Popsicle Emperor,
Speaker 4: Joshua Tals and Sarah Argueta, Rowan Tree, Michelle Gregos, Ali Brown,
Speaker 4: Patricia Evans, Katie Hammont and Rachel Persco wanted to know
Speaker 4: how emotions affect pretension, and Nick Allston asked what's the
Speaker 4: chemistry behind emotional memories? And also patron Ryan asked, Hi.
Speaker 7: This is Ryan from Los Angeles. I was wondering if
Speaker 7: you could speak to the effects that negative emotions such
Speaker 7: as shame and guilt have on working memory and long
Speaker 7: term memory.
Speaker 4: Are people who experience heightened emotions, either with anxiety or
Speaker 4: pretty happy people, do they keep those memories more because
Speaker 4: there is more of an emotional connection.
Speaker 6: There's no doubt that having an emotional connection strengthens the
Speaker 6: way that you store on memory. So certainly, if you
Speaker 6: tend to have much more emotional reactions to things or
Speaker 6: the experience that you're having are much more emotional, they
Speaker 6: will have the capacity to be stored for longer, to
Speaker 6: be able to influence your actions and decisions for longer.
Speaker 6: And again there's the evolutionary significance for that. Of course,
Speaker 6: more emotional things may be a little bit more involved
Speaker 6: in your survival. Right that said, emotion doesn't always improve
Speaker 6: your ability to store things. It colors the experience, for sure,
Speaker 6: but it also kind of zooms in on certain aspects
Speaker 6: of the experience and zooms out from others. So you
Speaker 6: may recall certain details incredibly well, but there may be
Speaker 6: other things that are kind of lost on you because
Speaker 6: of the emotionality. So it creates this competition between some
Speaker 6: central features of the experience, and then a lot of
Speaker 6: the peripheral stuff doesn't win out in that competition, and
Speaker 6: that can be forgotten.
Speaker 4: Many of you wondered about what is normal given our
Speaker 4: very chaotic and technological world, such as pologist from the
Speaker 4: Carobology episode, Meghan lynch Amelia Frank, Jinny Bateman, Katie brick Klein,
Speaker 4: Margaret and Nuskum Randapana Regular k Waspsologist, Eric are Eaton,
Speaker 4: Rachel m Meghan Walker, Tiny Nature and first time question
Speaker 4: askers Julie Williams, Chelsea Loves Chocolate, Theo Klin, Tara Villanova,
Speaker 4: and some folks who are distracted by Struus don ewelld
Speaker 4: Holly Coole, Eric Masterson, and Helen Langale. I wonder if
Speaker 4: our lack of presence, because we were distracted a lot
Speaker 4: with our phones and internet stuff, I wonder if that
Speaker 4: lack of presence is making our memories a little bit
Speaker 4: more Swiss cheesy.
Speaker 6: I like this Swiss cheesy. It's a good way to
Speaker 6: think about it. Certainly, every time that I've lifted up
Speaker 6: my phone and tried to record a video of my
Speaker 6: daughter playing basketball, as opposed to put the phone down
Speaker 6: and actually watch her play, I feel like I have
Speaker 6: Swiss cheese in my brain. Yeah, so one percent. I
Speaker 6: think that you're right when we replace actually experiencing something
Speaker 6: in its full glory, three dimensional and all of that
Speaker 6: with some two D version of what we're recording on
Speaker 6: the phone, or being distracted by looking at something at
Speaker 6: the same time and not being fully aware, fully cognizant
Speaker 6: of what's happening. Of course, it's going to change how
Speaker 6: these memories are stored and how they're represented, and I
Speaker 6: do worry about that. I think that, you know, there's
Speaker 6: no doubt that there's value to having the electronics and
Speaker 6: having I mean, look at us, we have our devices
Speaker 6: are out all the time, and that's just the nature
Speaker 6: of what we have to do to be able to
Speaker 6: deal with the situations around us and the rapidly kind
Speaker 6: of evolving world and all of the stimulation. But I
Speaker 6: think it misses something about experiencing something fully and truly
Speaker 6: with all of its three dimension at four dimensionality, i
Speaker 6: should say, and with all the emotional contexts that come
Speaker 6: with it, right, and to be able to have that
Speaker 6: genuinely you have to be there. So immersion, I think
Speaker 6: is really key for good memory storage.
Speaker 4: So those four dimensions are like a three D object
Speaker 4: on the x, y, and Z axis, but with the
Speaker 4: added dimension of time. It's interesting because we're experiencing it
Speaker 4: less in the moment, but we're able to recall it
Speaker 4: more With that video footage, and it's such a weird
Speaker 4: trade off that it's like, well, I can remember it
Speaker 4: later as long as I don't fully experience it now.
Speaker 6: It is a weird trade off because what you remember
Speaker 6: based on the video is this weird sort of you know,
Speaker 6: two dimensional version on a screen, and you're never able
Speaker 6: to piece back being there fully in three dimensions. But
Speaker 6: if that was your experience, that's what you piece back,
Speaker 6: So it comes back with all of the pleasure, the
Speaker 6: sensory experience that came with it, as opposed to if
Speaker 6: you're looking at the screen, that's your version of that reality,
Speaker 6: and that's what comes back. It's just that two dimensional,
Speaker 6: more impoverished version. Yeah, and that, to me, I think
Speaker 6: is the big concern.
Speaker 4: That's funny because I my husband and I got married
Speaker 4: three years ago and a good friend of mine was like,
Speaker 4: let's watch the video on your first anniversary. My husband
Speaker 4: and I can't watch the video. What we remember from
Speaker 4: it is what we remember, and both of us have
Speaker 4: like the ick when it comes to watching it.
Speaker 2: For some reason.
Speaker 4: We're like, I don't want to remember it any differently
Speaker 4: because we are kind of always, like you said, reconstructing
Speaker 4: those memories based on input right.
Speaker 6: And you don't want to change the version that you
Speaker 6: have in your brain, especially if that version was beautiful
Speaker 6: and something that you want to hold on to. Now.
Speaker 6: I have the anytime anybody tells me to watch a
Speaker 6: video of myself, So I just can't do it. Categorically,
Speaker 6: that's just something I don't want to do. But I
Speaker 6: can totally resonate with what you're saying. If you've experienced
Speaker 6: it fully being there, being able to piece it back
Speaker 6: together in this two dimensional version, and looking at it
Speaker 6: on a video, it's just never the same and it
Speaker 6: kind of alters your actual recollection of that experience.
Speaker 4: And a University of Chicago study recently recruited users of
Speaker 4: this app called One Second every Day to hop it
Speaker 4: an MRI and look at quick videos of strangers lives
Speaker 4: versus one second clips that they had recorded themselves using
Speaker 4: that app, and this study found that different parts of
Speaker 4: the brain light up if it was their own memory
Speaker 4: versus just intaking a stranger's video. And other neurobiologists at
Speaker 4: the University of Toronto are exploring how video diaries like
Speaker 4: that could help Alzheimer's patients connect more to their own past,
Speaker 4: so to patrons Antifa and Rosalie de Laforet, who recall
Speaker 4: more when prompted by photos and videos. That's some real
Speaker 4: science right there for you everyone else. That app was
Speaker 4: called one Second every Day If you want to log
Speaker 4: little chunks of your whole life. Now, what if you
Speaker 4: don't need physical memorabilia or pixels to jog your memory?
Speaker 4: What if your mind is a camera? So Alia Myers
Speaker 4: and Erica Perryandre, among others, had questions about that.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 4: On the topic of photographic memory, many people asked. Mariah
Speaker 4: Kay said, this question has been on my mind for
Speaker 4: so long, all caps. I know there's photographic memory, but
Speaker 4: are there different versions or levels of it? Read Berry
Speaker 4: wants to know what actually is photographic memory? This question
Speaker 4: was us why Cyberman's, Erica Harry Andre, Rachel McGill Arla Gramlkin,
Speaker 4: what is photographic memory exactly?
Speaker 6: Okay, fellas, this is mythbust in time. Okay, ready, yeah,
Speaker 6: photographic memory does not exist. Hell, and it's so uncomfortable
Speaker 6: to hear that. Well, So photographic memory is or what
Speaker 6: we sometimes referred to as idetic memory. And you know
Speaker 6: the way that it's defined, it's that you have this
Speaker 6: perfect recall, perfect recollection of something that you've seen potentially
Speaker 6: only once, right, and if it's in the context of
Speaker 6: say reading, you're talking about like a remembering page numbers and
Speaker 6: all of that. The evidence that that exists historically is
Speaker 6: slim to none. We've been led to there's maybe a
Speaker 6: very small handful of cases of savant syndrome where somebody
Speaker 6: could legitimately make the claim for true photographic memory, But
Speaker 6: aside from that, there's no real evidence that photographic memory
Speaker 6: to this sense exists. That said, there's really really really
Speaker 6: good memory, and this really really really bad memory. There's
Speaker 6: a whole spectrum and a lot of times when we're
Speaker 6: thinking about photographic memory, it's not exactly that, but it's close.
Speaker 6: It's really good memory where you're memorizing where things are
Speaker 6: laid out on the page, where you may be memorizing
Speaker 6: things like you know, the page numbers and where the
Speaker 6: figures were, where the pictures were, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 6: to the extent that we can tell whether or not
Speaker 6: you know that that's actually helpful in a day to
Speaker 6: day learning, it's not clear whether or not that actually
Speaker 6: helps you.
Speaker 4: And well, a true photographic memory is at this point
Speaker 4: just flim flam. There is such a thing as idetic memory,
Speaker 4: where someone can see a visual and look at it
Speaker 4: or sometimes hear something, and once it's removed, they can
Speaker 4: recall it in great detail. It's as if visually they're
Speaker 4: still looking at it, but it's not one hundred percent faithful,
Speaker 4: and it does not last a lifetime. Your brain's like,
Speaker 4: I don't really need that fancy of a feature.
Speaker 6: Because remember, what we're trying to learn and remember on
Speaker 6: a day to day basis is not necessarily the details
Speaker 6: of the exact words on a page or the exact
Speaker 6: details of what happened. It's the gist. It's sort of
Speaker 6: the overall is kind of abstracted. It's whatever knowledge it
Speaker 6: can abstract from that experience and be able to use
Speaker 6: it to guide my future decision making. So, if you
Speaker 6: start to think about memory a little bit differently, that
Speaker 6: it's not really about the past, it's all about the future,
Speaker 6: this is no longer uncomfortable. It's okay to sit with
Speaker 6: that that there's no photographic memory because there's no rationale,
Speaker 6: there's no reason for it to exists.
Speaker 4: So though we debunked learning styles in part one, what
Speaker 4: about people who don't retain things as well visually but
Speaker 4: through sound. Hey, first time question askers Kimberly, Kirston Cornell,
Speaker 4: as well as E Jordan Sewn, Thomas k Matthew Walcher,
Speaker 4: Lisa Gorman, Maria Kay, Josh Walden, sonny As, Vanessa Adams,
Speaker 4: Daniel van Voren, Jennifer Frow, Debda Science, Alicia Clarkson and
Speaker 4: Sam wanted to know about sound and memory, including song lyrics. Well,
Speaker 4: I know because we have obviously a lot of listeners
Speaker 4: who learn by auditory memory. Are some people better at
Speaker 4: recalling things that they hear it?
Speaker 6: Yes? Okay, yes, so, and this takes us back to
Speaker 6: a COmON station about learning styles. So I want to
Speaker 6: be very clear, right, it is a myth. Learning styles
Speaker 6: is a myth. There is no one way to be
Speaker 6: able to get to your brain, and it could be
Speaker 6: visual for you or auditory for you. That said, people
Speaker 6: do have individual differences in how much they learn visually
Speaker 6: and how much they learn through their ears auditorily, and
Speaker 6: how much they learn through other senses. But at the
Speaker 6: end of the day, the most effective learning is the
Speaker 6: one that combines the most senses. Ah So as a species,
Speaker 6: we are far more visual as a species collectively. If
Speaker 6: you look at rodents, for example, rats, they have a
Speaker 6: much stronger sense of smell than we ever would be
Speaker 6: motivated by. Right, that does not diminish our sense of smell,
Speaker 6: does not diminish our other senses, But it says that
Speaker 6: primarily because we are not nocturnal, we operate usually in daylight,
Speaker 6: and the sunlight visual information seems to be really important
Speaker 6: to us. We tend to kind of prioritize that we
Speaker 6: have a lot more real estate in our brain dedicated
Speaker 6: to processing of the visual sense and to other senses.
Speaker 6: So when somebody says, well, I learned better if I
Speaker 6: hear it, I'll say I'm willing to bet that you'd
Speaker 6: learn better if you heard it and saw it at
Speaker 6: the same time. Ah, So don't just rely on oh,
Speaker 6: I just want to hear it if you can. So,
Speaker 6: for example, if you're reading and you say I'm just
Speaker 6: not a reader, we'll try reading out loud so you're
Speaker 6: also hearing it and listening to yourself say the words,
Speaker 6: and you'll notice that that is a bimodal kind of learning,
Speaker 6: and things will stick a lot more.
Speaker 4: We did a reading episode recently and there was a
Speaker 4: big question as to whether or not audiobooks were reading,
Speaker 4: whether they count, whether you can count them in your book.
Speaker 6: Oh, I sure hope they count.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So we talked about this in the recent Anagnosology episode
Speaker 4: all about Reading, and I'll just give you an excerpt
Speaker 4: from that with doctor Adrian Johns, who is a professor
Speaker 4: and a historian and who authored the book The Science
Speaker 4: of Reading.
Speaker 8: It's actually interesting that e books or actually audiobooks more
Speaker 8: the idea that you could, as it well, read a
Speaker 8: novel or something by having it read to you by machine.
Speaker 8: There are schemes for those going back as far as
Speaker 8: the pretty much the origin of recording, so the late
Speaker 8: nineteen thirty twentieth century, there were visionary schemes for having
Speaker 8: things like, oh, you know, vending machines where you could
Speaker 8: put your money in and there would be a speaker,
Speaker 8: you know, like a speaking trumpet that would speak a book.
Speaker 8: It's not like there's something that is that radically new
Speaker 8: about audiobooks per se. Having said that, I mean my
Speaker 8: own sense of it kind of crudely is that I
Speaker 8: think with audiobooks it's really that you're having something read
Speaker 8: to you rather than reading. And part of that has
Speaker 8: to do with the control of the pace of it,
Speaker 8: you know, so you can slow down recordings, you can
Speaker 8: pause it, and all of that kind of thing. But
Speaker 8: it's not the same as doing what mon does with
Speaker 8: one's mind's eye all the time in reading a page,
Speaker 8: where you're constantly shifting the speed and considering things and
Speaker 8: going back, you know, without necessarily thinking about it. You
Speaker 8: don't have to press a button or something. Ebooks, on
Speaker 8: the other hand, I think are just reading. I mean,
Speaker 8: I don't have any issue with those at all.
Speaker 4: So doctor John's is a reading scholar, and I am
Speaker 4: a lady recording this while not wearing a bra, but
Speaker 4: whose entire life revolves around reading to people. So we'll
Speaker 4: have to arm wrestle for dominance. But I will say
Speaker 4: that per an ancient study from the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 4: titled Retention and Recall Incidental Learning of visual and auditory
Speaker 4: material in the Journal of Genetic Psychology, that visual memories tend.
Speaker 2: To be better for recall.
Speaker 4: But there is quote a decline with age for recall
Speaker 4: of visual material, but virtually no deterioration in performance on
Speaker 4: the auditory task. So I'm going to amplify that data
Speaker 4: in my favor now what about smell? Cody bardoc Vanessa Adams,
Speaker 4: Christine Hurley, The Dork next door a, Manda Regan, Guy
Speaker 4: Hutchinson eating dark hair for a Living Renee Vandenhoven, Jess
Speaker 4: h Fiona, Elizabeth Karro Young Anastasia press All wanted to
Speaker 4: know about smell and memory, and Susan Singley asked, why
Speaker 4: do some aromas bring back such clear and nostalgic memories
Speaker 4: like cut grass, old books, coconut sunscreen, ocean waves, and
Speaker 4: that smell after rain.
Speaker 2: But yeah, earlier Mike.
Speaker 4: Mentioned that rodents have a much stronger sense of smell
Speaker 4: than us, and I wonder if they feel nostalgic for
Speaker 4: smelling certain garbage.
Speaker 2: I bet they do.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: You mentioned smell and rats.
Speaker 4: We have an excellent Urban Rodentology episode about rats that
Speaker 4: made me cry with affection for rats. But Amanda Regan
Speaker 4: wanted to know why do smells or sounds trigger memories sometimes?
Speaker 2: And I have.
Speaker 4: Heard that it's difficult to really know what a smell is.
Speaker 4: You have to have a memory of that smell that
Speaker 4: it goes straight to some memory center.
Speaker 2: Ye, what's up with that couple things?
Speaker 6: So let me break this down, because you asked a
Speaker 6: couple of really really interesting questions, but they're a little
Speaker 6: bit different from each other. So the first one is
Speaker 6: maybe whether or not we can sort of label smells.
Speaker 6: You can label a sound, and people that have perfect
Speaker 6: pitch can tell you exactly what note it is and
Speaker 6: so on, and you can certainly label visual things. We
Speaker 6: have objects, we have things colors, right, but with smells,
Speaker 6: it's a little bit different, and we don't have a
Speaker 6: great lexicon for ss smells. A lot of times we're
Speaker 6: relegated to kind of like lavender, kind of like and
Speaker 6: fill in the blank, right, something that you're familiar with,
Speaker 6: But that's the rob You have to go back to
Speaker 6: something that you're familiar with, so it reminds you of
Speaker 6: something else. It reminds me of something that you might
Speaker 6: have smelled or since before, and that maybe just that
Speaker 6: evolutionary thing, like we haven't really evolved to prioritize this
Speaker 6: kind of information, smell information. We don't use it typically
Speaker 6: to navigate around the world, although if you've got a
Speaker 6: nice baking cake in a kitchen, you might navigate your
Speaker 6: way there. So in some situations maybe it's helpful, but
Speaker 6: we tend to navigate mostly based on visual information.
Speaker 4: So our sense of smell isn't keen enough to save
Speaker 4: us essentially, so it remains pretty mid. And think back
Speaker 4: to any time you've tried to describe a smell, You've
Speaker 4: probably said it smells like and thought of the last
Speaker 4: instance or the strongest instance of smelling something like that thing.
Speaker 6: We tend to kind of know what we need to
Speaker 6: do based on visual information. So because it was never prioritized,
Speaker 6: we never sort of bothered to create robustly lab for it.
Speaker 6: And when you don't have labels for things, your brain
Speaker 6: sort of struggle to kind of store it with that
Speaker 6: fidelity because you don't have that verbal thing that you
Speaker 6: can attach to it. I know what a coffee monk
Speaker 6: is because I have a verbal label for those coffee monks, right,
Speaker 6: So that's one piece. The other piece, which I think
Speaker 6: is fascinating, is that especially smells can trigger memories, sometimes
Speaker 6: long lost memories. There's a certain smells that will remind
Speaker 6: me of my grandmother's house, certain smells that remind me
Speaker 6: of specific people in my past because that might have
Speaker 6: been the perfume or clone they wear or something like
Speaker 6: that or similar to it. And then the experience of
Speaker 6: going back sort of it like washes over you. You
Speaker 6: kind of go back in time, immersed your exactly in
Speaker 6: that moment. The sense of smell almost has this incredibly
Speaker 6: privileged capacity to do this, And we don't know why
Speaker 6: this happens, but we suspect that it's possible. Part of
Speaker 6: it is the fact that your sense of smell, unlike
Speaker 6: all of the other senses, it has direct access to
Speaker 6: your hippocampus, your memory bits of the brain. And it's
Speaker 6: not clear why that is, but it's sort of co
Speaker 6: evolved that way. The sensory systems in the brain that
Speaker 6: are outside of smell, so vision, audition, all have to
Speaker 6: go through the thalamus, which is this sort of major
Speaker 6: hub in the brain before they get to the memory
Speaker 6: parts of the brain. There isn't like this direct access,
Speaker 6: whereas everywhere else this happens. For our sense of smell,
Speaker 6: it doesn't happen. Our sense smell doesn't go through the thalamus.
Speaker 6: It like directly has this you know, revolving door straight
Speaker 6: into our memory bits of the brain. And we have
Speaker 6: no clue why the hell that is. It's just this weird,
Speaker 6: quizzical thing. And I don't know to what extents that
Speaker 6: means it's truly privileged, and that's the reason why we
Speaker 6: remember thinks so vividly. But it seems plausible that it's
Speaker 6: at least a contributing factor that you don't have to
Speaker 6: gate through somewhere else before you get to the hippocampus
Speaker 6: right there.
Speaker 4: It's like an express train. Yeah, so exciting. What about
Speaker 4: as someone who has had a nasty concussion Hope Lauren
Speaker 4: Galia Well at a capello Adam Foot's wife Anna, a
Speaker 4: bunch of people wanted to know how studying concussions or
Speaker 4: TBI has influenced work or influences our memory.
Speaker 6: You know, it's challenging with concussions or TBI traumatic brain
Speaker 6: injury because there's no two injuries that are the same,
Speaker 6: so that is a particularly difficult set of conditions. It
Speaker 6: depends on the severity of the concussion, the location, all
Speaker 6: sorts of things, and we're learning a lot more about this.
Speaker 6: Clearly it impacts a variety of different memory systems, memory
Speaker 6: being one of the key ones that gets impacted. But
Speaker 6: depending on the kind of injury, whether it's a coup
Speaker 6: contrac coup kind of injury where they're sort of stretching
Speaker 6: and shearing of some of the brains, white matter pathways,
Speaker 6: the connections between different regions. All of those things tend
Speaker 6: to happen. There's inflammation, there's sometimes franc injury. You can
Speaker 6: actually see evidence of that, but it's not clear how
Speaker 6: much of that is, first of all, common across individuals,
Speaker 6: because again the extent of the injury is different, the ideology,
Speaker 6: the rooms of the injury, the cause it can be very,
Speaker 6: very different. But the fact that memory is impacted almost
Speaker 6: in all concussive injuries is an interesting phenomenon, and I
Speaker 6: always go back to our memory system is, or at
Speaker 6: least the hippocampal memory system, is one of the most
Speaker 6: vulnerable systems in the brain. It tends to feel the
Speaker 6: brunt of pretty much anything.
Speaker 4: Patrons Rye of the Tiger, Heidi Brina Palencia and Christine
Speaker 4: Hurley asked about what is loathsomely called mom brain, or
Speaker 4: in Tim Farr's words, I don't feel like I know
Speaker 4: things anymore, and it's horrible. I myself do not have kids,
Speaker 4: but I have damaged my brain with a hospital grade
Speaker 4: below to the head.
Speaker 6: I feel for you, and not just concussions, but even
Speaker 6: if we're sleep deprived, even if we're anxious or depressed,
Speaker 6: or anything that's happening to us tends to impact the system.
Speaker 6: It is one of our most primitive systems in the brain.
Speaker 6: It's one that we shared with all the mammalian species
Speaker 6: and many others. Even though it's tucked in the middle
Speaker 6: of the brain, it seems like it would be like
Speaker 6: nice and enveloped and covered up. It has kind of
Speaker 6: weird positioning. The vasculature around it is quite vulnerable. The
Speaker 6: white matter is quite vulnerable. It's also very close to
Speaker 6: the most porous parts of the blood brain barrier, so
Speaker 6: toxins can get into those limbic structures much more easily
Speaker 6: than in other places in the brain.
Speaker 4: So remember from part one that memories are stored all
Speaker 4: over the brain, kind of like coins hidden in the sand.
Speaker 4: But the hippocampus, that seahorse shaped organ, acts as a
Speaker 4: sort of metal detector to find and retrieve those memories.
Speaker 4: So the hippocampus is this wicked combination of really important
Speaker 4: and very delicate.
Speaker 6: Just be careful. So it's just the hub of vulnerability,
Speaker 6: and it's one of the reasons why we studied so
Speaker 6: excessively in my lab across a variety of different conditions
Speaker 6: because we believe that it is very vulnerable and if
Speaker 6: we develop ways to be able to protect it or
Speaker 6: treat it, that will generalize across a number of different conditions.
Speaker 4: And is it rather knew that we even know that
Speaker 4: the blood brain barrier is permeable at all?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would think. I mean, we've always known that
Speaker 6: it's permeable to some things. We know this because there's
Speaker 6: a lot of things that are in our blood that
Speaker 6: get through the blood brain barrier very quickly and get
Speaker 6: into our brain easily. Alcohol is one of those, right
Speaker 6: that gets straight from the blood to the brain. So
Speaker 6: there are things that we've known about for quite some
Speaker 6: time that can traverse that barrier with great ease. But
Speaker 6: there are new things that we're learning about now that
Speaker 6: we didn't realize can get through the blood brain barrier easily,
Speaker 6: that seem to get through. And some of these things
Speaker 6: maybe inflammatory in nature, some of them may be toxins.
Speaker 6: So when we talk about the connection between the body
Speaker 6: and the brain, that is real and it's always been there,
Speaker 6: but we've only really started to study the sort of
Speaker 6: mind body or brain body connection much more in recent
Speaker 6: years and trying to understand how our gut, for example,
Speaker 6: influences our brain, how our brain influences our gut, this
Speaker 6: back and forth, which has to be able to kind
Speaker 6: of get through some of those barriers, and the blood
Speaker 6: brain barrier being the one. One of the most interesting
Speaker 6: things that happened in terms of technology recently is there
Speaker 6: is actually an approach technique using what's called focused ultrasound
Speaker 6: to open up the blood brain barrier to be able
Speaker 6: to transmit things through. Because it's always been a challenge
Speaker 6: for us in developing drugs and interventions, sort of pharmacological interventions,
Speaker 6: how to package something just right to get it through
Speaker 6: the blood brain barrier. And this may be this other approach.
Speaker 6: It seems a little scary, I know, but with focused
Speaker 6: ultrasounds and what's called microbubbles, we can actually open up
Speaker 6: the blood brain barrier and get some things that maybe
Speaker 6: are larger macromolecules that normally wouldn't get through actually to
Speaker 6: go through the blood brain barrier. So lots of fun
Speaker 6: activity these days in research on the blood brain barrier.
Speaker 4: Well, you mentioned something about the gut connection to people
Speaker 4: are talking a lot about.
Speaker 2: The vagus nerve.
Speaker 4: Yes, just a quick background on that vegas nerve so
Speaker 4: it's the longest nerve in your body, and it plays
Speaker 4: this key role in your parasympathetic nervous system, which is
Speaker 4: the chill side, the rest and digest as the vagus
Speaker 4: nerve carries messages between your heart and your brain and
Speaker 4: your guts. And according to this twenty seventeen study, childhood
Speaker 4: trauma and lifetime syncopy burden among older adults. Researchers say
Speaker 4: that vasovagal syncope where your heart rate and blood pressure
Speaker 4: fall suddenly, which can cause dizziness and sweating or fainting.
Speaker 4: According to the study, it's governed by the autonomic nervous
Speaker 4: system and it's often precipitated by a highly salient emotional situation.
Speaker 4: And researchers found that the report of childhood abuse was
Speaker 4: independently associated with frequent syncope in youth. So what role
Speaker 4: does this physiology have. Does that vegus nerve play a
Speaker 4: role in memory at all?
Speaker 6: It certainly does. One easy way to think about that,
Speaker 6: and it's been known for quite some time, is that
Speaker 6: this is one of the ways by which the adrenal
Speaker 6: hormones can impact the brain. So when we think about
Speaker 6: cortisol and cortisol release, when we think about epinephrine. Those
Speaker 6: kinds of things do have a way to be able
Speaker 6: to impact the brain through its impact on the vegus nerve,
Speaker 6: but it's way beyond that. Now. There's a lot of
Speaker 6: literature now such as that vagual stimulation, for example, could
Speaker 6: have some really interesting effects therapeutic in some ways, and
Speaker 6: we're starting to understand a little bit more about how
Speaker 6: that mode of communication is operating. But it's certainly there,
Speaker 6: and it's again one that we stend to learn a
Speaker 6: lot more about.
Speaker 4: I feel like this is all a really good endorsement
Speaker 4: for meditation and deep breathing all well, I.
Speaker 6: Mean that should be endorsed right off the bat, all
Speaker 6: the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know you're mentioning toxicity in the
Speaker 4: brain blood brain barrier alcohol.
Speaker 2: Many people wanted to know.
Speaker 4: Matthew Welker, Ali and Julian and Neil Anderson asked about
Speaker 4: different opinions of alcohol affecting memory, but others have more
Speaker 4: herbal questions, such as Alia Myers, Adam Michael James, Storm,
Speaker 4: Sericity and Olympia Rymple, and first time question askers Craig
Speaker 4: Steinberg and Zach Gary and Chris bullagas why does marijuana
Speaker 4: make memory so shitty?
Speaker 2: Asking for a friend? Winky face?
Speaker 6: Okay, ask you for a friend? I see, well, answering
Speaker 6: for a friend. I can't say that I've had firsthand
Speaker 6: experience of this, but I can say that, first of all,
Speaker 6: there's different kinds of memory that are made shitty to
Speaker 6: different extents by marijuana. So it doesn't impact all kinds
Speaker 6: of memory. It might impact your recollection for things that
Speaker 6: you were doing, you know, previously or sort of around
Speaker 6: that same time. Not exactly clear why that happens, but
Speaker 6: I can tell you that one of the things that's
Speaker 6: really interesting about marijuana is that when you think about
Speaker 6: how it impacts the brain, there are particular receptors in
Speaker 6: the brain what we call endocannabinoid receptors that are specifically
Speaker 6: geared to responding to cannabinoids, which is essentially the active
Speaker 6: species in marijuana. But the interesting thing is that endocannabinoid
Speaker 6: receptors are involved in long term potentiation in memory, in plasticity.
Speaker 6: So in some ways, it's not surprising that it impacts
Speaker 6: your memory. It's surprising if it's always shitty, because I
Speaker 6: think there's probably an optimality. I'm not telling you should
Speaker 6: use it to improve memory, but there may be some
Speaker 6: realm in which you can actually improve plasticity as opposed
Speaker 6: to make it worse. That's very difficult to get at
Speaker 6: at an individual level. But the fact that you have
Speaker 6: receptors in your brain and especially in your memory systems
Speaker 6: that are specifically geared to responding to the impact of marijuana,
Speaker 6: I think is a very very cool thing. And it
Speaker 6: also tells us that we need to invest a lot
Speaker 6: more energy and a lot more time and a lot
Speaker 6: more resources in understanding exactly how it's impacting the brain,
Speaker 6: how that changes from individual to individual, on what background
Speaker 6: and what context with everything else is happening in the brain.
Speaker 6: So recreational use versus use for depression and anxiety, other things,
Speaker 6: some more sort of therapeutic uses, all of those are
Speaker 6: really interesting questions. And now that we are seeing the
Speaker 6: legalization sort of, you know, across many states and a
Speaker 6: desire from the National Institutes of Health to really support
Speaker 6: research on this front, I'm hopeful that we'll be able
Speaker 6: to have a lot more answers. A lot of my
Speaker 6: colleagues here actually are studying this exact thing.
Speaker 4: Would there be a difference between the CBD component and
Speaker 4: the THHD component definitely.
Speaker 6: So they're different chemicals and they have different potency and
Speaker 6: different binding properties and so on. I don't know that
Speaker 6: there's as much evidence for CBD in terms of brain
Speaker 6: active kinds of things or psychoactive kinds of things. There
Speaker 6: may be a little bit out there, but certainly the
Speaker 6: impact of THC has been the one that studied much more,
Speaker 6: and there's a lot more literature on that.
Speaker 4: So a twenty twenty three paper in the journal Biomolecules
Speaker 4: titled Effective Cannabis on Memory, Consolidation, learning and Retrieval and
Speaker 4: its current legal status in India acknowledges that quote the
Speaker 4: role of cannabis on cognitive functions is a matter of
Speaker 4: long debate, but that generally THHC is responsible for cognition
Speaker 4: related deficits, while non psychoactive CBD has been shown to
Speaker 4: elicit neuroprotective activity. However, because it's a restricted substance, there's
Speaker 4: not enough research on it, they say, and contradictions exist,
Speaker 4: and some reports showed low t SEA dose improved learning
Speaker 4: in cognition. So I guess keep an eye out for
Speaker 4: emerging studies, and as discussed in the recent surgical Angiology episode,
Speaker 4: on veins and arteries. Smoking is not the best way
Speaker 4: to ingest it if you're going to, so remember to
Speaker 4: protect your blood plumbing for the long term.
Speaker 6: Oh.
Speaker 4: Patrons Lila Weller, Carleen dh and Barb Miller had questions
Speaker 4: about the long and the short of it all.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I.
Speaker 4: Feel like some people talk about short term versus long
Speaker 4: term when it comes to that, But the difference between
Speaker 4: short term memory and long term when does it become
Speaker 4: a long term memory?
Speaker 2: When does it get filed?
Speaker 6: Yeah, great question, Carleen. I'm gonna get ready to bust
Speaker 6: another myth. Okay, when I talk to people about long
Speaker 6: term and short term memory, typically they're complaining about their
Speaker 6: long term memory and they're saying, my short term memory
Speaker 6: is okay, so I can remember things from yesterday or
Speaker 6: the week before. But it's like, you know, long term
Speaker 6: memory that's impaired, or my mother. If they're talking about
Speaker 6: maybe their mother with developing Alzheimer's or early dementia, it's
Speaker 6: the opposite. It's her long term memory is okay, so
Speaker 6: she can remember her past, her childhood, but everything in
Speaker 6: the last few years. Her short term memory is what's impaired.
Speaker 6: And I kind of have to stop and say, okay,
Speaker 6: let me just clear up the terminologies. Then when you're
Speaker 6: talking to a physician or talking to somebody to understand
Speaker 6: what you're talking about, both of those are long term memory.
Speaker 6: You're talking about recent versus remote memories. Short term memory
Speaker 6: is very very short. We're talking the span of seconds.
Speaker 6: So that's at least the way that these things are
Speaker 6: defined in psychology and neuroscience. Short term memory is extremely short.
Speaker 6: It's what we also call working memory. If I were
Speaker 6: to give you a phone number, not that you would
Speaker 6: have to dial a phone number these things, you know,
Speaker 6: But if I were to give you a phone number
Speaker 6: and say, hey, hold on to this phone number and
Speaker 6: then you have to dial it, you might sort of
Speaker 6: rehearse that phone number to yourself for a few seconds,
Speaker 6: and then you dial it, and then what happens to
Speaker 6: that number? Poof go all right, So you stored it
Speaker 6: very briefly in your short term memory store, your working memory,
Speaker 6: which is there to be able to help you store
Speaker 6: things for a very short period of time. You can
Speaker 6: get distracted out of it very quickly. And also I
Speaker 6: can exceed your span very quickly if I just yell
Speaker 6: out a whole bunch of numbers at you. Things are
Speaker 6: going to fall out, right, So it's not intended to
Speaker 6: store any more than just a few a handful of items.
Speaker 6: People used to say seven plus or minus two, but
Speaker 6: that number is likely closer to three or four.
Speaker 4: Okay, he just threw a whole bunch of numbers at you,
Speaker 4: But seven plus or minus two means that brain. Scientists
Speaker 4: used to think we can hold five to nine items
Speaker 4: in our short term memory, but turns out we don't
Speaker 4: even have that much room. It's like three or four
Speaker 4: things at a time, three or four things.
Speaker 6: And the reason why phone numbers work is because we
Speaker 6: chunk them into three bits yep. So then everything beyond
Speaker 6: that is actually long term memory storage. But when we
Speaker 6: think about memory for yesterday or last week or the
Speaker 6: month before versus you know, years ago, we're talking about
Speaker 6: recent long term memories versus remote long term memories. And
Speaker 6: as we get older, our memory for things that happened
Speaker 6: way in the past could be very preserved. Because we
Speaker 6: talked about how memory over time gets strengthened and kind
Speaker 6: of linked to a whole bunch of different regions of the brain,
Speaker 6: so it becomes more robust, more resilient to forgetting. Those
Speaker 6: are typically the last memories to go. Say for a
Speaker 6: patient experiencing dementia, they're going to remember those memories much
Speaker 6: later in the progression. But memories of the last few months,
Speaker 6: the last year, the last few years, they're going to
Speaker 6: be the ones that are the earliest to go because
Speaker 6: they have not been solidified as much, they have not
Speaker 6: been stored in all of these parallel networks in the
Speaker 6: brain and made kind more resilient to forgetting. There's still
Speaker 6: somewhat dependent on the Hippi campus, and the Hippi campus
Speaker 6: is kind of the culprit in early dementia, right, It's
Speaker 6: one of the places that's changing very early. So as
Speaker 6: we think about long term versus short term, that's typically
Speaker 6: what people are thinking about. Why am I not remembering
Speaker 6: as much of the recent things, but I remember memories
Speaker 6: in the past for longer. We experience that as we
Speaker 6: get older, but much more dramatically in the context of dementia. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so it's just a little bit of a misnomer, but
Speaker 6: I think, you know, being able to kind of divide
Speaker 6: it into recent versus remote covers the same question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, I.
Speaker 4: Had no idea, and I do want to ask about
Speaker 4: dementia and Alzheimer's as well, but a quick detur with
Speaker 4: short term memory. Many people mentioned having the memory of
Speaker 4: a goldfish. Jasmine Patino, first time question asker whose dear
Speaker 4: wonderful boyfriend is a goldfish in that capacity, and Caitlin Tindale,
Speaker 4: who compared themselves to a fish cognitively.
Speaker 2: True or false.
Speaker 4: Goldfish remember for two minutes and then they don't know
Speaker 4: why they're in a bowl.
Speaker 6: You know, I'm trying to remember finding Nemo now and
Speaker 6: think about whether it was truly two minutes. You know,
Speaker 6: I don't know if it's exactly two minutes, but it
Speaker 6: is very short. It is thought to be one of
Speaker 6: the shortest memory spans.
Speaker 2: How do they test that on a goldfish?
Speaker 6: It's difficult. I think that whenever you're testing things with animals,
Speaker 6: you have to be clever, right, So you have to
Speaker 6: figure out a way that the animal can kind of
Speaker 6: indicate to you whether or not they recognize something. Maybe
Speaker 6: it's by the amount of exploration or the amount of
Speaker 6: time they spend in the vicinity of that thing. If
Speaker 6: they're more familiar with it, maybe they'll navigate to something
Speaker 6: that's newer. So you can position things in the environment
Speaker 6: in a way where you can see how much they
Speaker 6: explorer went over the other and be able to tell oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: their memory is shot, or maybe their memory is really good.
Speaker 2: I love the idea. They're like, you know this guy,
Speaker 2: and they're like, no, yep.
Speaker 6: The name has not come into mind. I remember the
Speaker 6: face though anywhere.
Speaker 4: But yeah, we're in luck because yeah, people study this.
Speaker 4: Of course they do. And according to a recent paper
Speaker 4: Distance Estimation in the Goldfish in the Proceedings of the
Speaker 4: Royal Society be of Biological Sciences Journal, goldfish can accurately
Speaker 4: estimate distance after learning it. And another study in the
Speaker 4: Journal Animals titled Visual Perception of Photographs of rotated three
Speaker 4: D objects in Goldfish trained six goldfish to tap either
Speaker 4: a photo of a frog or a turtle for a treat,
Speaker 4: and researchers report that all the fish had successful performance,
Speaker 4: showing that they were able to distinguish between the turtle
Speaker 4: and the frog photographs, which is evidence of object constancy.
Speaker 4: So flimflam goldfish memories are not trash. They can be
Speaker 4: trained to do things, and it should be noted that
Speaker 4: in five years of having my daughter, who's a poodle
Speaker 4: mix named gremlin. I have never successfully trained her to
Speaker 4: do anything, So lay off the goldfish and lay off yourselves.
Speaker 4: Although when it comes to future fears and caring for
Speaker 4: loved ones, many patrons had questions about Alzheimer's and dementia,
Speaker 4: including Lisa Gorman, debdast Science, Stephanie Halfree, Matty Cakes, Two
Speaker 4: Stones with One Check, Mia, Meg McDaniel, Ken Edmondson, Aaron White,
Speaker 4: Camellia b Brian Reisinger, Sarah Crucker, and Stephanie, who wrote,
Speaker 4: there are cases of dementia on both sides of my family.
Speaker 4: Is there actually anything we can do to stop or
Speaker 4: slow down this awful disease? A lot of people obviously
Speaker 4: concerned about dementia concerned about Alzheimer's That deserves its own
Speaker 4: two part episodes. Certainly, can you describe when it comes
Speaker 4: to memory, the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's is Alzheimer's
Speaker 4: a disease?
Speaker 2: In dementia is the symptom of it? Or how does
Speaker 2: it exactly what's happening?
Speaker 6: Yeah, So the easiest way to think about it is
Speaker 6: that dementia is a larger umbrella term and Alzheimer's disease
Speaker 6: is one of the principal causes of dementia. Okay, you're
Speaker 6: right that dementia is a set of symptoms and Alzheimer's
Speaker 6: is a little bit more about the biology that leads
Speaker 6: to those symptoms. And there are many other types of dementias.
Speaker 6: So Parkinson's disease can lead to dementia. There's frontotemporal low
Speaker 6: Bard degeneration or fronto temporal dementia. Huntington's disease can lead
Speaker 6: to dementia. So there's a number of different causes for dementia,
Speaker 6: but the most prevalent one, the one that most people
Speaker 6: are really concerned about, is Alzheimer's dementia. So yeah, dementia
Speaker 6: is the umbrella term. Alzheimer's is the subcategory or the
Speaker 6: set of causes that lead down the path to dementia,
Speaker 6: and it's among many others, but Alzheimer's is the chief one.
Speaker 6: When we think about how do we DIFFERNI between dementia
Speaker 6: and say, you know, healthy aging. That's another question that
Speaker 6: pops up a lot is as I'm getting to a
Speaker 6: certain age, i feel like I am losing my memory,
Speaker 6: I'm starting to lose my way when I navigate, or
Speaker 6: I'm having some memory issues and be forgetful. And some
Speaker 6: of that happens as we all get older, and the
Speaker 6: majority of it is okay, right, that's just the natural
Speaker 6: part of a normal aging brain. But when it becomes
Speaker 6: pervasive and noticeable to not just a person but to
Speaker 6: others around them, and people are sort of missing doctor's
Speaker 6: appointments or getting lost around their neighborhoods and their wandering,
Speaker 6: and then it becomes a real concern. And when that's
Speaker 6: happening already things have changed so much in the brain
Speaker 6: that now it's really unable to compensate for it, because
Speaker 6: we tend to compensate so much for any sort of
Speaker 6: brain deficit for the longest time, So for many years,
Speaker 6: a patient with Alzheimer's ease wouldn't technically be a patient
Speaker 6: because they're not reporting symptoms, they're not experiencing anything. Neither
Speaker 6: patient nor doctor can say anything is wrong with the brain.
Speaker 6: But already the pathology is changing the brain. And one
Speaker 6: of the challenges for us in research is trying to
Speaker 6: develop ways that we can detect that pathology, maybe with
Speaker 6: brain imaging, with brain scans and so on, very early,
Speaker 6: even at a time when the patient and the doctor
Speaker 6: don't really know that anything is wrong, But when it
Speaker 6: comes to memory deficits experience that that older age, you know,
Speaker 6: the question is always how do I know when it's
Speaker 6: really kind of tipped over? How do I know when
Speaker 6: it's really problematic? And a good rule of thumb to
Speaker 6: think about is that if somebody's forgetting things, all natural
Speaker 6: and fine, especially if they can remember it later on.
Speaker 6: If they're reminded and they go, oh, now I remember,
Speaker 6: so it's tracked somewhere, it's there, you know that it's okay.
Speaker 6: Maybe that's challenge. As we're getting older, that just changes
Speaker 6: to some extent. But if they're really never able to
Speaker 6: piece it back together and no reminder is helping them,
Speaker 6: that they may be kind of over that cliff and
Speaker 6: they're going down the path to Alzheimer's disease. The somewhat
Speaker 6: more cross example, if you forget where you placed your
Speaker 6: car keys, it's okay, But if you forget that you
Speaker 6: drove the car, then that may be a challenge.
Speaker 4: Is that because of plaques in the brain, is that
Speaker 4: parts of the brain atrophying into almost spaces where there
Speaker 4: used to be more wider gray matter.
Speaker 2: What's happening biologically?
Speaker 6: We used to have this idea, and the idea took
Speaker 6: the field by storm and actually resulted in, i think,
Speaker 6: an overinvestment of resources into clinical trials that try to
Speaker 6: get rid of those plaques. We used to think that
Speaker 6: plaques were sort of the evil, right, and the two
Speaker 6: pathologies of Alzheimer's disease are plaques and tangles. Plaques are
Speaker 6: made up of amyloid protein. Tangles are made up of
Speaker 6: what's called TAO protein. And for the longest time, people thought,
Speaker 6: if you have amyloid and tao or plaques and tangles
Speaker 6: in the brain, that's Alzheimer's disease, and we should be
Speaker 6: trying to break up those pathologies somehow to restore the
Speaker 6: brain or prevent it from getting worse. The reality is
Speaker 6: the idea never really fully panned out, because just having
Speaker 6: amyloid in the brain is not sufficient for you to
Speaker 6: experience memory problems. It's not sufficient freeed have dementia. There's
Speaker 6: about a third of everyone with amyloid in their brain
Speaker 6: will likely never experience dementia. So clearly, by itself, it's
Speaker 6: not sufficient. But something else that you mentioned turns out
Speaker 6: to be sufficient and really important, which is neurodegeneration. Actual atrophy,
Speaker 6: actual loss of cells. That doesn't happen naturally. As we age,
Speaker 6: we lose synapses, we lose connections. As we get older,
Speaker 6: it becomes more difficult to make them, difficult to maintain them.
Speaker 6: That happens, for sure, But cell loss in these massive
Speaker 6: amounts doesn't really happen unless there's a progressive neurodegenerative illness,
Speaker 6: which is what Alzheimer's disease is. So when we find
Speaker 6: evidence of neurodegenerations, say for example, on MRI scans, we
Speaker 6: see a very close connection, a close link or our
Speaker 6: relationship between the extent of that neurodegeneration and memory symptoms
Speaker 6: or memory loss and cognitive symptoms down the line that
Speaker 6: are not memory also, so executive function gets disrupted all
Speaker 6: of our cognitive faculties right because it's progressive. But in
Speaker 6: the absence of that neurodegenerative change, it's very difficult to
Speaker 6: see associations with actual cognitive or clinical decline, which has
Speaker 6: created a bit of a dilemma for the field. Even
Speaker 6: though the FDA has been approving anti amyloid therapeutics, these
Speaker 6: drugs have some nasty side effects and it's not clear
Speaker 6: that clearing amyloid is going to be the solution in
Speaker 6: the long run. Coupled with that also the complexity that
Speaker 6: Alzheimer's disease is extremely heterogeneous. So if I were to
Speaker 6: get it, and hopefully not, but if you were to
Speaker 6: get it, it may look very different in your brain that
Speaker 6: it does in my brain. We may have a lot
Speaker 6: of variability, so that means you may respond to a
Speaker 6: drug or therapy that I may not respond to, and
Speaker 6: vice versa. So the idea of like a one size
Speaker 6: fits all kind of solution is also kind of falling
Speaker 6: away by the wayside and people thinking about the complexity
Speaker 6: of maybe Alzheimer's disease is actually diseases it is, and
Speaker 6: we need to be able to tailor therapeutic study individual.
Speaker 4: Obviously, dementia once again deserves its own episode.
Speaker 2: It's a complex.
Speaker 4: Condition with a lot of emerging research. But there are
Speaker 4: some pharmaceutical treatments that can involve modulating neurotransmitters in the
Speaker 4: brain like glutamate. There are dietary modifications that can ease
Speaker 4: some related symptoms, and psychopharmaceuticals that can help with depression
Speaker 4: and anxiety related to the progression of dementia.
Speaker 2: And Robert G.
Speaker 4: Odey and Isabelle the Cleric mentioned Louis body dementia in
Speaker 4: their questions and it is the second most common cause
Speaker 4: of dementia after Alzheimer's and it's caused by aggregations of
Speaker 4: proteins in the brain called Louis bodies, and some symptoms
Speaker 4: of it can include visual hallucinations, trouble with sleep including sleepwalking,
Speaker 4: mood changes, and stiffness. And Isabelle, whose mom had it,
Speaker 4: asked why public awareness of Louis body dementia was low.
Speaker 4: But there's a little bit of background on it, and
Speaker 4: we're going to get to more questions about how you
Speaker 4: can avoid dementia and memory loss and yourself per an expert.
Speaker 4: But first, let's donate to a cause of his choosing,
Speaker 4: and he opted to send it to a fund at
Speaker 4: his center called the Junior Scholars Fund, which goes to
Speaker 4: supporting graduate students and their professional development because he says
Speaker 4: they are the next generation of talent and he wants
Speaker 4: to do whatever he can to support them. And there's
Speaker 4: a link in the show notes for more on the
Speaker 4: Junior Scholars Fund at the UC Irvine Center for the
Speaker 4: Neurobiology of Learning in Memory. So thanks to sponsors of
Speaker 4: the show for making that donation possible.
Speaker 1: You're on the bus an hour from home, in bumper
Speaker 1: to bumper traffic, creeping forward a few inches at a time,
Speaker 1: Someone's kids are screaming, and suddenly your back is too. Luckily,
Speaker 1: Panadal extra film coated tablets are boosted by caffeine and
Speaker 1: they get to work in as little as ten minutes
Speaker 1: for powerful relief. That's more than just paracetamol. That's one
Speaker 1: for Panadal speed based on absorption data contains paracetamol. Always
Speaker 1: read the label.
Speaker 5: Or leaflet.
Speaker 2: Get value.
Speaker 3: You can't argue with Tesco with their amazing club card prices.
Speaker 3: Have the perfect night in with their finest frozen pizza
Speaker 3: meal deal. Get the finest frozen pizza, chips and ice
Speaker 3: cream all for six euro like our delicious spicy Salami,
Speaker 3: hot honey and Doya or Margarito wood fired pizzas, served
Speaker 3: up with their crispy chunkie chips and ice cream like
Speaker 3: se sil de caramel or Pistaggio for dessert. Can't argue
Speaker 3: with that shop in store or online. Tesco Every little
Speaker 3: helps available in most stores. Prices vary in express.
Speaker 4: Okay, back to the million dollar question here, which honestly
Speaker 4: I think is eating away at everyone listening, But it
Speaker 4: was asked by Stephanie Christina Manuj who loves Saunas, Margaret
Speaker 4: and Nuska Carrat Singh, Shushanja Gettinger, Nicole dig Kara Young,
Speaker 4: and Jennie Hoover. So let's go well, I think, you know,
Speaker 4: last listener question that we got so much obviously is
Speaker 4: every day I feel like we're all getting older.
Speaker 2: It's nuts.
Speaker 4: Wow, time we're gonna get old eventually if we're lucky, right,
Speaker 4: what action does help us stay sharp and retain our memories?
Speaker 4: Is it sudoku? Is it going to zooma classes? Is
Speaker 4: it reading?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: You know, the challenge of brain aging and sort of
Speaker 6: body aging is an interesting one. I think everybody wants to,
Speaker 6: you know, live longer and live happier and healthier lives
Speaker 6: and so on. And the trick is to make sure
Speaker 6: that our brain aging is sort of consistent with our
Speaker 6: body agent. You really want to kind of maintain health
Speaker 6: across both of those. So mind longevity is something that
Speaker 6: we think about a lot, and there are some answers.
Speaker 6: So we know, for example, that maintaining levels of physical
Speaker 6: activity regular physical activity hopefully not just undertaken when you're eighty, right,
Speaker 6: So starting kind of in midlife and continuing regular levels
Speaker 6: of moderate physical activity seems to be helpful, seem to
Speaker 6: be preventative. They are associated with reducedress for Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker 6: If people get it, they tend to get it later
Speaker 6: in life, but they're protected from it for some period
Speaker 6: of time.
Speaker 4: So exercise for more. You can see the paper Exercise
Speaker 4: and Dementia Prevention from the Journal Practical Neurology, which notes
Speaker 4: that around a third of dementia cases are attributable to
Speaker 4: modifiable risk factors such as physical inactivity, smoking, and hypertension.
Speaker 4: And they say that with the rising prevalence of dementia,
Speaker 4: there is a renewed focus on prevention strategies and exercise
Speaker 4: has emerged as a key intervention for influencing cognition positively,
Speaker 4: including reducing the risk of age related cognitive decline and dementia.
Speaker 4: So use ologies as walking time, dance around your kitchen,
Speaker 4: get a dog to walk, take a break dancing class,
Speaker 4: do some arm stretches. Just keep it moving, folks. Okay,
Speaker 4: what else?
Speaker 6: Dock The other thing that people have identified in these
Speaker 6: large scale not just trials, but also epedemiological studies. What
Speaker 6: seems to help while social activity and this was a
Speaker 6: challenge in the pandemic, actually, and I got to hear
Speaker 6: a lot about that from folks who felt that they
Speaker 6: had social structures and Zoom was no replacement for it.
Speaker 6: It just did not help as much. You really wanted
Speaker 6: to be around people, and being around people an older
Speaker 6: age is really key. Now we see this all the
Speaker 6: time when people retire. There's sort of a fork in
Speaker 6: the road. You are very socially engaged in your job
Speaker 6: and other settings, and then when people retire, in some cases,
Speaker 6: they become very isolated and they're spending a lot of
Speaker 6: time at home, maybe with just a twenty four hour
Speaker 6: news cycle and all that kind of stuff, and not
Speaker 6: going out and being around people. And others have planned
Speaker 6: appropriately and said, these are going to be my post
Speaker 6: retirement plans. I'm going to spend more time in my
Speaker 6: community center and my church and whatever it is to
Speaker 6: maintain that social level of activity. And those individuals tend
Speaker 6: to do better cognitively over time.
Speaker 4: And of course not everyone is able to get the
Speaker 4: same levels of physical activity. And we have an entire
Speaker 4: episode about disability sociology that discusses accommodations and attitudes toward disability.
Speaker 4: So talk to a doctor or a physical therapist about
Speaker 4: what you can do and how your activity level is.
Speaker 4: And we also have an episode on chronic pain with
Speaker 4: some biopsychosocial interventions that have helped some folks. And as
Speaker 4: this is being released right before the crush of holiday
Speaker 4: travel and flu season, likely a spike in more COVID cases,
Speaker 4: it's always good to take precautionary measures against infection.
Speaker 2: If I'm on a plane, I'm in a mask. So
Speaker 2: do what's right for you.
Speaker 4: But know that doing physical activity that works for you
Speaker 4: and staying social is incredibly important for your health and
Speaker 4: your brain, she said to herself in and aside.
Speaker 6: So maintaining a good level of physical activity and a
Speaker 6: good level of social activity. You know, a great exercise
Speaker 6: that do both simultaneously is dancing. So we tend to
Speaker 6: hear about that a lot. Like if somebody is in
Speaker 6: a dance group or does dance classes a couple times
Speaker 6: a week, they are much happier. You know, you get
Speaker 6: a lot of endogenous sort of dope mein boosts that
Speaker 6: happen when you do that, but the social exposure and
Speaker 6: the physical activity seem to be key. Then we go
Speaker 6: on to other things that people are really curious about.
Speaker 6: What about brain games, what about sudoku? What about this
Speaker 6: and this and that, and the evidence there is a
Speaker 6: little bit shaky, right, So there's some evidence to suggest
Speaker 6: that maintaining sort of cognitive engagement, of course is very helpful,
Speaker 6: but most of it is based on cognitive engagement again
Speaker 6: in a social setting. Right, So if you're playing chess
Speaker 6: out in the park with somebody and having discussions and
Speaker 6: all that, that seems to be more helpful than playing
Speaker 6: chess against the computer avatar at home. Right, you might think, well,
Speaker 6: cognitively it is the same, I'm playing chess, but it
Speaker 6: turns out to be different if you're doing it with
Speaker 6: a human, right, and actually having conversations and actually being
Speaker 6: out and about. So again I go back to the
Speaker 6: two things that are kind of tried and true and
Speaker 6: I think are very helpful. The third thing that seems
Speaker 6: to be helpful has to do with diet and being
Speaker 6: able to have sort of a heart healthy diet, because
Speaker 6: we know that heart health is really important for brain health.
Speaker 6: So maintaining something that looks close to something like the
Speaker 6: Mediterranean diet, smaller amounts of red meat and things like that,
Speaker 6: high levels of leafy greens and fruits and vegetables and
Speaker 6: those kinds of things that also seems to be associated
Speaker 6: with better longevity and higher levels of cognition into that longevity.
Speaker 6: Those are massive studies that were done where they randomize
Speaker 6: people to either the Mediterranean diet or so the typical
Speaker 6: American diet, and they see some really decent results for
Speaker 6: something like the Mediterranean diet. But the brain game stuff
Speaker 6: is the one that I'm sort of tentative about. It's like,
Speaker 6: I don't know if it'll hurt you, but I'm not
Speaker 6: sure it's helping you all that much.
Speaker 4: You know, my husband's grandfather played a lot of video
Speaker 4: games in his later years, and he would play multiplayers,
Speaker 4: so he would be on the headset with his grandkids
Speaker 4: across the country while he was playing like World of
Speaker 4: Warcraft or League of Legends or whatever.
Speaker 6: I mean, we've heard that from a number of folks
Speaker 6: were involved even in our studies, said you know, I
Speaker 6: started playing video games, and I started to and they
Speaker 6: felt like even the learning experience was a really good
Speaker 6: thing for them. And some others just said Nope, not
Speaker 6: for me. I don't know what you're talking. There's no
Speaker 6: way I could ever do that. There was just kind
Speaker 6: of a block. So while it's challenging, there's no doubt
Speaker 6: that incorporating the social aspects into this has made a
Speaker 6: huge difference. This is why also reluctant to tell my
Speaker 6: kids not to play games and do things, because I
Speaker 6: felt like, if they're doing it with their friends and
Speaker 6: it's sort of communal, then it's a little bit different
Speaker 6: than just droning in front of the computer and playing
Speaker 6: a game by yourself against the computer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that you are.
Speaker 4: You're not only researching this on the daily, but also
Speaker 4: seeing it as your children are growing up and watching
Speaker 4: how memory might change. But I imagine there are some difficult
Speaker 4: things about your job or studying it.
Speaker 2: I always ask what sucks? What sucks the most about
Speaker 2: your job?
Speaker 6: Oh, what sucks the most? Let's see. I think sometimes
Speaker 6: the pace by which things move frustrates me. And in research,
Speaker 6: you know, I think in science in general, there's this
Speaker 6: notion that we're going to do the best science that
Speaker 6: we can. We're gonna put it out there, We're going
Speaker 6: to publish our work and then hope that somebody else
Speaker 6: is going to come and take that work and build
Speaker 6: on it and then be able to translate things and
Speaker 6: get them to be helpful to somebody out in the
Speaker 6: real world. That takes forever, and it's so frustrating that
Speaker 6: it takes forever. And so one of the things that
Speaker 6: I've started to do in recent years and get my
Speaker 6: lab more involved in, is say, to hell with that,
Speaker 6: We're not going to wait. We're actually going to try
Speaker 6: to do it ourselves. So I've started to bridge a
Speaker 6: little bit between sort of the academic environment and more
Speaker 6: of the industry. But for the longest time it sucked.
Speaker 6: It felt like it were so removed as academics doing
Speaker 6: the science, and there's not enough of that science that's
Speaker 6: getting out there and helping people, even though it has
Speaker 6: the potential to help people. And then the other thing
Speaker 6: that's frustrating, Well, I will say that you can change everything.
Speaker 6: You always want to do what you feel is scientifically
Speaker 6: very rigorous and also like morally and ethically right, and
Speaker 6: you have kind of a code by which you operate,
Speaker 6: But there are certain systems in place that are really
Speaker 6: really difficult to change and some of them you can change,
Speaker 6: and you have to kind of figure out who to
Speaker 6: work with to make sure the message is communicated very
Speaker 6: well outside of academia to be able to influence people.
Speaker 6: But I am very fortunate that I'm surrounded by people
Speaker 6: who are equally frustrated and also believe that that sucks.
Speaker 6: So at least we can kind of riff off of
Speaker 6: each other a little bit and commiserate slash come up
Speaker 6: with ways that we can try to address it.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a community aspect too, right, exactly helping your brand.
Speaker 6: And that's the thing also science. You know, when it
Speaker 6: started out hundreds of years ago, when people were doing science,
Speaker 6: it really was kind of a solo practice. When you
Speaker 6: look at Nobel laureates, was always sort of singular winners.
Speaker 6: And that's not a thing anymore. Science is so communal now.
Speaker 6: It really requires teams and communities of people that are
Speaker 6: dedicated to solving these big, you know, challenging questions. They're
Speaker 6: not very simple at all. They're extremely challenging, and I
Speaker 6: think that's one of the reasons why things have been
Speaker 6: exponentially growing in recent years.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: It's not just that we have better technology, we have
Speaker 6: smarter people and hordes of them that are dedicated to
Speaker 6: answering these questions and doing it together. So when you
Speaker 6: look at the number of authors on a paper or
Speaker 6: the number of co investigators on a grant, those numbers
Speaker 6: have also shot up. So that community aspect of it,
Speaker 6: I think, is what keeps a lot of us at
Speaker 6: the table, and it's what makes it worthwhile despite the
Speaker 6: occasional sucking.
Speaker 4: Well, if someone wanted to go into this field or
Speaker 4: just just curious, what is the best thing about your job?
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, there's so many things. I mean, I'm
Speaker 6: like a kid in a candy store most of a time.
Speaker 6: I can tell you that for someone who is naturally
Speaker 6: very curious and inquisitive, this is like heaven, right because
Speaker 6: you're learning new things every day and it never stops
Speaker 6: and there's no real retirement. Also for people like me,
Speaker 6: like you retire, but you're still on recall, You consult,
Speaker 6: you do things, you're constantly continuing to learn. So if
Speaker 6: that's something that appeals to you, being a constant student, man,
Speaker 6: science is like the best place to get into the
Speaker 6: other thing also is being an academic. I have incredible
Speaker 6: freedom to pursue the questions of my interests and my
Speaker 6: lab's interest. If tomorrow I decided I wanted to study
Speaker 6: fruit flies, I will not lose my job. I can
Speaker 6: do that. I have to go support that effort somehow.
Speaker 6: But no one tells me what to study, No one
Speaker 6: tells me what science to do. I get to decide that,
Speaker 6: and I do it communally with my lab because they
Speaker 6: we're all collectively, and so we get to decide on
Speaker 6: the science that we want to do. We get to
Speaker 6: write the grants and papers together. So that's liberating. And
Speaker 6: I don't know of any other job out there where
Speaker 6: you can decide what you want to do at any
Speaker 6: given day and just go do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Right, that's incredibly empowering. You can continue to do what
Speaker 6: you want to do and continue to be in love
Speaker 6: with it for as long as you want to.
Speaker 4: This has been such a journey into my own brain
Speaker 4: and anyone listening, so thank you for just inspiring us
Speaker 4: also to treat our brains a little better.
Speaker 6: You're very welcome. This was so much fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, just a great.
Speaker 4: So once again, ask neuroscientist neuroticqiquestions if you are me,
Speaker 4: and thank you to doctor Michael Yasa and everyone down
Speaker 4: in Irvine for helping arrange this. There's more links to
Speaker 4: their lab and his work. They're in the show notes
Speaker 4: and up on our website at aliwar dot com, Slashnemnology,
Speaker 4: and we're at Ologies on Instagram and now blue Sky
Speaker 4: where everyone seems to be headed see you over there.
Speaker 4: We also have Smologies, which are shorter, kid friendly episodes
Speaker 4: that you can find anywhere you get podcasts.
Speaker 2: We put them in a.
Speaker 4: New feed so it's easier for parents and teachers or
Speaker 4: anyone who's looking for shorter, clean language versions of Ologies
Speaker 4: to find them. You can look for the new green
Speaker 4: artwork and the Smologies logo. Thank you also to Aaron
Speaker 4: Talbert for admitting Theologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Mallick makes
Speaker 4: our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyd is a website. Noelle
Speaker 4: Dilworth is our birthday girl this past week and she's
Speaker 4: our wonderful scheduling producer. Susan Hale Managing directsit All, Jack
Speaker 4: Chafy edits and lead editor. And another great brain is
Speaker 4: Mercedes Maitland of Maitland.
Speaker 2: Audio with some assists the last couple weeks.
Speaker 4: From Jared Sleeper of mindjam media. When I'm late on things,
Speaker 4: Nick Thorburn the theme music, and if you stick around
Speaker 4: until the end, I tell you a secret. And this
Speaker 4: week it's that I have a theory that if you
Speaker 4: have a good friend who has a party, like they're
Speaker 4: close buds, you should either be the first one there
Speaker 4: to help set up and just kind of like set
Speaker 4: the mood so they're not worried about when people are
Speaker 4: going to start showing up, or you should be the
Speaker 4: last one standing to help tidy up and say, hey man,
Speaker 4: great party. Relatedly, I love ice. I love having any
Speaker 4: cold beverage with an absolutely egregious amount of ice, so
Speaker 4: much so that our freezer could not keep up with
Speaker 4: my ice consumption. Our ice maker was like, I don't
Speaker 4: know what to tell you.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 4: During early quarantine, there were a lot of cafes that
Speaker 4: were closing, and Jarrett surprised me. When I was out
Speaker 4: of town, I was helping my dad and he bought
Speaker 4: an ice machine from a closing cafe. We have it
Speaker 4: in our garage and I use it every single day,
Speaker 4: even in winter. Now, what does this have to do
Speaker 4: with parties?
Speaker 1: So we have.
Speaker 4: Become the friends who show up first with a giant
Speaker 4: bucket of ice and it feels heroic. You are someone
Speaker 4: who goes to bed early. Be the first to show
Speaker 4: up at a party, pick up some bags of ice
Speaker 4: on the way. Everyone will love you forever. You get
Speaker 4: to bed early. Okay, just in general, be safe on there, Okay,
Speaker 4: bye bye hacadermatology, homology or do zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology, matteratology, ethnology, seriology, elidology.
Speaker 8: Let's make some memories, huh.