Yep. Playing Idea Tennis With Them Is Fun And I Am Grateful That They’re Here In My Life.

Hump-nosed lizard (Lyriocephalus scutatus)

The hump-nosed lizard is a species of lizard within the agamid family, the only species in the genus Lyriocephalus. It is the largest agamid endemic to Sri Lanka and lives in dense wet zone forests. The hump-nosed lizard inhabits forests with high canopy and dense undergrowth, but it occasionally also enters home gardens. It is active during the day, when it dwells low on trees as well as on the ground. It goes higher up on trees to sleep at night. The typical threat posture is open-mouth gape, revealing the bright red lining of the oral cavity. This species is also known to feign death when picked up. Its diet comprises essentially of earthworms and also arthropods, including termites, butterflies, and moths. It is also known to feed on young shoots and buds.

photo credits: Kalyanvarma

The (neuro)science of getting and staying motivated

There is no question that motivation is one of the hardest and yet important factors in life. It’s the difference between success and failure, goal-setting and aimlessness, well-being and unhappiness. And yet, why is it so hard to get motivated – or even if we do, to keep it up?

That is the question that scientists led by Professor Carmen Sandi at EPFL and Dr Gedi Luksys at the University of Edinburgh have sought to answer. The researchers worked off previous knowledge that told them two things: First, that people differ a lot in their capacity to engage in motivated behavior and that motivational problems like apathy are common in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Second, to target an area of the brain called the “nucleus accumbens”.

Sitting close to the bottom of brain, the nucleus accumbens has been the subject of a lot of research. The reason is that it was quickly found to be a major player in functions like aversion, reward, reinforcement, and motivation.

To test and quantify motivation, the EPFL team designed what is known as a “monetary incentive force task”. The idea is that participants perform a task with increasing – and measurable – effort and get paid sums of money that correspond to their effort. Basically, do more and get paid more.

In this study, 43 men were scanned to measure–metabolites in the nucleus accumbens in their brains with a sophisticated brain-imaging technique called “proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy”, or 1H-MRS. This can specifically measure the abundance of neurochemicals in the brain, such as neurotransmitters and metabolites. Because of this 1H-MRS is used even in clinical settings to determine neurological disorders.

Subsequently, each participant was asked to squeeze a device that measures force – a dynamometer – to a given level of contraction in order to earn either 0.2, 0.5, or 1 Swiss franc. This procedure was repeated for a number of 120 consecutive trials, which made performance in the task quite demanding.

The idea of the experiment was that the different sums would push participants to decide if they were going to invest energy and perform the task accordingly at each trial. The scientists also ran the experiment under isolation and group conditions to investigate the influence of competition on performance.

Once they had gathered the behavioral data, the researchers processed it through a computational model that estimated the most appropriate parameters that should be measured with regard to utility, effort, and performance functions. This allowed them to interrogate whether particular neurotransmitter levels predicted specific motivational functions.

The analysis revealed that the key to performance – and, by extension, motivation – lies within the ratio of two neurotransmitters in the nucleus accumbens: glutamine and glutamate. Specifically, the ratio of glutamine to glutamate relates to our capacity for maintaining performance over a long period of time – what the researchers term “stamina”.

Another discovery was that competition seems to boost performance even from the beginning of the task. This was especially the case for individuals with low glutamine-to-glutamate ratios in the nucleus accumbens.

“The findings provide novel insights in the field of motivation neuroscience,” says Carmen Sandi. “They show that the balance between glutamine and glutamate can help predict specific, computational components of motivated performance. Our approach and data can also help us develop therapeutic strategies, including nutritional interventions, that address deficits in effort engagement by targeting metabolism.”

The Washington Post, May 19, 1912

I can’t tell which idea is funnier: 1. that they actually got pictures of them and Jeff way back when as part of a trick, and he didn’t think much of it until now, or 2. Someone in the group is really, really good at photoshop

unanswered paranatural lore:

where did they get the scrapbook. how. theres a photo of jeff and johnny on the back. when did they take that. did they make this ahead of time for this exact situation. i need answers

Some of these are inviting, in their own odd way. Some of these faces seem as if the person is turning to you with the words "can you believe what's going on here?" about to leave their lips. The gentleman staring gives off a "sitting on the subway train longingly gazing out the window, thinking of love" vibe.

I fucking hate James Tissot’s paintings because in ALL OF THEM there is ALWAYS someone staring right at you, but it’s not always immediately visible. You just feel watched by this mf. Sometimes the little shit is right there at the centre, but others the bastard is just gazing from the distance, it is CREEPY, my guys

This is morbid, but it's also really cool. The Timeless Journey of the Mind (and the rest of the skull)™

Decapitated Stone Age woman's head rolled into a cave in Italy

Following her death about 5,600 years ago, a Stone Age woman’s skull took an unexpected journey when mud and water washed it away from her burial site and into the craggy rocks of a steep cave in what is now Italy, a new study finds.

When archaeologists found the skull, its resting spot in the cave shaft was so hard to reach that only one archaeologist, using rock climbing equipment, could squeeze into the space to recover it. During a later analysis, the researchers found that the skull was very scratched up; at first, they couldn’t make heads or tails of what had happened to the ancient woman.

But, after determining which of the skull’s lesions were likely caused by humans and which were likely incurred as the skull tumbled against various rocks, the researchers came up with a possible scenario. Once this woman died, people in her community likely dismembered her corpse — a funeral practice performed at other burials from this time period and region. Read more.

the critical thinking sheet filled with questions to mull over is nice and very much appreciated

Y’all “critical thinking” does not equal “criticism”.

yooo albino alligators pulling the sleigh is rad as hell!

fun fact: albino alligators need special enclosures to ensure they do not get burned from the sun

others: “so, how ~southern~ are you?”

me: “The entrance of my hometown has a shrimp boat sitting in the main street. At Christmas theres a shrimper Santa and alligators pulling him instead of reindeer.”

others: “what?!”

me: