TIL Picasso once famously said: 'It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.' Researchers hypothesized that this is because early childhood is a period characterized by 'exuberant neural connectivity' that facilitates 'arbitrary sensory experiences in infants.
DARPA-funded prosthetic memory system successful in humans, study finds - Coded electrical signal reinforces memories in patients, supporting pioneering research
Scientists nix Alzheimer’s-causing brain plaques in mice. Could humans be next? In experiments with mice, researchers demonstrated that it is possible to remove the plaques which begin forming in the brains of future Alzheimer’s patients, sometimes years before the disease manifests.
TIl John Milton was totally blind during the composition of his ten-thousand-line epic poem Paradise Lost. Every morning he would have verses already prepared in his head for his aide to take dicatation. If the aide was late, Milton would complain, saying 'I want to be milked'
TIL of the Brocken Spectre, an atmospheric condition in which the sun casts a person’s shadow onto fog or clouds, making the shadow appear enormous, otherworldly, and ringed with a rainbow halo.
TIL that that attributing depression to spontaneously low serotonin is “deeply misleading and unscientific” and 65-80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year.