From Sacks to Suicidality: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and the NFL

Ah, football. The great American pastime.

The fresh cut grass and crisply-painted yard lines. The sound of helmets clashing in an epic stack of large men vying for a single ball. Stands packed high with thousands upon thousands of crazed, prideful, body-painted fanatics. The cheerleaders. The roar of the crowd. Chips, dip, and booze. Hilarious touchdown dances. Dementia, confusion, and depression.

Wait, what?

That last bit may not be present on game day, but for many football players, it's brewing all along—with every clash, tackle, and fall.

Cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, are only now beginning to unfold with postmortem diagnoses and early symptoms of memory loss, depression, confusion, and aggression being reported by former NFL players.

And with the recent settlement involving 4,500+ former footballers against the NFL, the topic of CTE has quickly shifted from being more than just a medical issue.

Alcohol, Sleep, and Why You Might Re-think that Nightcap

"Alcohol makes you sleepy."

We've all heard it. Many of us have experienced it. A few of us even swear by it—enough to ceremonially partake in a glass or two of wine before crawling into bed.

A nightcap.

In fact, a little booze has been experimentally (and anecdotally) demonstrated to help us fall asleep faster and increase slow-wave, or deep, sleep in the first half of the night.

But its effect on other aspects of sleep—notably, the second half of the night—leaves much to be desired.

What causes alcohol's strange and dichotomous effect on the sleeping brain? And the real question—do you accept the nightcap or not?

Sleep Cycle App: Precise, or Placebo?

Thanks to the Internet, it's the age of self-diagnosis. People like to learn about (and treat) themselves through technology.

Especially when pretty graphs are involved (see fancy screenshot at right).

As a sleep researcher, I was interested in my friends' use of sleep-tracking apps, and I received a pretty positive response when I prompted them for their thoughts:

"I'm a believer."

"When I use it right, I feel less groggy."

The website sleepyti.me and smartphone apps like Sleep Cycle use the average human's sleep pattern to determine the best window of time that you should wake up. The idea is that interrupting the "wrong" sleep cycle stage, such as slow-wave ("deep") sleep or REM (rapid eye movement, when dreaming occurs), results in grogginess upon awakening, as many of us can attest. Sleep researchers call this phenomenon "sleep inertia."

It's such a big deal that, in the sleep laboratory, we as techs are instructed not to wake participants if they're in REM, even if the experimental recording time is over.

So when a friend told me that he only feels refreshed after (according to his sleep-tracking app) eight REM cycles, I got a little skeptical, given the average person will only experience four or five REM periods per night.

What's the verdict on sleep-tracking apps? How do they work, and how accurate are they? Is it all a big scam, or perhaps the placebo effect at work?

Prosopagnosia: Why Some are Blind to Faces

A few months ago, I had an hour-long conversation with Professor P in his office discussing his course that had just wrapped up. We veered off-topic toward the end of our talk, broaching the subjects of his grad school days, scuba diving hobby, and my blogging.

Less than an hour later, I was loitering around the college's entrance in my coat, ready to go home for the day. I spotted Dr. P locking up his office and gave him a wave.

He eyed me strangely and walked a couple steps closer before returning the greeting. "Oh, didn't recognize you in the coat. You were wearing green earlier. Have a good night, Jordan."

It would have been a puzzling encounter if I didn't already know about his strange afflication.

Dr. P has prosopagnosia, or the inability to recognize faces. "I only identified you by the blonde ponytail," he admitted, evidently blind to my appearance in his class everyday—much less from our extensive conversation just an hour prior.

Why do we cry when we're happy?

It's been awhile, braniacs. But I have an excuse! A good one, I swear!

I got married to the love of my life on August 10—who I, of course, met in a neuroscience lab a few years ago.

Something inexplicable has been plaguing me the past few months, though. Getting married, including the months of stressful planning and nightmares leading up to the big day, was the happiest time of my life.

I reveled in choosing dresses and shoes, booking vendors, and constructing centerpieces. I saw my family and friends a lot over the past few months. And, after all, I was celebrating one of the purest and most joyful things that can be celebrated in this crazy, mixed-up world: love.

But, for some reason, I found myself crying a lot more. Not out of sadness or frustration or hopelessness, though.

I mean, I couldn't even keep it together while walking down the aisle—something every girl, growing up, likes to daydream about...right? (See pathetic photo.)

Most of us have heard that crying, in essence, is good for us—that it relieves us when we're sad, releases stress and toxins, yadda yadda.

So what was with my sobbing on what was inarguably the happiest day of my life?

One reason airline food is so bad? Your own tastebuds

Hey, readers!

I'm over at NBC News Health today discussing why we perceive airline food to be so bad, even when it really isn't.

(Spoiler alert: changes in air pressure and humidity affect our sense of taste and smell.)

Check it out here!

Are we pushing pink on girls...or pushing boys away?

My brother got a remote-controlled race car for his 4th birthday. I, being the jealous big sister, begged and pleaded to play with the car at every opportunity. I should not have been shocked to get my very own remote-controlled car that Christmas.

But I was. The car was black and had a spider emblem on the side. "Santa must have written the wrong name," 6-year-old me declared, ruffling through the pile of balled-up wrapping paper to check. But indeed, the car was for me. The boy car.

Last week, The Conversation published a piece by Melissa Hines, Professor of Psychology at Cambridge University, addressing gender differences in toy preference. Towards the second half of the article, the focus shifts toward girls' preferences for pink and its implications on cognitive development in both males and females.

LEGO Faces are Getting Angrier; So What?

Transport yourselves back to sprawling across the living room floor—colored blocks scattered like confetti about the carpet—building the highest towers and fattest spaceships (without directions, of course), all the while ignoring your parents' yelps as they step on a rogue piece.

There's nothing quite like LEGO.

And certainly there's nothing quite like those ubiquitious yellow, blocky LEGO faces.

But a piece in The Daily Mail last week cites that "LEGO faces are getting angrier," and that this may, in turn, "be harming children's development."

Christopher Bartneck, of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, will be presenting his findings at the First International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction in Japan this August. The central theme of the conference will explore how humans interact with objects that represent different personalities.

Whoa whoa whoa...let's slow down a bit. Perhaps LEGO faces have indeed become angrier—and more disdainful, more fearful, more smug—since their 1975 debut. But is it actually affecting the emotional and mental well-being and learning of a developing child?

Tone deafness and the brain

Hiya, brainiacs!

I've been having a crazy, exhausting, educational, and whirlwind week in Baltimore for the SLEEP2013 annual conference. Check out the Twitter hashtag #sleep2013 for real-time updates. Wednesday is the final day!

In the meantime, I'm over at NBC's The Body Odd blog today exploring a recent study on the neuroanatomical differences between amusics (tone-deaf individuals) and normal controls.

The authors found differences in short-term memory, electrical currents, and white-to-gray matter ratios in the two groups.

Check it out here!

Sound it out: Do you "see" or "hear" words you have to spell?

I have an extraordinarily intelligent friend. Halfway through veterinary school, she's a hard worker, an avid reader, and scores highly on standardized and academic exams. She excels at what she does, and I've met few other people in life with her brand of outstanding dedication and commitment.

But there is one feature about her that is so strangely unexpected—so strikingly opposite her accomplishments—to the point where it's just comical.

She can't spell to save her life.

Now don't get me wrong. The spellcheck has saved me more times than not, and while I'm no Arvind Mahankali (13-year-old New York native who just won Thursday night's 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee; seen above competing in 2011), I never had too much difficulty remembering how to spell words that I'd read. What do we know about spelling, and why are some of our most brilliant peers some of the greatest misspellers out there?

Study says chilling out—literally—may help us see eye to eye with others

I'm over at NBC's The Body Odd blog today discussing a study in the June 2013 issue of Acta Psychologica.

According to the study, cooler temperatures were shown to reduce something called "egocentric anchoring," or remaining rooted in one's opinion about in issue.

In other words, they were more likely to take another's point of view.

Check out the article here!

Misophonia: enraged by everyday sounds

Very soon, I'll be joining forces with Scitable, a network developed by Nature Publishing Group.

(Don't worry—you won't miss any of my writing if you follow Gaines, on Brains!)

In preparation, I've got a piece on the Scitable Student Voices blog today about misophonia, or hatred of certain sounds.

Check it out here!