Neuroticism - 81523

"The great events of the world take place in the brain." - Oscar Wilde

I hope this newsletter becomes embedded in your brain. Let’s jump in.

---

The Daily Rabbit Hole: 107 facts about Jimmy Neutron

I’m more just gobsmacked that there is enough information out there to create 107 facts about this 2000s cartoon character.

---

How the brain works is up there with the endlessness of the Universe in the “are we ever going to stop discovering things?” category. From our own sapience (which does need to be distinguished from sentience), to why songs just get stuck on loop from time to time, we are always searching for an answer.

We do this regularly with things we don’t know enough about. For example The Kola Superdeep Borehole is an attempt by the Russians to go as deep as possible into Earth’s core. At 40,230 feet deep, this project was 20 years in the making and is still only about 1/3 of the way through Earth’s crust which according to those in the area, is far enough to stop the experiment.

It’s “so deep that locals swear you can hear the screams of souls tortured in hell.”

I just really hope that we don’t get so deep into the human brain that we discover terrors of this magnitude.

---

The ‘Wait, What?’ Vortex: We discovered Synapses in the brain before we invented the escalator.

“It was Sherrington who introduced the term synapse in 1897.” And the escalator was invented in 1899. These two things aren’t linked together in any way, I just find it to be very plainly, “wait, what?” followed by “how?”

---

The Jennifer Aniston Neuron …

Watch the below from 1:27 - 1:45.

Beyond the simplicity of this impression, there lies something deeply engrained into your brain that has been colloquially dubbed “The Jennifer Aniston Cell” by the scientific community. It’s why something as ordinary as Nikki Glaser’s subtle vocal shift and posture change makes the impression immediately clear.

Discovered in 2005, this “cell” (it’s actually a neuron) isn’t unique to Jennifer Aniston - it’s actually intricately developed over time for all recurring characters in our lives. We have neurons that become dedicated to individuals that come back into our field of vision or conversations, over and over again. Neuroscientists noticed that when flashing imagery of Jennifer Aniston or having her brought up in a room full of test patients, they all had an individual neuron that had no business firing off in the brain joining in with other neurons that made sense to light up.

Complicated? Only slightly. In a way it makes almost too much sense - our brains map out characters and memories associated with them, and those memories have to be stored somewhere.

“May your week be full of meeting more people that leads to the inevitable dedication of a neuron in your brain” doesn’t roll off the tongue the same way “May your week be full of meeting lifelong friends” does, but it means the same thing.