Tag Archives: brain

The Effect of Screens Before Bedtime

Staring at screens right before sleep turns out to be a lot worse than previously thought. Dr. Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, lays out all of the negative effects that bedtime screen viewing can have on the brain and body.

And of course, that’s aside from the effects of the contents! If you read any news, you may find yourself all riled up and annoyed at something you can do absolutely nothing about (or at least not at that moment). If you check your work email, just as problematic.

Sleep: How to nap like a pro | BBC Future

Why the modern world is bad for your brain | Guardian UK

Brainy info on smarts and depression

From 50 Incredibly Weird Facts About the Human Body an interesting tidbit about the brain:

A higher I.Q. equals more dreams: The smarter you are, the more you dream. A high I.Q. can also fight mental illness. Some people even believe they are smarter in their dreams than when they are awake.

Do check out the links referenced there, it’s at least interesting reading. What do you think of it?

The bit I’m particularly sceptical about is how it relates to IQ. IQ has a cultural bias due to the way it’s designed, but funnily enough people in Eastern Asia actually score higher than West Europeans for whom the test was designed (by a Frenchman, originally). Anyway, depending on how you ask about people’s dreams and the way they are able to express that, you can easily enforce a similar bias and thus come to the above conclusion without actually having a scientific basis for it. In other words, the test may have been utterly borked. Tricky stuff.