Before The Bottom Of Chapter 3 Page 34 Reveals That He Saw Isaac Use His Weather Powers, You Can See

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.”

O great goldfish, I have a question. What happens to crocodiles/alligators when their skin dries out? Does it get stiff, or cracked? Do their scales start to peel? Thank you for the animal wisdom

nothin, their skin is pretty impermeable and doesn't actually dry out all the way unless the animal dies first!

crocodilians live just fine in arid environments as long as there's a body of water for them drink and hunt in, the hot dry winds don't hurt them near as badly as the lack of water does out there.

''Useless'' Writing Reminders

Save your documents. Strive to be safe, not sorry.

Back-up your documents. Strive to be safe, not sorry.

Placeholder names can quickly turn into forever names. Picking name(s) on a whim can lead to great things, or it can become your worst nightmare (😁).

Your writing has value. Yes, even the most inadequate of writing. You don't have to boast or even like everything you've ever written, but even the most questionable of writing will have contributed to your growth as a storyteller. Cherish it for what it is.

You can take a break. It is absolutely okay.

First drafts are scary. But you know what's more scary? Not having a draft at all.

Using clichés or ''overdone'' tropes will not kill your story. Firstly, tropes are building blocks. Secondly, humans actively search to consume stories revolving around these tropes.

Write your heart out. Boast about your writing. Boast about your friends' and fellow writers' writing. Everyone deserves recognition, even you, from within your own heart. (Sorry. That's really cheesy. But it's true).

Hello! This is my first time asking but I could I have some advice on how to write a story that starts in the climax of the plot already? The context is my MC woke up and they are not able to remember anything, but suddenly, he just woke up in the wards of his family (a very strong political figure in their world might I add) whom he told what his life was but the narratives they are telling does not match even in the slightest of the flashback that's plaguing him as the time stretches. And they were in the middle of the war, too. I'm having a hard time to achieve that mind-blowing... thrill I suppose? They also got a love interest that is unmistakably not the one his family claimed ‘their-spouse’ to be.

Starting with Inciting Incident

Remember: your story's climax is the moment your character faces off against the antagonist once and for all. While some stories do start at the climax, and then flashback to the beginning of the story to build back up to it, it doesn't mean you start at the climax and move forward from there.

I think there can be a lot of confusion with the concept of "In Media Res" which a lot of people confuse as meaning starting in the literal middle of the story, or at the inciting incident or climax. Instead, "in media res" simply means starting in the middle of the action. That action can be the inciting incident, the climax, or the literal middle, but again, it doesn't mean the story moves forward from there.

If you're starting your story at the point where your character wakes up without their memories, this isn't the climax but rather the inciting incident. This is the moment when their life and world are turned upside down. Starting at this moment in a story about memory loss is a great way to go, because your reader knows as little about the character and their world as the character does. It puts the reader in your character's shoes right from the start, and they'll be learning everything right alongside your character.

So, that's really the key is to make sure you're filling in the gaps left by not having an exposition. You'll need to make sure to fairly quickly illustrate this character's natural personality, the world they've woken up into, and what their life was apparently like before they lost their memories. If they're being lied to, you may want to build in some clues that hint at what their actual life was like--such as feeling a place is familiar to them even if they're told "no, you would never have been to such a place."

As far as creating that thrill in that opening moment, it's really going to come down to emotional and sensory description. In lieu of recognizing who they are, where they are, and what happened to them, they're going to focus on their immediate surroundings. What can they see, hear, smell, taste, feel? What does that sensory input tell them about who they are and where they are? How does that sensory input--and what they can learn from it--make them feel? What emotions are they feeling as they process this unfamiliar environment and realize they have no idea who they are, where they are, or what happened to them?

I hope that helps!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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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.

Big-headed turtle Platysternon megacephalum (or big headed turtle) is a very odd-shaped turtle with a huge head and a long tail that are almost the same size as its body.

This is such a simple little video, and it's glorious. Has a bit of the "we're in a 70s cartoon and we're only making one noise to signify something got hit" vibe.

♪

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

What a wonderful piece of art! Check out the artist for more of their cool stuff! Pixel art is always fantastic to see.

I wanted to work on a little bit of pixel art, because I haven’t touched the stuff in awhile.