For weeks on end, I kept returning to a personal problem that wouldn’t leave my thoughts. I couldn’t figure out this one calculus problem no matter how many times I attempted it or how hard I tried to focus on the task at hand. My brain was stuck in a feedback loop wired for a solution. I tried to pursue more hobbies and make my daily life more original, but the uncertainty of venturing into a new domain still scared me. This connects back to the brain’s salience and default mode networks, which help keep important or unfinished thoughts active. Since our bodies are physiological systems, we thrive on curiosity that shifts our minds away from procrastination built around quick dopamine boosts from social media. The anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex flag unanswered questions as important, while the hippocampus connects them to memories and past experiences. Searching for a solution feels rewarding whenever we move closer to a possible answer.

As I have stated in previous articles, the brain constantly predicts future interactions as a method of resolving incomplete information. The gap between what your brain expects and what actually happens presents itself more clearly in uncomfortable situations. Sometimes, it is not even a question that burdens my mind. Falling short of perfection can manifest as being only a few steps away from the goal. In predictive coding, the anterior cingulate cortex detects when reality differs from your expectations and signals that something needs attention. The anterior insula translates that mismatch into feelings of discomfort, tension, or self-consciousness. If the setback feels threatening, the amygdala and stress system can heighten alertness, making a small mistake feel much more significant. The prefrontal cortex helps plan and organize the path you have for the life you are leading. The funniest part of it all is that the majority of humans don’t know enough about their own brains to make meaningful inferences about their identity, even as they continue building toward the future.

Maybe that is why I could not simply forget about that calculus problem. The problem itself was small, but my brain treated the uncertainty surrounding it as something worth resolving. There was always another possible approach, another connection to make, or another explanation that might finally make everything click. Even when I tried to distract myself, some part of my mind continued returning to the same point. It was almost as if my brain was keeping the question open in the background, waiting for the moment when I could finally make sense of it.

This happens outside of school too. We can replay conversations because we wonder if we said the wrong thing. We can think about a decision for days because we are unsure whether we made the right one. We can become frustrated by a mistake that other people barely noticed because our own expectations were never satisfied. In each case, the brain is trying to close a gap between what we expected and what actually happened. Sometimes that gap is useful because it pushes us to learn. Other times, it can make us overthink something that does not deserve nearly as much attention as we give it.

I think that is what makes unfinished questions so powerful. They expose the difference between what we know and what we still want to understand. Curiosity is not always comfortable, and uncertainty can be frustrating, but both can push us beyond the easiest answer. The same brain that makes us obsess over an unanswered question is also the brain that allows us to investigate, experiment, create, and eventually discover something we did not understand before.

Maybe I do not need to eliminate every unfinished thought. Maybe some questions are supposed to stay open for a little while. That calculus problem eventually became solvable, but the larger lesson stayed with me. Our brains are constantly searching for patterns, explanations, and conclusions, even when we are not consciously asking them to. Sometimes, the inability to move on is not a weakness. It is simply the brain telling us that there is still something left to figure out.

Why My Brain Cannot Ignore an Unfinished Question was originally published in Reaching Hearts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The brain is involved in every patient admitted to the hospital. While a person may be suffering from an external issue with their body, such as a hemorrhage, the nervous system plays an important role in how the body detects, responds to, and experiences that condition. After all, the brain helps control perception, sensation, behavior, and responses to illness. Pain is interpreted by the brain, not just caused by tissue damage. If a doctor is unable to understand the magnitude of symptoms a patient is facing, then a wide array of miscommunications can occur among the medical team. Since doctors are treating whole people, they cannot afford to purely focus on an isolated organ. The body is interconnected, so why shouldn’t our departments at the forefront of medical infrastructure follow the same path? On a more scientific note, neuroscience plays an important role in modern medicine. It helps explain human behavior and plays a key role in rehabilitation. For example, understanding the cerebellum’s role in coordination and balance can help physicians develop rehabilitation strategies for stroke patients working to regain movement and function.

Now, it is true that merely studying neuroscience does not guarantee that you will be able to shape the experience of every one of your patients. Pain varies between people, even when they experience similar injuries or medical conditions. Personally, I sometimes wonder whether my sensitivity to certain situations is one reason why I respond strongly to aggressive verbal interactions. The hospital environment is also a melting pot of the worst coming out of people. Miracles come out of hospitals every day, but stress and constant attention from family members or medical staff may build on an already negative patient experience. I also think it could be beneficial for doctors to conduct more surveys and interviews to compile case studies of a patient’s experiences and memories. Previous experiences can influence how patients perceive pain, communicate symptoms, and respond to treatment. Patients should not be expected to make perfect decisions or drive communication when they are hospitalized. People who have experienced brain injuries may also experience changes in attention, memory, emotion, or decision-making, making effective communication even more important.

Moreover, medicine is becoming more neuroscience-driven. Nowadays, there are so many neurological diseases and conditions to take into account: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, epilepsy, etc. One thing that these diseases have in common is how they connect the nervous system with the rest of the body. A person with Alzheimer’s disease may eventually make dangerous mistakes because of impairments in memory, judgment, or information processing. However, given the growth of brain imaging, AI, neuroprosthetics, and computational neuroscience, it is reasonable to believe that physicians will increasingly make inferences based on neurological and cognitive data. Not just neurologists or radiologists, all physicians involved in healthcare could become a greater asset if they can use computer applications suited to measure changes in cognition. After the testing stage, physicians can use this information to better understand how the brain interacts with other systems throughout the body. A safe physical environment meant for individualized care truly provides an escape from some of the redundancies of receiving medicine.

In conclusion, understanding the brain makes better physicians. Medicine requires both biological knowledge and emotional intelligence, and there is not an organ in humans more capable of processing and coordinating complex interactions with the body than the brain. Neuroscience connects disease mechanisms with human experience in the world of neurotechnology. The number of technologies being developed for brain stimulation, recording, imaging, and implantation continues to rise, expanding the ways physicians and researchers can study and interact with the nervous system. You don’t need to be a neurosurgeon to benefit from knowing how the brain functions.

Why Doctors Still Need to Understand the Brain was originally published in Reaching Hearts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My senior year of high school starts in a couple of days, and I am extremely excited to make some of my last childhood memories, lead clubs, and leave a mark on my school. However, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about the college admissions cycle looming over my mind. There are so many factors that can determine your future, including cost of attendance, distance from home, and the strength of the academic program you are pursuing. Based on my observations, students tend to focus more on a college’s location rather than actual college life; traveling far away can itself feel exciting to them, independent of a college’s academics. This thought process partly occurs because of psychological distance, a concept from Construal Level Theory suggesting that things farther away from us — physically, socially, or temporally — are often represented more abstractly. Faraway places can therefore be easier to imagine without any glaring flaws. If you have never visited a college, then the possibilities are endless; humans often show optimism when imagining uncertain futures, so an unfamiliar place can actually spark curiosity. Novelty-seeking may also make unfamiliar environments feel especially appealing because they offer experiences that differ from the routines we already know.

Aside from feeling a desire to visit a place you have never seen before, a huge reason why people want to go to college out-of-state is because it can feel like an opportunity to explore a new version of themselves. Before college, most children are surrounded by family, a couple of mentors, and, of course, many friends. While it is possible to improve yourself at any point in your life, it is much harder to change how other people perceive you. Teenagers can place a strong emphasis on social validation because it is tied to their changing identity and need for emotional reassurance. Developmental psychologists have also studied the idea of possible selves: the different versions of ourselves that we imagine becoming in the future. An out-of-state college can make one of these possible selves feel more attainable because it physically separates us from the people and routines associated with our current identity. Leaving behind your hometown reputation, routines, and expectations gives you the freedom of joining a friend group in which you may become more beloved. At the same time, this does not mean that moving away automatically changes someone; social identity is still shaped by the groups and communities we join wherever we go.

Choosing a college is no different than shopping at a convenience store for cleaning supplies. You might run into a dual-sided sponge, a microfiber cloth, or even a Magic Eraser. All options have pros and cons. It is up to you to choose between multiple versions of use. When applying to college, you are also imagining different versions of yourself in different environments. A microfiber cloth thrives on glass surfaces, similar to how you may feel welcomed by a small college town in the Midwest!

Now, in this article so far, I have spent a lot of time hyping up the importance of expanding your horizons after high school. It is dangerous to romanticize a distant campus, though. After all, distance can hide mundane realities such as difficult exams, poor weather, and loneliness. This is where psychological distance can work against us: the same distance that makes a place exciting can also make it easier to overlook details that would become important in everyday life. For example, I don’t think it is likely a kid born and raised in Georgia his whole life will enjoy the brutal winters of Boston immediately. Like anything in life, being able to adjust your perspective on a new life experience takes time. I am not saying that the kid from Georgia will never start to appreciate the intense snowfall Boston has to offer, but all aspects of a college need to be considered before making a decision. Students need to be asking themselves the question, “Will I be able to grow into a better person in this environment?” Sure, everyone envisions an exciting future over a random Tuesday in February. But here’s the catch: those epic, once-in-a-lifetime college events? They literally last one day. The excitement of a possible future can be powerful, but anticipated experiences are not the same as lived experiences. Personal growth hinges the most on how hard you work when there is no external reward upcoming. A school’s distance is not directly correlated with becoming a new person. I strongly urge every college applicant this cycle to choose a new environment only if they genuinely love its daily community; at the end of the day, authentic community keeps a student there, not fancy statistics or other people’s opinions.

In conclusion, there will always be many different answers to what students are actually choosing from a college, because college life represents a future beyond parental control. A college decision is not just whichever school is the best; you are also deciding how much of your current life you want to carry into the next chapter. Distant schools may offer you the chance to interact with new cultures and break through comfort zones you feel forced to conform to. They may also give you the psychological distance needed to imagine a possible self that feels different from the person you have been at home. Truthfully, it is scary that college is the bridge to who you want to become in the future. This milestone occurs once in your life, and you only have one decision to make about the location of your launch.

The Strange Psychology of Choosing a College You’ll Never Live Near was originally published in Infinite Impulse on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The liver performs more than 500 important functions, from regulating chemical levels in the blood to supporting the immune system. It acts as an essential organ, a storage spot for fat-soluble vitamins, and, most importantly, the liver maintains homeostasis for the body’s metabolism. Today, we are going to be talking about the connection between the liver and the teenage brain, which is probably a combination you have never considered. However, the liver can influence brain inflammation indirectly through filtering out toxic waste products and regulating inflammatory signals in the bloodstream. Ammonia is also prevented from accumulating and causing brain cells to swell with fluid because the liver actually turns toxic ammonia into safe urea through the urea cycle. If the liver were to ever fail, then the possibility of cognitive decline would heighten, which is bad news for a developing teenage brain that is more sensitive to body-brain imbalances. Teenagers must keep their liver healthy by eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, and avoiding any alcohol or illegal drugs.

If you didn’t already know, the brain depends on a steady fuel supply to think clearly. This fuel supply relies on glucose delivered by the bloodstream and occasionally ketones produced by the liver during periods of fasting. Additionally, the liver stores glucose as glycogen to keep energy stable; the last thing we want for our bodies is to go through unexpected blood-sugar crashes that result in brain fog and sluggish movement. Personally, I feel more irritable and lose focus whenever I haven’t eaten nutritious food in a while. I know that a lot of teens have irregular meal plans; for example, some of my friends don’t even eat a proper breakfast and instead have “brunch” at 1 p.m. I am not trying to prove the correlation between mental performance and attentive eating, but teens who don’t prioritize eating well may be disrupting the metabolic balance that the liver-brain axis relies upon. At least, give your liver some fats and proteins to process, so that it can continue supporting metabolism and other essential physiological processes.

Moreover, the liver plays a huge role in puberty as it is an important hormonal hub of the body. The liver synthesizes IGF-1 in response to the pituitary gland’s release of growth hormone; IGF-1 supports bone elongation and muscle development while participating in feedback signaling that helps regulate growth hormone production. A sluggish liver would struggle to properly metabolize hormones, potentially contributing to hormonal imbalances. Men with liver dysfunction might even experience altered testosterone metabolism, which can contribute to changes in typical male physical characteristics. As the body shifts biochemically, the liver produces Sex-Hormone-Binding Globulin (SHBG), a transport protein capable of binding to testosterone and estrogen. The amount of active hormone available to interact with body tissue at any given moment depends partly on hormone production, transport, metabolism, and clearance.

In conclusion, the liver supports brain function as a metabolic and digestive organ. Some of the liver’s key roles include detoxification, nutrient storage, glucose regulation, and monitoring the circadian rhythm of sleep. The liver doesn’t just release hormones; it contains a molecular clock driven by transcription–translation feedback loops. This clock generates 24-hour oscillations that influence gene expression and post-transcriptional modifications. Disruption of the liver’s circadian function would unfortunately cause rhythmic metabolic and hormonal processes to no longer integrate fully with systemic circadian signals. Adolescence is a critical period for brain development, even if the prefrontal cortex continues developing beyond adolescence. Poor liver function can result in deep-seated neurological consequences such as hepatic encephalopathy in severe cases. Why would you ever jeopardize the brain because you don’t take care of a simple organ? Many liver diseases are preventable through healthy lifestyle choices; protecting one organ benefits another.

Why Liver Health Matters for the Teenage Brain was originally published in Reaching Hearts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Holmes-Adie syndrome is a rare neurological disorder that affects pupil responses. It typically presents with a tonically dilated pupil that constricts slowly in bright light and is often accompanied by absent or diminished deep tendon reflexes. This is unusual given how most pupils automatically adjust to light through the autonomic nervous system. A viral infection capable of causing inflammation and damage to the ciliary ganglion is generally thought to be one possible cause of this disorder, but there is no single clear answer as to why one pupil becomes larger than the other and reacts slowly in Holmes-Adie syndrome. Vision is not just one of the five senses; it acts as the primary sensory input for visual processing through the optic nerve. We rely on our eyes every day to assess threats requiring a fight-or-flight response, navigate social settings, and locate objects within our environment. Something as simple as a pupil can reveal hidden problems in the nervous system.

Moreover, both the sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system work in opposition to maintain optimal vision. The pupil is controlled by the iris, which contains two smooth muscles: the sphincter pupillae muscle and the dilator pupillae muscle. Without these muscles functioning properly, the pupillary light reflex cannot produce normal responses. Light entering the eye travels through the optic nerve to the pretectal nuclei in the midbrain before activating parasympathetic pathways. Damage to the ciliary ganglion disrupts these accommodation and light reflex pathways. Fibers traveling through the oculomotor nerve can no longer properly innervate the sphincter pupillae muscle. Disrupted nerve signals result in weakened and delayed pupil constriction. The accommodation response is also affected, making it more difficult for the eye to focus on near objects.

Once Holmes-Adie syndrome is in full swing, patients develop a tonic pupil, referring to a pupil that remains tonically constricted for an extended period after near focusing effort. Damaged nerves do attempt to reconnect, and some surviving nerve fibers become overly sensitive, but incomplete nerve regeneration still creates abnormal pupil behavior. Unfortunately, this abnormal behavior extends beyond simply having a larger pupil at rest. Holmes-Adie syndrome can also involve autonomic dysfunction, including reduced sweating in some patients. While the abnormal pupil is usually unilateral at first, many people eventually develop Holmes-Adie syndrome in both eyes. In addition, the disorder is associated with diminished deep tendon reflexes, reflecting broader dysfunction of the peripheral nervous system.

In conclusion, I like to think of tonic, unresponsive eyes as small pupils with a huge neurological story. Holmes-Adie syndrome beautifully reveals just how complex the nervous system is, proving that rare disorders help scientists understand normal biological systems. Researching this syndrome has given me more insight into how a small, localized injury can produce widespread physiological effects because of how interconnected neural pathways are. If inflammation or infection damages the ciliary ganglion, parasympathetic control of the pupil becomes impaired, disrupting normal constriction and accommodation. Neurology truly integrates cranial nerves, autonomic pathways, and reflex systems; understanding the underlying pathology makes diagnosis and management easier while demonstrating how much insight can come from studying something as small as a pupil.

Holmes-Adie Syndrome: The Mystery of the Pupil was originally published in Beyond Lines on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It feels natural to like someone who has done you a favor. After all, they are making your life easier even if they have other things to do at the moment. However, what if I told you that the person doing you a favor may actually like you more simply because you asked for their help? This is the exact psychological phenomenon that the Benjamin Franklin Effect describes; rather than kindness arising from liking, the act of helping can create liking.

Now, you might be thinking, “Varun, do you really expect me to love my neighbor after mowing their lawn in the Texas heat?” No, not at all! In fact, I would expect you to be frustrated throughout the entire task. Eventually, though, you might begin wondering why you volunteered to help in the first place. Accounting for the principle of cognitive dissonance in psychology, people begin to feel mental discomfort whenever their actions and beliefs conflict. No one wants to feel like they willingly helped someone they dislike. To resolve this conflict, your mind subtly adjusts your attitude, causing you to like them at least a little in order to justify your past actions.

Benjamin Franklin famously utilized this strategy to turn a political rival into a close friend by asking to borrow a rare book from him. After Franklin returned the book with a thank-you note, his former political rival treated him with warmth and respect, becoming much more willing to help him again in the future.

To put it simply, the brain is a creature of habit. It continuously tries to keep our actions and beliefs consistent in order to maintain mental harmony. Since our feelings toward others are often ambiguous, self-perception theory becomes incredibly useful. Self-perception theory states that people infer their own internal states and emotions by observing their behavior. Personally, if I saw myself from an out-of-body perspective giving cookies to an elderly neighbor, I would probably assume that they had a positive effect on my life. Understanding that your actions can become separate from how you originally thought holds immense value when discovering what you truly care about. It is possible that you are willing to change deep-rooted attitudes in favor of satisfying your intrinsic motivation to help people.

Moreover, we see Benjamin Franklin’s psychological teachings all the time in everyday life. In friendships, disagreements over the amount of quality time spent together can sometimes be resolved if one friend simply takes the time to genuinely listen, even if they do not want to hear opposing viewpoints. In school group projects, I purposefully give each of my partners an important task — even if it is not completely necessary — so that everyone begins to trust one another more. Asking for a small favor can sometimes build stronger relationships than offering one. Some of the strongest connections a young employee can make come from showing small moments of vulnerability and humility when speaking with experienced mentors in the workplace.

Before we celebrate the Benjamin Franklin Effect too much, it’s worth considering its downsides. The obvious hard limit to this effect is that it only works with reasonable, voluntary favors. Once you start forcing someone to do something, the Good Samaritan no longer feels like they are acting out of kindness. Instead, resentment builds, and they may begin seeing you as a manipulative control freak. Toxic behavior should never be excused under the guise of trying out a new psychological experiment. Benjamin Franklin only discovered this concept because it naturally appeared in his own life. This article is not meant to motivate a new mindset of exploiting others. The real reason this article has meaning hinges on what the Benjamin Franklin Effect symbolizes: relationships are often strengthened not by grand gestures, but by small acts of trust, vulnerability, and mutual cooperation.

Writers, bring your chaos, your charm, and your half-baked drafts — Beyond Lines is ready for the beautiful mess. Let’s publish it!

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The Benjamin Franklin Effect was originally published in Beyond Lines on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Like most people, before researching this topic, I had never heard of the superior colliculus. After all, it sounds more like a Harry Potter spell than something you would learn about in school. But joking aside, the superior colliculus is located in the midbrain, beneath the thalamus. After the optic nerve translates and sends the signals we see throughout the day to the brain, the superior colliculus receives direct visual input from the retina. Visual input is definitely not refined when it first reaches the brain, though, so the superior colliculus helps process visual information and initiate reflexive eye movements. The superior colliculus is an evolutionarily conserved sensorimotor structure while still being able to support novel capabilities, such as coordinating rapid eye and head movements before you are consciously aware of them. If the brain ever had an automatic visual targeting system, the superior colliculus would fit the bill.

I found myself genuinely surprised when I discovered how much control the superior colliculus really has over our eyes. As I mentioned earlier, saccades, otherwise known as rapid eye movements, arise due to motor microstimulation and the firing of high-frequency burst neurons within the brain. The superior colliculus also possesses the ability to instantly direct your gaze toward flashing lights or moving objects. This fact finally explains why I am captivated by a broken traffic light switching colors constantly! Now you might be wondering why motor stimulation affects the processing of visual information; the answer to this question hinges on how the superior colliculus integrates information from vision, hearing, and touch to orient attention. For example, if your friend sitting next to you started touching your left shoulder, then the superior colliculus would immediately orient your head to the left, as this moment would be deemed a situation requiring your full attention. What makes the superior colliculus truly special, though, is how it works alongside the frontal eye fields while responding much faster by determining fixation points before the current one is even complete. Humans make 3–5 saccades every second!

Moreover, these saccades are coordinated through networks involving the superior colliculus. Microsaccades are small, rapid, ballistic eye movements; they are part of the brain’s active sensing machinery. Any changes in their rate, amplitude, or peak velocity could reflect shifts in attention and the dynamic gaze needed during fixation. Microsaccades help maintain visual clarity, enhance the detection of fine spatial details, and prevent image fading. There are other types of eye movements, though, including ocular tremor and ocular drift. While the exact function of ocular tremors is unknown, ocular drift refers to the slow retinal motion that occurs during fixation. This low-frequency oscillation can be measured with image trackers and different types of image stabilization techniques within search coil systems. Without the superior colliculus orienting our reflexes and shifting our gaze whenever we need it, we would not be able to look toward loud noises, instantly track balls in the air, or even react to an emergency vehicle.

In conclusion, the future of superior colliculus research is looking extremely bright! Researchers are studying its potential role in autism spectrum disorder, Parkinson’s disease, ADHD (attentional control), and brain-computer interfaces. To better understand visual attention and eye-tracking biomarkers, we must develop treatments for when the superior colliculus malfunctions. Patients may struggle to initiate accurate eye movements and properly orient their behavior. One day, I hope AI systems become increasingly inspired by biological attention mechanisms to mimic how humans complete tasks over time. The superior colliculus may not be the most famous part of the brain, but it is a bona fide hub connecting vision, hearing, movement, and attention.

The Superior Colliculus: Your Brain’s Hidden Visual Controller was originally published in Reaching Hearts on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thousands of athletes specializing in contact sports such as boxing, MMA, football, or hockey suffer concussions every year. A concussion isn’t like any other injury; it occurs when a blow to the head causes the brain to move rapidly back and forth within the skull. While concussions might not always be life-threatening, absorbing hard hits to the skull is never healthy, especially when brain cells are stretched and disrupted in the process. The issue with concussion recovery does not stem from initial screening, as the brain goes through obvious chemical changes after a concussion that may include dizziness or nausea, making the injury easier for a sports medicine specialist to recognize. The truth is that the brain heals continuously, not just on appointment days, and most concussion patients are evaluated every 2–6 weeks. Between visits, clinicians have almost no objective information about recovery. Concussion patients are often advised to rest at home and avoid activities that worsen their symptoms. However, symptoms often fluctuate dramatically from day to day. What if a person in concussion recovery is now forgetting moments from their past? Rest alone will not solve what mental therapy focused on sensory cues can do for people with compromised cognition. A patient who feels drained and dizzy during an appointment may have had poor sleep quality for the last ten days!

Moreover, current concussion tests leave information behind, prioritizing simple snapshots instead of continuous monitoring that can reveal how cognition changes over time. Most symptom checklists also depend entirely on self-report; patients are expected to note the severity and frequency of their head pain while mentioning any new sensory changes. Personally, I would struggle to quantify how much my sleep has changed due to a concussion. I might question whether my sleep has been suffering because of the concussion or because of a broader trend of turning on blue-light screens right before bedtime. As a whole, symptoms of any disease are subjective and difficult to quantify consistently. Athletes may underreport symptoms to return to play sooner. Concussions are consistently placed on the backburner in favor of returning to matches sooner and not letting the team down. How is it possible for Josh Allen to return to the field without missing a play after taking a bone-wrenching hit? I do not believe team physicians are able to review all concussion symptoms and complete a comprehensive medical evaluation in that short period of time! With that being said, existing medical tools meant to assess concussions are valuable. The SCAT5 provides an excellent sideline assessment, but it is not designed for daily longitudinal monitoring, and it requires trained personnel to administer. The ImPACT tool tracks reaction time, memory, and processing speed to establish a cognitive baseline; still, it does not capture how cognition changes between testing sessions. These tools are not inherently flawed; they simply weren’t designed to continuously monitor recovery.

Trends matter more than single scores. One isolated test does not illustrate how a person’s brain function has differed from their own baseline over time. Reaction time, working memory, attention, and synchronized symptom burden across domains are all factors to watch for when looking for patterns in head trauma. In regard to reaction time, one slow day is not concerning; three weeks of gradual improvement in reaction time is. Working memory may fluctuate after poor sleep, but long-term stabilization in remembering niche events from the past indicates meaningful improvement. This same idea applies to attention and symptom burden. People are often sensitive to overstimulation or light exposure, and they sometimes become discouraged whenever concussion recovery does not mean headaches improve after only a few days. The majority of medications physicians prescribe are targeted toward improving one element of a traumatic brain injury first so that the patient can feel better sooner and gradually return to a more active lifestyle while addressing any remaining problems. I hope none of your doctors form an opinion on your progress based on one performance or one reading!

The future of digital biomarkers and remote neurological monitoring is very bright. In fact, neurology is moving toward continuous data collection. Wearables under the Fitbit brand have already transformed how people monitor aspects of their health during physical activity. It is truly impressive how Fitbit technology can generate an active pulse count, heart rate, and alert users if oxygen levels or other metrics change unexpectedly. Neurology researchers are now beginning to study digital biomarkers such as typing behavior, eye movement, speech patterns, and other subtle indicators of brain function. Since our society spends so much time on social media, our expectations of medicine have become warped. People are often more curated online than they are in real life. So, purposefully providing an online cognitive assessment to a concussion patient can establish a new data point each time that does not rely solely on self-reporting. By simply presenting cognitive tasks under the premise that an athlete’s responses may provide insight into their recent head trauma, neurologists can work together with technology professionals to provide clinicians with objective data between appointments and potentially reduce unnecessary clinic visits while improving follow-up. The goal of concussion recovery should not revolve around one side tricking another, not unless a recovery plateau is wanted.

Writers, bring your chaos, your charm, and your half-baked drafts — Beyond Lines is ready for the beautiful mess. Let’s publish it!

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Why Concussion Recovery Shouldn’t Be Measured Once Every Two Weeks was originally published in Beyond Lines on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this vast world, many people live with neurodegenerative diseases, one of the most impactful being Alzheimer’s Disease. Alzheimer’s often develops through genetic factors like amyloid precursor protein or apolipoprotein E alleles, which raise the risk of tau tangles and insoluble amyloid plaques.

Monoclonal antibody drugs such as lecanemab and aducanumab try to stop this by binding aggregated beta-amyloids, preventing harmful fragment release, and triggering microglia to remove plaques. These treatments have changed the future of Alzheimer’s care, but they also introduce new challenges.

These drugs can also cause neuroinflammation and brain swelling known as ARIA-E and ARIA-H.

The question is no longer only how we remove harmful plaques. It is also how we protect the brain while doing so.

A New Approach to Protecting the Brain

My drug cocktail aims to counter these complications.

Right now, doctors only screen patients for weak blood vessels or recent head injuries before giving aducanumab or lecanemab, and there is no medication given alongside them to reduce ARIA risk. My cocktail fills that role by combining anti-inflammatory, BBB-targeting, and vasodilatory properties.

Nitric oxide donors strengthen endothelial walls through vasodilation, Vitamins B6 and B12 support oxygenated blood flow, Annexin A1 blocks inflammatory pathways, and dimethyl pyrophosphate reduces neuroinflammation by producing inhibitory immune proteins like Rho and Rac.

The power comes from synergy: multiple drugs enhancing each other’s effects to stabilize the BBB and reduce ARIA far better than any single compound.

Using Computation to Explore Drug Synergy

To understand how each compound behaves, I analyzed lipophilicity, BBB permeability, binding affinities, GI absorption, P-gp efflux, interacted residues, and important partitioning logs.

Individually, none of the drugs were BBB permeants, but their combined ADME traits produced a cocktail likely capable of crossing the BBB. Computational synergy modeling allowed me to explore these interactions and optimize the cocktail without testing every combination in vivo.

ADME properties, targeting predictions, and lipophilicity were calculated using SwissADME and Swiss Target Prediction to categorize each drug as anti-inflammatory, BBB-targeting, or vasodilatory. PyRx docking was used to collect binding affinities, such as Vitamin B6’s -5.9 score with pyridoxal kinase.

Rather than testing countless combinations experimentally, computational modeling allowed me to explore how different compounds could work together before biological validation.

Modeling ARIA Protection

Component synergy was calculated using affinity, mechanism multipliers, lipophilicity terms, and dose factors.

ARIA protection was calculated using mechanism ARIA scores, dose factors, and GI absorption bonuses.

Interactive sliders in Jupyter Notebook allowed high and low anti-inflammatory and BBB-targeting dose trials, and synergy scaled with these dose changes. Dose-response curves were generated using matplotlib and the Hill equation through scipy’s curve_fit, and a nonlinear correlation plot between total synergy and ARIA reduction was created using numpy.corrcoef.

The dose-response curves between synergy and dose show synergy scaling linearly as dosages increase, supporting the idea that the cocktail becomes more cohesive when each component is strengthened.

The synergy bar graph shows that the high BBB-target trial, where nitroglycerin, vitamin B6, and vitamin B12 were doubled, produced the highest synergy, and both “high” conditions outperformed their low-dose counterparts.

The ARIA-reduction bar graph shows that all trials lowered ARIA more than Aducanumab, with the high anti-inflammatory trial giving the biggest reduction. This pattern supports the hypothesis because synergy that centers on BBB-targeting drugs aligns with the idea that higher BBB support relates to reduced ARIA and stronger protection of the brain’s environment.

The nonlinear synergy vs. ARIA-reduction plot shows a correlation of 0.586, meaning higher synergy generally coincides with larger ARIA decreases, especially in scaled-dose trials.

The Future of Computational Alzheimer’s Research

While promising, the model still has limitations. In-silico predictions cannot capture biological variability, dosing was simplified with linear scaling, and the multiplicative synergy formula may have inflated some values.

Future versions should test the cocktail in real cell cultures, incorporate non-linear PK/PD interactions, and expand modeling to antibody-drug interactions and ARIA-E vs. ARIA-H specific cocktails. Machine-learning-based weighting could also refine dose-effect relationships.

Overall, the computational results strongly support further biological validation of the cocktail’s potential to reduce the risks associated with Alzheimer’s treatments.

Aducanumab and lecanemab should stay effective Alzheimer’s treatments, not the cause of new neurological problems. The future of Alzheimer’s therapy may not only depend on discovering new treatments, but also on making existing treatments safer.

For decades, neuroscientists studied brains one person at a time, not wanting to complicate procedures and research across different labs. Recently, hyperscanning, first introduced in 2002, has made major strides in simultaneously recording brain activity from two or more people using EEG, fMRI, or fNIRS. Hyperscanning is evolving into a multimodal approach capable of investigating inter-brain coupling during social tasks and exploring the neural basis of communication. The journey toward developing hyperscanning started when researchers discovered interacting people often exhibit synchronized neural activity, possibly due to emotional closeness. To clarify, this does not mean thoughts are transmitted directly; it means brainwave rhythms linked to specific cognitive states begin to align with those of another person. Brain-to-brain synchronization starts with shared sensory input, so many shared neural states arise within attention networks and the default mode network. These brain regions account for two people relaxing together or focusing on the same high-stress task.

Researchers have found this synchronization in many situations outside of simple conversations, though. Actions and patterns like speech rhythm, eye contact, gestures, facial expressions, and shared attention all help synchronize brain activity. Specifically, this synchronized brain activity refers to the alignment of neural oscillations between individuals, arising from a balanced interplay between excitatory and inhibitory signals. The reason synchronization was not properly understood back in the day hinged on how different brain rhythms associated with attention, memory, or communication interact across common frequency bands. For example, if your friend is asleep and their brain activity is oscillating primarily in the delta frequency range (0.5–4 Hz), your brain will not simply transition into that frequency to achieve neural synchrony. Instead, synchrony typically emerges when two people are engaged in the same activity and similar neural networks become active at the same time. While synchrony doesn’t require identical thoughts — only coordinated information processing — most people do not naturally share the same neural tempo during random moments.

Additionally, synchrony appears stronger when two people have established roles in each other’s lives. In this section, I am going to cover the many relationships where neural synchrony is common. Teachers and students often develop a degree of understanding between one another; this closeness translates into greater synchrony associated with improved engagement and learning. Musicians rely on coordinated neural activity while playing together; their auditory and motor cortices must work in concert to coordinate the production of music based on previous experience. Ensemble performers also synchronize their movements through internal spatial alignment strengthened across many training sessions. In team sports such as soccer, teammates develop similar patterns of attention and anticipation during gameplay; players practice rapid attentional shifting to build cognitive flexibility throughout a match. Neural entrainment and dual-brain coupling may improve reaction time and decision-making. Finally, prolonged romantic relationships can show stronger interpersonal synchrony during conversation or while actively cooperating.

In conclusion, synchrony does not equal telepathy! I am thankful that synchrony is becoming more widely discussed in neuroscience because more people are beginning to understand that intelligence is rarely an isolated process. Synchronized activity reflects the brain’s ability to constantly generate new predictions that adjust depending on the type of attention unfolding beneath conscious awareness. Groups often solve problems more efficiently because their brains serve complementary roles. In the future, shared cognition may play a role in improving education, rehabilitation, and autism research involving child-to-child interactions. Brain-computer interfaces supporting collaborative work have also become increasingly common in neurotechnology. Enabling joint decision-making in large language models is one example of how researchers are exploring collaborative intelligence, echoing the way our brains evolved not only to think independently but also to coordinate with other brains.

Intelligence is social. Why aren’t you?

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Brain-to-Brain Synchronization was originally published in Beyond Lines on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.