#89. Neuroscientists Answer Your Questions: Trauma, AI, Alcohol, Hot Dogs & Dark Neuroscience

In this special audience Q&A episode of The Smooth Brain Society, hosts Dr. Sahir Hussain and (soon to be Dr.) Beth Facer answer your most thoughtful, chaotic, philosophical, and occasionally cursed questions.

From the darkest stories in neuroscience history to whether trauma is really “stored in the body,” Beth and Sahir dive into mental health, AI, addiction, academia, policy, stress, and the strange realities of working in science. 

Plus: the podcast finally tackles one of humanity’s greatest debates… is a hot dog a sandwich?

Topics discussed include:

• The darkest neuroscience experiments in history
• Trauma, stress, and the body
• AI’s future impact on child development and human connection
• Alcohol & mental health
• Culture and public health policy
• The realities of working in academic research
• Epigenetics and family planning
• Research papers Beth & Sahir wish they’d worked on themselves
• And, of course, hot dog discourse.

Thank you to everyone who sent in questions for this episode! we loved making this one.

Follow The Smooth Brain Society  on our social media platforms for future Q&As, episode updates, and science content from Beth and Sahir.

Transcript

0:03

Hi, hi, hi, everyone. It's Beth from the Smooth Brain Society. So today we're going to do a special where we've asked our lovely listeners for any questions that they have about anything really. And we've actually had some pretty good responses. So we're going to be doing a Q &A and yeah, getting to know us maybe a little bit more on our opinions on things. So just as a recap, I'm Bethany Facer. I'm just handed in my PhD thesis, woo-woo. And so hopefully things don't go horribly wrong. We'll meet Dr. Bethany Facer soon at the University of Liverpool and I specialize in neuroscience and neuroimaging. I love cats and this is Moose. And everyone I am Sahir, Dr. Sahir Hussain. um My PhD is in cognitive behavioral neuroscience, but I work more in sort of public mental health. um I work around sort of issues around substance use, alcohol use in particular. And yeah, I mean, I've been doing this podcast for four years now. So yeah, for the first time. I second time, technically I did speak about my research at one point, but for the first time we'll be answering all your questions. And thank you everybody who sent questions in. anybody's listening and they want to be involved in the future, just follow us on the Smooth Brain Society at Instagram. yeah, shall we get into it then, Beth? Let's do it. What was first question? All right, so the first question, uh I'll kind of go in order in which they came into us maybe, unless there's certain things that are very similar. So the first question was actually for you, Beth, which is on your Instagram and TikTok, you post about dark science stories. uh And Amer sent this in. What is the darkest neuroscience story you have heard of? Oh, yeah, there are some dark ones out there. There's a lot. I think the darkest one is going to be, it'll be the Nazi brain experiments. There was some really horrific, horrific, I'm sure people might know a little bit about it, but. There was from maybe 1939 to 1945, the Nazi regime actually murdered around 275,000 people with mental illness, intellectual disabilities, epilepsy and other neurological conditions in the guise of euthanasia, which is obviously disgusting. So they were like centre killing centres basically, it was really horrific. But around over 2000 brains were collected across various brain research centres. there's a couple of key, won't say their names because I don't want to actually give them any space. But there was a couple of people who weren't directly Nazis, but they were from the universities and they took those brains and they were working up, you know, for many, many, years, like 60s, 70s, 80s. Obviously that started to die down and now the research isn't really there. they're basically the levels of experiments would be such as low pressure altitude experiments, which is basically where prisoners were placed in a hypobaric chambers, were stimulating altitudes of up to 20 kilometers. Basically, it's very little oxygen up there. Scientists studies the neurophysiological uh death of subjects' brains who were basically starved of oxygen. It went on for many days sometimes. It was incredibly unpleasant. m and there were sensitive institutes, freezing experiments as well, submerged in ice water, was to the hypothermia and brain function. Some of those died, some of them who did survive had permanent neurological problems. And there was children in specialized research wards with. yeah also subject to induced hypoxia and seizures and the brain tissue studied after they were killed. Less about neuroscience but there were a lot of like they were really obsessed with twins so they tried to do a lot of studies on twins and I won't go too much into those because a lot of the time it was um it was children and they had special very specialized a lot like if you look at the number of twins that came out of of the prison camps very, very, very few, very, very, very few. It was pretty despicable. So em that's what I would say. There was also tens of papers, completely unethical, cited well into the 2000s, but now they've kind of... em stopped now but a lot of the scientists, neuroscientists who took those brains received absolutely zero consequences for it as well so that to me is like the darkest dark science i might do it a couple of videos on it but i need to be quite sensitive about it because it's it's obviously it's it's horrific that's the worst one i would say there'll be others that's pretty say that. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there'd be similar ones and sort of like the, what do you say, the camps, the Japanese, Chinese ones on the same, on the same side. unit 741 I think. That was pretty awful. uh Less neuro based but live vivisections with absolutely zero anesthesia. uh It's not fair to say more horrific because they were both horrific, but horrific in very different ways. Right, after that lovely start. Oh my God. ah you're a professor, isn't it? Shares the knowledge. It is, yeah. All right. uh Maybe I shouldn't have done it by order, but anyway. um Next one, Alex Balan asked two questions. They're kind of related, so I'll ask the first one first. So is trauma really stored in the body? Like they say for women, it is stored in our hips. Can I take this? Yeah, you take this one. That's a good question. So, Me having the ability to have sort of like done a little bit of research before coming on once this question was posted was sort of along the lines of yes and no, it depends what you mean by trauma and what you mean by stored in the body. So. Um, we know for example of things like epigenetics and sort of like intergenerational sort of trauma being passed down in the sense of if adverse life events happen to in one generation, you tend to see the effects in future generations. So in that way it's stored, um, your flight of your flight and your, sorry, your fight and flight response is also impacted. Right. So we see post-traumatic stress, post-traumatic stress disorder, for example. So in those cases, yes, trauma is stored in the body. Now, when we get into things like like women say, is it stored in our hips? I could not find anything concrete that yes, trauma or the physical manifestation of trauma is stored in your hips. um What I could find, however, though, was sort of research talking about uh where is it? Let me pull it up because I want to give the. so there is a link between the psoas muscles and the adrenal glands and the adrenal glands are the fight or flight responses and the psoas muscles are the ones in the hips and pelvic area so those can tense up so it is not necessarily that trauma is being stored in the hips it's actually more that your stress responses if they're hyper activated They activate muscles around this area, can tense up. Yep, I guess it kind of manifests physically almost, doesn't it, if there's too much pressure. Yeah, so I'm not a physiologist, but this is what I've found from looking up research. So I think I need to make this very clear. But no, thanks for the question. It was very interesting. eh Thank you. Personal experience, Beth, in terms of like, do your hips feel tighter when you're stressed? They feel tight when I go to rugby. That's when they feel like they're, painful, but otherwise, um, no, I would say. Alex's other question was, does constant stress and mental health issues lead to autoimmune diseases? Again, especially in women. Women tend to have higher rates of certain autoimmune diseases. So that's there. I do not think and I do not know of any papers of direct links like stress causing autoimmune diseases. But uh I also looked this up and I found a few review articles around or a few research studies around stress triggering autoimmune diseases. So if you're already susceptible to autoimmune diseases, being in high stress conditions and situations is associated with a higher likelihood. So this paper here, which I have pulled up, I will also link it in, Stress as a Trigger of Autoimmune Diseases. um So in a Swedish registered study of over a individuals, so yeah, 1,064,640 individuals, they found that clinical diagnosis of any stress-related disorders was significantly associated with increased risk of immune disease. So 9.1 per thousand people per year in the exposed to high risk conditions versus six per every thousand persons per year in uh non-exposed individuals and their siblings. higher rates, but not cause. No, course, linked. think it's something to do with like higher cortisol as well. And then the T cells and the B cells. So your body's natural immune system, your body's immune system, basically. Yeah. And the rate system, think it's autoimmune. It's like 80 % of it tends to be women. Yeah. So I mean like a mess. Yeah. I need to double check the stats on that so don't tell me too much. but like MS for example, m more likely to affect women than men. There's lots of interesting things around MS as well. I believe the further you away from the equator you are, the higher the rates of MS are as well. Yeah, it's, but then things like if when men do get MS, it tends to be more aggressive. m than when women get a couple of facts there for you. But yeah, I think there's not a cause, like there's definitely some evidence, take that with a pinch of salt that stress could be related. But as Saheer said, might just be, well, what came first, chicken or the egg? Are you stressed because of what's happening to your body? or is it the stress that's making you more susceptible to the disease? Chicken or the egg? Who knows? No, awesome. No, thanks for that. All right. Next question from Kate Slade, Dr. Kate Slade, previous guest on the show. ah What's your favorite thing about your job in research and what's your least favorite? Great question. I'll start with, right, we'll start negative and then we'll go to the positive. m I think the, m within research, sometimes the unreliability of the job market, especially just coming out, just, well, just not quite there, but almost finishing my PhD. It's, you know, trying to find jobs and a lot of the contracts are a year, two years. m And then if you go into industry, it can be quite difficult to get into, but also, m of like the industry and startups, it can be a little bit more ruthless with like laying you off and whatnot. So that can be a little bit of a scary thought, but exciting as well. It is exciting to be in this position. That's the way I'm viewing it. Favorite parts of the research. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be like, it's particularly nice when you... For me, you realise the stuff that you're doing is actually going to advance even just a small part of research and also possibly help people because I work directly with patients sometimes with the neuroimaging. It's very pleasing to do that. And of course, science communication. That's part. Okay, so for me, uh least favorite thing, there's so many things I don't like. I'd say the least favorite thing is the sheer administrative stuff involved, which I had not, which they don't tell you about. Research is a lot of writing for grants, hoping and begging that somebody gives you the money to do your work. um There's a lot of like, and then writing papers up and getting rejected and then writing them up again. You're getting rejected by people who have not actually seen your work. They just like going off like what's written. The uh peer review system. I do not find that fun or interesting. So it feels quite daunting the entire aspect. oh the Beth already mentioned the job security side of it and like the short term contracts, meaning you can't actually move ahead in life until you're actually like a lecturer or like have like a solid higher up research post, which is quite painful. um But yeah, I think just that kind of administrative stuff. The most fun part is the research. I've worked in animal labs, in biological labs, like we say, molecular labs. uh I've done epidemiological work. And I work with people now uh in terms of doing interviews and qualitative stuff. And the research itself is heaps of fun. uh People might not like it. And we have a question later about statistics. I quite enjoy it. So seeing those come together and seeing all the work you put in actually sort of manifest in like numbers on paper or like ideas coming out being like what we can do. That's probably like the most fun parts for me. That's very fair. ah Okay. um question. We got two questions about AI, so I will ask them both. um So Jasmine asked, how will AI change development in children and teenagers? And Sarah had asked, what are your thoughts on AI replacing jobs? um So I guess we'll start with the child development, and then we can talk about us as adults. Yeah, yeah, do you want to lead on this one or do you want me to? well, I will start off by saying just because AI is so new, there isn't a lot of research on it. Also, AI is in terms of how we know it. Now, it's changing very rapidly from year to year. And like new models come out seemingly every day and what they can do and can't do in that regard. There isn't a lot out there. There's certain things which You can kind of infer. for example, with other technologies, we're seeing a lot of positive benefits as in they've made teaching and learning more accessible, which means you're kind of helping more kids out and sort of learning and developing on the negative side. One of the big things which I'm seeing, at least in my students, I know it's not child development, it's slightly older up in university is critical thinking seems to be. We can some studies back this up as well that critical thinking has been reduced because you're looking for these instant answers, which AI provides. You're not sort of searching through and being able to parse information as much as earlier generations and that sort of critical thinking can the earlier on it is in sort of child development can impact the development of these skills, not just the use of them later on. Yeah, those are sort of my takes, my thoughts from what I've seen. Yeah, I think critical thinking is the biggest one. But I do, I'm hopeful that it's helping more than it's hindering. Yeah, big thing we don't know the long-term effects yet, you're very right. But yeah, I think it's fantastic as a learning tool. Just as an example, as a researcher, not everyone is... Some people don't learn by reading and that's, yeah, that's a, that's a real struggle, but there's a lot of AI tools such as notebook LM. I don't know if anyone's heard of it, but you can put in a paper and they can, first of they can summarize the paper. If that's what you're looking for and you can ask it questions and it only takes, only takes, it doesn't outsource. It only takes everything from the paper, but the best thing that it does is it creates a podcast of the paper. And it's only stuff from the paper so people can listen. And I think that's, mean, obviously that's not for children, but like, that's just something that I think is very, it's very good and important. Another thing is, em is this good, is it bad? Emotional support. Some people have been using Claude chat GPT for when they're struggling with maybe real life situations and, you know, for a little bit of, if they, know, if we're, as you know, the mental health kind of system, especially in the UK, it's very difficult to get therapy. It can be quite expensive. lot of people can't afford it. So if that's kind of used in a safe way, but the thing is it's not a doctor. So it's very difficult. I can't comment on that too much. It's got pros and cons. And there's obviously going to be some horrific stories involving that, where, cause a lot of time it wants to please you. If you ask it something when you're feeling low, might, it can kind of push you to do those things. Oh, it's a toughie. I actually don't think we'll know for another few years. We had the same thing about gaming though, didn't we? thought, gaming going to ruin children? But actually what it does is it's actually increased things like coordination. Gaming is actually not necessarily a bad thing. So maybe AI will be like that in the future. But I critical thinking is a big one and it's like learning how to use it appropriately. Yeah, I think kids need to be taught earlier and earlier on. um While you were talking, there's more concerns which also come to mind, right? So, for example, you said talking to Claude or whatever, as like any sort of uh language learning model earlier in terms of for sort of mental health or physical health questions, and that's all good. But then does it also add that level of isolation? Because if you like being friends with an AI bot who's always agreeing with you, do you do you like sort of lose those skills? Do you not develop those skills as a child of sort of interacting, facing sort of pushback? All of these things. I wonder, like, I mean, I could I could barely find I could find sort of experts papers because I Googled this while you were talking. I could. a quick scroll through found sort of experts talking about various things, but no real publications. A lot of the publications are from sort of like the history of AI or how AI can be used in a positive way because all of these are from 2021, 2022. And in theory, it wasn't as big as it is now. Do you want to talk about the job market in the end? The job market, yeah, let's do it. m Yes, this is happening, I think, to a certain extent. I'm hopeful it won't last. think recently there was a case in China where I think two people got fired because AI replaced their job and basically the government or I don't know whoever it was like. whoever, whatever the ruling was, or like you can't fire somebody for AI, that's, that can't happen. So I am hopeful things like that will kind of continue. I think AI is a great tool to help support and organize. It's not for critical thinking. It's, em it's not, you know, it really shouldn't be stopped. I mean, I'm sure there will be some jobs that they shouldn't be, but they might, they might be overtaken by AI. But I think I was speaking to my friends the other day and they said something quite interesting. They said like, we shouldn't be using AI to stop jobs. We should be using it instead to make our lives easier. So they said we should be using AI to cut down from maybe a five day week to a four day week because you still, if you're still getting the same amount done and we just have a better quality of life, then why are we not doing that? And I quite liked that point of view. I was like, I think that's an interesting way to do it, but yeah. All right. What would you say? Next question. ah Thoraya, do you think the more we learn about mental health and the more it is spoken about has led to an increase in people with mental health disorders? Ooh, controversial. I like it. um I don't think it's people having, the way that that might come across in the phrasing, I know it wouldn't have meant that, is are we talking about it more so people are being like, oh, if we're talking about it more, I must have it. But I think it's just opening conversations that we didn't have before. It's a similar thing, not similar, no, actually I won't use that as a comparison. But it's just because it was maybe taboo 100 years ago. People wouldn't really comment on it or they wouldn't be like I'm struggling because it was yeah taboo. So now more Resources, I think yeah going to use the left handed writing example? I was actually going to use how, gosh, 60 years ago, it was illegal to be homosexual. And people are like, there's so many more, you'll see, why are there so many people, so many more people who are gay nowadays? And it's like, well, because it was illegal in the 50s, 60s. And before that, like Oscar Wilde's... Alan Turing, you know, it was hideous. Of course there was less people. And mental health that can report in like, I'm actually really struggling. You get sent to a mental asylum. So, yeah. There's this guy who makes spoof posts on LinkedIn, which is quite hilarious. And one of them was I was I burst into tears when my son told me he was gay. Not for the not for the reasons you think, but I was really happy men earn more than women. So now the double income household, it's a financially smarter decision. Wow Thank So, hey. As far as the mental health goes, I there might also be just just not necessarily Devil's advocate, but to another side of it, there might also be an issue with sort of over diagnosis in ways. One of the reasons being wait lists are so long. Health sectors are. stressed are like under a lot of pressure, not just the NHS here, but around the world, generally speaking, which means that in some cases, it's almost often easier to like give a diagnosis, give a prescription and move on to the next one as opposed to yeah, as opposed to like preventative care, take uh making sure people are okay, you know, all the other sort of aspects involved. So there might be an element of that into it to the On the diagnosis side that we see more mental health disorders because of just strains on the system. um And I know Ellie was here critiquing the DSM five a few episodes ago about how it's quite checkboxy, but it's also not the best way to assess people. But if you're using that and if you have like a scale and if you just meet that number, you're diagnosed or you're not diagnosed, that can also cause based on what the threshold is over under diagnosis as opposed to. So just maybe to point to think about that that could be an issue. But the overall point still stands. The more we understand it, the more we talk about it, the more it's not illegal. em And you're not just being binned off into a mental institute. uh You will see more people because we know about it more. So we care about it more. All right, from Melanie, you guys have worked at some incredible institutions around the world. Have you noticed any differences in attitudes towards mental health across them? Oh, I like that question. It's a bit of back-throwing. I don't know you all know, me and Sahir met when we were both studying at King's College London at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. And then I'm a Northerner. Sahir's from New Zealand and I've been to various other institutes around the world. So yeah, that's a good question. You wanna lead on it? You wanna go first? I mean, yeah, can I can speak from some experience, not just working at but also working with like spend time in India as well. Of course, if you're watching video, eh I you can probably tell by my skin as well. But uh yeah, I so there are different there are definitely differences in approaches and attitudes towards mental health and alcohol use and the things like. things like that. um There's also quite a bit of differences in not just in the not just in the public but also in academia and how they approach these issues I think I guess culturally informed as well. um I can't talk I won't talk heaps about India because being Indian, being from one city, it could be very different in different places because the different states uh have sort of different laws, different approaches to these things, but, uh and also different resource access. So I guess countries which have more resource access like New Zealand and the UK tend to do better in terms of their approaches to mental health and alcohol use compared to India, at least in my experience. um There's also, I guess, cultural factors about speaking about things. um for example, in India, although you kind of mental health for example, was always in a sense been a thing like you kind of always had like this weird uncle or this something in the family. But we don't necessarily talk about it. We don't talk about this extended uncle or aunt who has this problem. And it's kind of like put under the rug, but also kind of internally in some ways, or at least used to be. Now, I think with with social media and things like globalization overall, I think you're getting a bit more. openness, access to mental health in terms of in terms of purely institutes. I've personally found UK being a lot more corporate, a lot more results driven, a lot more needing to get publications, needing to get these things. Well, I felt like New Zealand was a bit more a bit chiller that way. It felt like it was a lot more about the research and doing the research. could also be because I was younger. Right. I my PhD there and first year of research there while like over here, I'm more like getting into this early career researcher phase where I guess you're judged by what your output is. uh But you've also been in Poland and Canada. So what are your thoughts? em So Canada, in terms of like, so Canada was, I feel like very, very good with mental health. I mean, I was an international student when I was there, so m they had things like a free gym, so everybody had access to the gym, which I feel was like a real fantastic thing. em Before that, I don't think I'd ever worked out and then realizing how much that affected my mood because it was free and I could just give it a go. I think everyone was able to access that. They planned trips almost every weekend to go do hikes. They were very much different, but it's very green out there. It's healthy. mean, like, yeah, and the people were lovely. Yeah, so I think Canada was very kind of... Pro mental health. Poland also, I mean, I was in a research institute, so it wasn't necessarily a university in the capital for a year. everyone was lovely. They had events for all the students. The support system was lovely. The people personally I worked with were absolutely lovely. Yeah, there was... Again, lovely and the probably the culture shocks that came from that were about from outside the lab not with it not within it and so yeah, well pretty similar to the UK again in the UK I have a I feel very lucky. I've had a very incredibly lovely supervisor so who? Within the entire team prioritizes our mental health. It's just you know, if I go to being stressed like I you know, feel like I haven't done this haven't done this is that Beth you have to look after yourself you're doing fine, you know, very like calming and So I've, but I have also heard a lot of horror stories. So I think I've just come from a place where I've been quite lucky where throughout where I've been. What about drinking culture, is there any difference between the UK and Poland? So I was, honestly, not really. The way they drink is different. It's definitely cheaper, but it's also, it's just, it's same, same, but different. Like people, people of course, it's like, it's the vodka capital. Some people say Russia, I'll say Poland, I'm biased. You know, a lot of like good beer, a lot of, it's the drinking culture. Yeah, there is, there is a lot of drinking in both. Probably, no, they were about the same. Also, I was on Erasmus, was, know, my early 20s surrounded by other people in their early 20s. Where, you know, you could get a pint for a euro or a euro 50. Or there was watties, so it was like six watties or something. Alright, guess continuing with the drinking theme, Steph asked, is it true that young people are drinking less and if so, why? What are the potential health implications of this? Yeah, good question. And yes, it has fallen. Not by lots and lots, but I think in the last 10 years, maybe been, it's been like, I think between like six to 10 % drop in drinking and young people. Yeah, it's just not as popular. Yeah, compared to maybe what it was. Why? Good question. Is it more economics? Is it being more health conscious? Is it there is less in-person socializing? A big one, I didn't, I just kind of was just thinking about is social media. I think when I was younger, was kind I'm in that kind of like 90s category where I wasn't, phones and filming wasn't quite there when I was maybe like a young teenager. So it wasn't. the exact kind of fear that people are going to film you. And another one is like more kind of acceptance within using drugs, I think is another one, like legalization of cannabis. You know, there's a lot of like, kind of really good groups in the UK, which are really open about drug use and being, you know, just knowing what you're taking and just being open and making sure that people aren't, know, because it was taboo. just be, you know, people are still gonna do it even if it's taboo, we need to make sure people are doing it in the safest way possible if they do wanna take drugs. So that's probably another one as well. I what your thoughts are. uh So I was at this Scottish Alcohol Research Network conference literally a week ago and one of the things, a lot of their focuses was on sort marketing policy and alcohol marketing and sort of availability now or increased availability of non or low alcoholic beverages. So I guess those sort of alternatives weren't there. There's a lot more limitations and structure on advertising and what you can advertise, how you can advertise. drinking. So back when I was much younger, almost every Formula One team used to be sponsored by a tobacco company and an alcohol company. um And now you can't do those things. A lot of sports clubs as well, the same thing. um I think that plays a big role. I think another thing which plays a big role is sort of. seeing a lot of health complications these days in sort of the Gen Xers and baby boomers around alcohol use. So a lot of young Gen Zers, probably younger millennials are seeing their grandparents and all have complications around alcohol use, which probably links well into the what Beth, you said about sort of being more health conscious. So. Yeah, there's not one factor, there's multiple. guess implications of it is, I guess a UK implication of it is pubs might need to evolve a little bit because the entire pub culture around it just being going to going after work and having a beer, whatever might be replaced with non-alcoholic drinks. um There's also policies in Scotland is very interesting because you're not allowed to take alcohol into stadiums. I know different countries you are. In actually in England you are in England you can buy beer at stadiums, but in Scotland you cannot on in football games. in England, you can, I think you can have pints maybe outside, but not in the stadium. Rugby, you can. there's a hole. There's a hole thing about that where, well, you can't, rugby you can, which, yeah. and in cricket, you're allowed to take uh wine bottles in. You can take like a wine bottle into lords, I think. this so so come. So this is this is weird sort of policies around the UK, which is really confusing. And. Yeah, I was a bit of classes in probably I suspect but well that's for another day. I remember in Brazil during the football World Cup in 2014 because Brazil has a ban of beer in alcohol being sold in stadiums or had a ban. And then FIFA and Heineken overturned that and they got was it Heineken Budweiser Budweiser, maybe. I don't want to implicate the wrong brand, a beer alcohol company basically overturned the laws in Brazil. And now there's this weird issue the country has because some stadiums alcohol is now allowed while other stadiums it's not. And it's confusion uh from a policy perspective. Yeah, guess implications generally. As somebody who studies alcohol, it's never a bad thing when alcohol use is reduced. That's my main takeaway off it, depending how. but also mentioned the economic implications of it, right? If you don't have the money, how are you going to buy these drinks? Also, one thing to mention is a lot of Gen Xers are still under the age of 18, which means in certain countries they can't buy alcohol. So that might also be skewing the stats to some extent. I don't know how the stats are run, but yeah. Two. Two, two. Awesome. Because we were talking about policies, Rob had a question of one policy you'd like to see at the intersection of mental health and alcohol use. I guess this is my area, isn't it? Beth, while you're thinking, there's a few different ones which I'd like to see. mean, whenever it comes to policy, a lot of it can often end up being give us, give some more money or resources to this area. uh But if we're talking about specifics, this is true for the UK I do not know about many other countries in Europe, somewhat similar in New Zealand, uh that Substance use and mental health are and help for these things are often separate from each other, which means you get this issue where a lot of people, for example, if you have a severe mental health condition like schizophrenia or bipolar or PTSD or anything like that and you have an alcohol use disorder, you cannot get treatment for one until you've sorted the other out or the other is under control, which is a big, big, big issue because The comorbidity of any substance use disorder and a mental health condition is so high that, in many cases you're using whatever substance, be it alcohol, be it whatever other drugs to sort of self-medicate against the mental health condition. And then are you making the condition worse by taking the substance away? Or um if you're trying to treat the mental health condition, if you force them to stop alcohol, are you making it? Are you making it worse? So it's it's this really hard thing where hard place for UK particularly isn't at the moment. And I would like sort of policies. That's why I say policies around better integrated integration of mental health care with sort of substance use care. It could be as it could be as simple as sort of bringing third sector organizations and organizations which look at alcohol. more directly under the NHS trust of various locations. and mandating sort of like cross checks so that people don't fall through the gaps. uh There's these community health center things which they're trialing these days, which I quite like where they're setting up centers in a community which have access to sort of all sort of conditions uh within one place. somebody who has a substance use issue could probably also go there for sort of any mental health problems they have. They're trialing it. I remember one of the supervisors, oh, no, supervisor, one of the colleagues I work with saying they're cautiously optimistic about it because it can go wrong in many ways, right? And whether the funding will maintain for it. But I think policies around there is what I was thinking at the intersection of mental health and alcohol. What about you, Beth? I would also say, I was going say the same one, eh which I think shows how important it is, mainly because like on a personal note, I've got kind of a good friend who is an alcoholic and was from a pretty young age and it was all related to them having mental health problems probably from the age of 14. So I guess on top of that, it's also m it's making, obviously with mental health, it can come at any stage in life. And as soon as picking up on that, you know, making sure people are getting the correct therapy and stuff before they need to self-medicate. back to that same thing, they m had mental health problems, just, you just refused to be even look at, refused to even be diagnosed, anything, because they were an alcoholic. And it was like, just because this person is having obviously self-medicating in some sort of way, you're just going to completely palm them off is I find foul effects. I know plenty of people who have family members or friends, you know, going through something similar. So yeah, I think the biggest thing is we should be able to do both. And I know the reason they do it is because we don't know to what extent it is the alcohol causing this or the mental health, you can't. just completely ignore it. So there needs to be better policies in place for that. Sticking to policies, three policies you think would pack the biggest mental health punch. I mean, I've already we've already talked about the alcohol and sort of mental health being sort of better integrated so that people don't fall through the cracks. I think that's one policy. So two more. Maybe maybe it's the way to go. I think there's a real thing, but from children to adults, there's this gap when you kind of leave the kind of the children and mental health services and you go to the kind of adult mental health services and they're very different. So I think there needs to be some sort of, I say policy or even an organization or some kind of help between that kind of middle section, you know, because otherwise there isn't overlap, it's a stop and a start and there needs to be something, instead of it just being 18 done, 18 it needs to be like 16 to 25 or something. And then of course the adult is 18 to 25, but there's some sort of like overlap, I think is really important. don't know how that would transform into a policy, very important. um I have one which might not seem very direct, but I think sort of uh it's more to do with sort of social deprivation and access because I feel not just mental health, mental health, guess in particular, but like mental and physical health, both are impacted by sort of the resources you have available, right? So poor neighborhoods, you're more likely, you're less likely to have access to things. So you're more likely to have severe or adverse health conditions. So. oh I guess policies, guess government policies and like I said, all comes back to money, like investment around reducing the gaps in deprivation or like reducing the sort of like the sheer, yeah, the wide divide between the least deprived and the most deprived uh regions. um Beth, you're a northerner. You know that the north has particularly been ignored generally in England. um So sort of policies around like increased care access, uh increased care access. So I guess more mental health institutes, if it means partnering up with sort of third sector organizations more, uh encouraging sort of longer term contracts, because I know a lot of third sector organizations suffer from getting a two year contract of funding, a three year contract of funding, and then. they lose that funding, then they lose their people or they can't care for whoever they're caring for. So sort of signing in sort of either tying in with the local hospitals or something that they'll be helped or be propped up for a year or two years in between those big fundings to make sure that they are carrying on. Yeah, there's many ways in my head which I'm spinning around of doing it in terms of in terms of what policies you could add, but Yeah. Yeah, because it's still a very negative view of, you know, the further up north you go, you know, there's that kind of thing. Like, you know, if you're from Yorkshire, you just like get on with it. And there's a lot of like initiatives. I think in Liverpool, there's one called Andy's Men's Club or something. And it's basically a space for, you know, men to talk because they have like quite a, you know, relatively high risk, especially younger. with suicide. m openness to talking and up north, even, I still hear people go, oh, mental health, there's no such thing. And it's just like, So it's increasing kind of public engagement, awareness, m and trust as well within that. And also accessibility because people wait years for a lot of having to. just go to the doctors or get any kind of therapy. So we need more of it, some more funding as well. Anyway, I'm sure we could go on for ages about it. It all comes back to money in one way or the other being like, but but yeah, I was trying to think of. Yeah. no, one thing which I remembered regarding policy is something around housing security and things like that. That would also help. So sort of food and housing security related policies would be a big impact for mental health. Yeah. So I guess. Yeah. think they would pack a massive punch without necessarily because until then, everything we spoke about was more like mental health systems focused, but something like that as well. guess it comes back to the. I mean, I don't know if we've covered three, Laura, unfortunately, we've we've covered a few potential options or targets. I'll try to list them and see if we actually ended up with three. Another one. So Lizzie, what's something about being a science communicator that has been especially surprising or delightful or challenging? Something you hadn't anticipated when you first started your science communication journey. Yeah, good question. em I think the biggest thing is like everyone is, what I find is everyone is incredibly supportive. em You fear that, you know, you're going to be laughed at and that's just not the case. And I think I was also very fearful of the other academics being like, gosh, does she even like stop, you know, going into pedantic, sometimes the stuff I say isn't very, very, specifically correct, but nobody's done that. It's... been overwhelmingly positive most of the time. I think it's sad sometimes to see that some people still don't really care about it and they don't view it as that important, which is something I still find a bit sad because I personally have had some of my best moments is when I've explained something to the public or to some patients and they've been like, oh, and they've been genuinely enthused and really excited by it. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's mainly it's for me it's mainly been positive people really do kind of want to help you there. It is hard unlearning the academic tone and kind of putting on, you know, yeah, and also not wanting to not to be patronising as well. There's a fine line between taking away the academic tone and kind of like simplifying a little bit and not sounding patronising. And yeah. But yeah, the community is like, it's lovely. There's a really lovely, lovely community built around it and people will kind of want to support you if you get into it. Yeah, I I echo everything you said, um For me, guess I can say pretty specifically to SBS um and specifically to the podcast, feel. So one of the most surprising things which I found was how keen people are to talk about their research, um which was actually quite pleasant because... uh I didn't think that I'd be able to find guests for long enough to run this for four years. So that was quite a surprise, The other surprising thing or the one which I probably should have led with was I was surprised how many people were actually willing to listen or like or follow this. And yeah, I mean, I've seen it even when we did sort of the science stand up comedy things, the number of people we've got showing up. it just shows people really enjoy science if you do it in an accessible way. guess, yeah, the challenges are the same, I guess for me, it was sort of learning how to edit, learning how to record uh those kind of practical challenges as well, learning how to cold email people and get rejections as well. um So yeah, I mean, think overall, overall, it's been fire. The surprise surprising part sort of like the uptake delightful is whenever people interact as well, and ask more questions about the podcast and talk to you about science outside of the lab. Because talking about science at work is a lot more painful than talking about it outside. It's way more fun. Yeah. All right. OK, Laura's question, health slash epigenetic recommendations for people looking to start a family. So I am not a genetic counselor. My mom is. um So I cannot speak to that. I can speak to the. fact that I have done a lot of uh epigenetic research, particularly in terms of alcohol. for those who don't know, epigenetics is essentially this idea that your genetics, um your genetic makeup, everybody has the same genetic makeup, but certain, the environment sort of interacts with your genes in order to change how they present, change how they activate, change how they regulate. example our heart and our skin have the exact same DNA but different genes and different things are activating which is why the heart is the way the heart is and the skin is the way the skin is but uh this also happens for other things so for muscle growth for example you exercise more though because of the environment or the stress you put your muscles under Epigenetics, blah, blah, blah. You your muscles grow. So that's the idea. uh And epigenetics is shown to pass down through generations. uh And so I guess the advice for starting a family from from what I have seen is around healthy eating and sort of healthy diet activity, those kind of things, uh particularly for the fathers. uh And I think that's something which is not there in policies a lot because my research had to do with looking at alcohol use, how alcohol use impacts multiple generations. And so one thing which I guess the advice that way would be for for fathers in particular in families who trying to have a healthy family um because sperm. regenerates every month or so roughly. And the quality of sperm really depends on your habits and your behavior. And this can have downstream implications for sort of the child's early development from things like imprinted uh genes. So imprinted genes are genes which are specifically coming from either the mother or the father. So certain ones which come from the father, like IGF2, for example, is very important for early child development. And so if those and your quality of sperm and the environment around it will impact the functioning of the IGF-2 can impact early development, for example. And then there's many others like that. So I guess that was one thing which I learned. And I guess that would be one sort of bit of advice. But there's also many others sort of things around family history and doing genetic tests, which I would advise talking to a genetic counselor about that. This is just. sort of one bit of advice from me. ah Yeah, uh anything you want to add to that Beth? Did that sound okay? That sounded good to me. Yeah, I've done a bit on genetics, but I don't think I'd be qualified to make any too strong comments on epigenetics other than basically, when the environment m interacts with your genetics. m Yeah. And you touched on things like diet, exercise. It's basically when everyday life, things that you do can affect your genetics. Yeah. Awesome. All right. All right. Liza, Liza Bolton, she was on this podcast two years ago. She asked, I share your YouTube channel with my intro to stat students. Shout out. Thank you so much. When when we look at YouTube data, many of them have to take the course because they're majoring in psychology, but have but no one has really explained to them why they have to take it. What advice about learning about data and statistics do you wish you had earlier in your career? First of all, is incredibly, yeah, it is important. Sorry, like, yeah, I'm sorry to back up your teacher there, but it is true. It's not, I know it is a form of maths and it can seem intimidating, but as a psychologist or as a neuroscientist, you know, we're not mathematicians. So although we need to know the principles and then some what's going on, don't view it as, you know, hardcore maths. I think it's the biggest thing. And the thing about stats is this is literally how you are proving your point. Every single study that you will ever read, almost all studies, unless depending on what types of statistics they're doing is kind of proving a point. So, you know, things like p-values that tells you whether results are significant or not, or effect sizes are becoming more more important. It's basically how we interpret all the data that... you know, we, we collect it's although frustrating to learn incredibly important. And it's basically a metric on how we can say something is working or not. mean, that we could go into stats chat about whether the types of tests and whether, know, some people don't think P values are very important anymore. Things more, won't get too into it. Don't worry. Um, but like visualizing your data, you know, it's just, you know, visualizing it kind of look what's going on. It's, it's important cause it's driving. the actual research itself. So the biggest thing would say is just start playing with data now. Reading about it is important, but playing around with it is going to help you so much more doing it. The biggest thing I would say for me is when I was doing it, we were using something called SPSS. think people still do use it. But I was at this intersection where it's between SPSS and R. Thankfully, when did my PhD, I got into R and Python. They are absolutely kind of foolproof ways, I'd say for quite a long time to help you with that. So get into it and I think you'll learn, although intimidating, you'll learn to learn when you start playing around with the data because it drives everything that you do. My advice, well, I'm on Liza's side and I'll have you back on Liza. Do come back on the podcast talk. We'll do more stats chat. um But I would say I think it's not just psych students. think everybody should do a bit of statistics at university because it's not just like for us, it's quite important, as Bet said, to sort of this is how we tell if something's working or not. If there is a relationship here, is there's a if our experiments are fine, if there is something to understand. We use statistics and yet, so it's very important to understand what's being done and how they work. And I guess just in daily life as well, like if you study stats and you understand it, then you can understand why reporters might report certain numbers over others. You kind of start thinking about why has somebody why has something been presented in a percentage versus in the raw number? ah What is what not just what is being shown, but what are the statistics actually hiding? So you get into some you can get into some really interesting stuff once you learn about statistics and then you can critique things more as to. even in research, why did they present their statistics like this? Are they trying to hide something? Is something different? Are they trying to prove some certain point in particular? You can get into a lot of it with that. What's the saying? Lies, damn lies and statistics. All right, final two questions. We're getting to the end. uh What's one piece of research you've heard or seen recently that you wish you could have a magic wand and everyone in the world would know about? I mean, I just find this like just interesting in general. And it's a study in the Netherlands. And it's basically like this 100 plus study, Centurion study. And it's looking at people who are over the age of 100 and are still not like, cognitively impaired. The whole way it started is fascinating because this woman said she was going to donate her brain to this university when she was in her 60s or 70s. And then she, know, was 40 years later, I think she was 112, and she emailed to say like, do you, or, it said like, do you still want my brain? Because I'm so happy to give it, but I'm not sure if I'm too old now. And they were like, she wrote like a really comprehensive email and they're like, this is amazing for a 112 year old. So they went to go and see and she's like, yeah, yeah. They did like full kind of like things like something called, I think it was a mocker, which is like a cognitive exam. She scored full marks, things like we dropped one mark because eyesight was a little bit impaired and the researcher involved was like, right, okay, I think there's something going on here. So they started to recruit people over the age of 100, not cognitively impaired and look at all the factors about their life. something really interesting is, about 30 % of them donated their brain afterwards. And what they found is lots of them had amyloid plaques everywhere, which is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, but they didn't develop dementia. So they had the disease, but it had been completely, it just wasn't there. Yeah, so there was just no difference, but they scored very high. But they actually found like a big thing related to this was genetics. And it's actually, the genes do play quite a big role within that. m But I think something when I spoke, I saw the head of the, her name was Henna Holsteig, think, or could be butchering that. was honestly, I think, one of the coolest women I've met. And she was talking about the different kind of risk factors. m Those who kind of drinking, unless they're heavily drinking, they happily would drink wine most weeks. That wasn't really a factor. Smoking did affect it. But things like something she did say about that, this isn't, by the way, a... m I don't think this is part of the actual statistical findings, good question, from what I've just been speaking about. But she said that they were all very happy-go-lucky, optimistic, every day is a new day. They had a very positive outlook on life. And yeah, there's another study linked to that called the Nun study where basically they took... Nuns donated their brain to... uh to uh a research institute and they found actually that m writing kind of early on and kind of writing kind of your thoughts down was very, I need to find the actual excerpt, but there's similar things kind of like nuns do, that kind of early kind of introspection I think was very helpful as well in the long term. Anyway I just find these studies really fascinating because a lot of the stuff is like genetics and maybe things that you do when you're younger can like genuinely help your brain health when you're older. would say long-winded answer but... Really cool. um So my study, oh based on the question, my study is it's not one which has been published, but I think people should do more research and publish on it soon. um So my brother worked briefly for a medical institute in India, they had like, and they have this sort of like data sample, small data sample um of about 300 odd participants. and sort of their medical health data and so on. And what they were just playing around with last week was looking at the impacts of Ozempic and if it works on everyone. And they found that about, it doesn't work on about 25 % of their sample because of certain genes which they have. and so if one in four people, I, this is an Indian sample in Hyderabad. But Hyderabad is a cosmopolitan city, so there'd be people from all over India at the sample. So there'd be quite a decent amount of genetic diversity, which makes it quite interesting in terms of thinking about the drugs we use. And if one in four people have sort of a genetic makeup, which means certain drugs aren't effective or certain doses aren't effective, then we really need to start thinking about personalized medicine and how we sort of develop. of medications uh more specific to certain people in the genetic diversity out there in the world. So I think that's quite a cool thing. It links to other studies, I guess, obviously, but this was just because I was having a conversation with my brother and mom about it two days ago. think this one came to mind as like, I think it's something people should think or hear about as to maybe why certain medications might not be working for them. It could be because ah the genetics just aren't matching and maybe there's a better medication out there for you. All right, very last question, Beth. This is from Sarah, who is my former flatmate. And she was like, I want to know if your views on a hot dog being a sandwich have evolved. uh Beth, you do so? But you do not know this, but for context, this famous question is a hot dog, a sandwich. And there's views on this of whether a hot dog is technically a sandwich and what makes a sandwich. And me and my friends have argued about it, particularly Sarah and I have argued about it a lot. So. She was wondering if my views haven't changed, but I'll ask you first. Do you have views on this? Do you think a hot dog is a sandwich? Gosh, is a hot dog a sandwich? Is a toastie a sandwich? Is a panini a sandwich? Are they just variations of a sandwich and is sandwich an umbrella term? I think sandwich is an umbrella term. So. Yeah, go on, hot dog's a sandwich. I think it's bread, anything that's between bread. Yeah, so, Sarah, my thoughts have evolved. used to argue that a hot dog is not a... I used to argue that a hot dog is a sandwich and you got mad at me. I agree with you now. A hot dog is not a sandwich. A hot dog is a taco. um So I think that a sandwich is anything with two slices of bread on each side or two slices of a carb on each side with anything in the middle. So, for example, ice cream sandwich is still a sandwich because there's two bits of carb and like a different substance in the middle. A panini is technically a taco because it's attached at the end. So it's technically three sides, just like a taco, just like a hot dog. A burrito, a burrito and sushi are exactly the same thing because they're like a circular carb with food in the middle and a samosa, a pasty, a samosa, a cornish pasty and an empanada and a calzone are the same thing because they're like completely surrounded by meat and dumplings. They're all completely surrounded by a carb with fillings in the middle. That's where I have evolved to. What about when people say an open-faced sandwich? What's your thoughts on that? Can the sandwich be closed and then they've opened it? So. was in like it's an actual so, for example, I got an open faced bagel the other day and it's egg. So it's just like eggs on toast. comes under that because there's one side of the carb. So it's just like a slice of toast kind of thing. This is where this is where I've come to it. This is where I have reached in my sandwich hot dog journey. So, yes, my thoughts have evolved. Beautiful. That's all the questions. Thank you, everybody, for sending them in. Thanks for. Thank you, Beth, for at least I got to read the questions. You didn't even really get to read them. So um you had to jump on these on the spot. Very impressive. try. And also, and again, thank you everybody for listening. If you guys want to get more involved, you can follow us on Smooth Brain Society at Instagram. We're also on X and TikTok and the other things, but I guess questions and all go out on Instagram. So yeah. uh just to say, you want more dark science, I'll be doing stuff in the next few weeks, which is at Betty on the Brain. I'm on TikTok and Instagram. Awesome, brilliant. All right, until that time, take care, bye. Ah!