Most Popular Content in 2024: Top 10 Countdown

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Why do people contradict themselves? Can AI push you to make the wrong decision at work? How does the brain learn from experience?

In 2024, BrainFacts answered the questions of inquiring minds. Click on the links below to see our most popular content for the year. 

Top 10 Stories:

1. Why AI Can Push You to Make the Wrong Decision at Work
   Automation bias is the tendency to be less vigilant when a process is automated. But can we effectively check ourselves against AI before making a wrong decision
2. Burnout Exhausts Brain Function and Physiology
   Burnout caused by chronic stress perpetuates a constant state of mental and physical exhaustion, hindering cognitive performance and everyday memory.
3. How Gut Bacteria Connect to Parkinson’s Disease
   Growing evidence suggests a link between Parkinson’s disease and the microbes in our intestines. The vagus nerve may be a pathway.
4. How Does the Brain Learn from Experience?
   Michael Greenberg, Christine Holt, and Erin Schuman — the 2023 Brain Prize awardees — have revealed the mechanisms that enable long-term brain changes.
5. Why Do People Contradict Themselves?
   Cognitive dissonance occurs when people’s actions do not align with their beliefs, causing unease and anxiety.
6. Turning on Flow Means Turning Off Parts of the Brain
   The transient hypofrontality hypothesis holds that activity in the prefrontal cortex dials down during some high-intensity activities.
7. The Growing Link Between Microbes, Mood, and Mental Health
   New research suggests that to maintain a healthy brain, we should tend our gut microbiome. The best way to do that right now is not through pills and supplements, but better food.
8. Six Months in Space Changes Your Brain for Years
   Recent research shows how microgravity changes key structures in the brain associated with waste removal and suggests implications for returning to life on Earth.
9. To Pee or Not to Pee? That Is a Question for the Bladder — and the Brain
   How do we sense the need to urinate? The basic urge is surprisingly complex, and it can go awry as we age.
10. Psychedelics Can Reopen Periods of Heightened Brain Plasticity
    Some drugs with hallucinogenic properties reopen critical periods in mice, allowing neural cells to more easily modify their connections for an extended period.

Explore more of our most recent content from BrainFacts.

About the Author

Cyrenna Cooper

Cyrenna Cooper is the Web Communications Specialist for BrainFacts. She graduated from George Mason University in 2017 with a degree in Communications.