All posts tagged: function

Psilocybin slows down human reaction times and impairs executive function during the acute phase of use

Psilocybin slows down human reaction times and impairs executive function during the acute phase of use

Published by José Betancourt

The acute influence of psilocybin slows down human reaction times and mildly impairs parts of cognition that coordinate behavior. These short-term effects scale with the dose of the drug, highlighting a need for supervision and safety measures while the substance is active in the body. The findings were recently published in the journal Psychopharmacology. Psychedelic substances are increasingly being evaluated for their therapeutic potential in treating conditions like anxiety and depression. As these drugs move toward broader clinical acceptance, researchers are attempting to understand exactly how they alter immediate thinking processes. Cognitive functions, specifically executive functions, are essential mental skills that help people plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks. Executive functions act as a sort of traffic control system for the brain, coordinating basic abilities to achieve a specific goal. Impairments in this system are common across various psychiatric conditions. Observing how psychedelics temporarily alter these domains helps scientists gauge basic safety and the potential side effects of future clinical treatments. P. Yousefi, a researcher at Leiden University, and Morten P. Lietz, …

Poor sleep quality, not duration, linked to slower daily brain function in older adults

Poor sleep quality, not duration, linked to slower daily brain function in older adults

Published by José Betancourt

An analysis of the Einstein Aging Study data showed that older adults who experience longer nighttime wakefulness tend to have slower processing speed, worse working memory, and worse visual memory binding. On an individual level, participants’ processing speed was slower after nights with greater-than-usual nighttime awakenings. The research was published in Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation. Sleep is essential for physical health, cognitive functioning, and emotional regulation. During sleep, the body repairs tissues, strengthens the immune system, and regulates hormones involved in appetite, stress, and growth. Adequate sleep supports memory consolidation and learning by helping the brain process and organize information. Poor or insufficient sleep is linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, depression, and impaired immune function. Sleep quality is determined by examining how well and how continuously a person sleeps. Key indicators of good sleep quality include short sleep onset latency (falling asleep easily), low wake after sleep onset (minimal time awake during the night), and high sleep efficiency (most time in bed spent asleep). Feeling rested and …

Health, Music, Executive Function, and Emotions

Health, Music, Executive Function, and Emotions

Published by Jenni Sidey

The rhythm of life may shift suddenly. A senior hears words like blockage, plaque, or monitoring. A mother hears a doctor say, “We’re not sure yet.” A teenager encounters the word idiopathic, that maddening medical term that essentially means we don’t know why. Our steady internal rhythms, our assumptions about our bodies, our stamina, and our future begin to feel off. Sound becomes strangely vivid. A hospital hallway that might otherwise feel quiet reveals a whole orchestra of small noises: beds rolling down polished floors, rubber soles on tile, nurses speaking softly to one another. A heart monitor keeps time with a steady electronic pulse. For families waiting through procedures or tests, that sound becomes its own metronome. When human hearts feel fragile, the mechanical rhythm of the monitor fills the space. Each pulse reassures that, at least for now, everything is still moving forward. Rhythm becomes noticeable during stressful moments. When certainty disappears, the brain looks for patterns that can stabilize attention and breathing. The nervous system naturally entrains to predictable sounds, whether they …

I found a better way than PivotTables in Excel, and it’s not a function

I found a better way than PivotTables in Excel, and it’s not a function

Published by skeptic

PivotTables have been Excel’s default answer to data analysis for decades, and I’ve used them enough to know the routine well. They work, but the setup has always felt disproportionate to the questions I’m actually asking. Copilot’s natural language queries skip that by allowing you to type a plain English question into Copilot and get an answer. It’s not a function or a hidden feature; it’s just a conversation with your data. For most quick analysis tasks, this is how I prefer to use Copilot in Excel now, and PivotTables have become something I reach for far less often. Related My Excel formulas used to break all the time until I found this function AGGREGATE was built to handle messy data from the start. Copilot lets you ask questions instead of building tables A plain English prompt replaces most of the clicking The traditional PivotTable workflow for a sales spreadsheet goes something like this: you select the data range, click Insert, choose PivotTable, decide where to place it, then drag Region into Rows, Product Category …

Executive Function Myths That Need to Go

Executive Function Myths That Need to Go

Published by Jenni Sidey

Somewhere, deep down, I know my level-eight reaction is a mismatch to the level-three problem: I’ve fallen behind on emails, and now I seem like a total flake. My inner voice chides me, “You’re an executive function expert, for goodness sake. You can’t make mistakes like these!” I time-travel in my head, forecasting that all of the families I work with will turn on me, my family will be shamed, and I will be seen as an irresponsible fraud. Never mind that I’ve fallen behind because I just moved. My brain has soaked up the messaging that conflated my executive function with my character, and as such, I worry that any executive function struggle reflects poor morality. The tangling of who we are with our executive function is just one of the many myths that permeate our thinking and, unfortunately, really set us back. It’s time to dispel the executive function falsehoods: Being late means you don’t care We all have that friend who will be late to their own funeral. For a while, I …

My Excel formulas used to break all the time until I found this function

My Excel formulas used to break all the time until I found this function

Published by skeptic

I’ve always found it frustrating that Excel’s most popular functions, such as SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, and MAX, fall apart the moment your data has a single error value. A stray #DIV/0! or #VALUE! in your range will cause the whole formula to return an error. The usual fix is wrapping everything in IFERROR, which works but clutters the formula bar. AGGREGATE is a function I’ve leaned on precisely because it skips that mess. It handles errors, hidden rows, and filtered data natively, without the need for any nested workaround. If you work with real-world data that isn’t always clean, AGGREGATE is worth learning. Related Don’t bother with IF in Excel when you can use this function instead Your formulas will thank you. AGGREGATE does what other functions can’t Here’s how the syntax works Screenshot by Yasir Mahmood Most people default to IFERROR when their formulas break. It works, but it’s a band-aid since you’re wrapping every formula in extra logic just to handle bad data. AGGREGATE eliminates that because error handling is built into the …

This Excel date function means I don’t have to guess month ends anymore

This Excel date function means I don’t have to guess month ends anymore

Published by skeptic

You wouldn’t think that figuring out the end of the month would be a hassle, unless you regularly work through bill renewals, investment timelines, and financial projections or analyses in Excel. When you hover over a calendar or try to count the days in your head, especially in February, you’ll realize how disruptive this small step can be. Fortunately, Excel already provides a built-in solution to this recurring annoyance. Once I add this function to my workbook, I no longer have to count days or double-check calendars for the exact month-end for me. EOMONTH is the smarter way to calculate month-end dates in Excel One formula to rule all month ends Screenshot by Ada EOMONTH, short for “End of Month,” is a built-in Excel function that returns the last day of a month relative to any date you give it. Because Excel stores dates as sequential serial numbers, EOMONTH technically returns a numeric value that corresponds to a specific calendar day. While that sounds technical, it simply means the result is a usable date that …

Don’t bother with IF in Excel when you can use this function instead

Don’t bother with IF in Excel when you can use this function instead

Published by skeptic

Most of us never question the IF function. It works, it’s familiar, and there’s a formula for everything if you’re willing to nest enough of them together. But functioning and functioning well are two different things, and IF starts falling apart the moment your logic has more than two or three conditions. The formula bar becomes a wall of parentheses; a misplaced parenthesis breaks the whole thing, and debugging it is difficult. The SWITCH function handles the same logic in a fraction of the characters — and once you’ve used it, going back to nested IF formulas feels unnecessary. Related Use Excel’s TAKE and DROP to make brilliant self-updating lists You don’t have to do it manually. SWITCH is the function you should have been using It does the same job as nested IF, but without the chaos Screenshot by Yasir Mahmood SWITCH evaluates a single expression and matches it against a list of values, returning the result for the first match it finds. It’s one of those conditional functions that make my Excel sheets …

Most Excel users are still using Pivot Tables, but this new function is faster

Most Excel users are still using Pivot Tables, but this new function is faster

Published by skeptic

At one point, Pivot Tables were the greatest feature in Excel, but as with most tools and tricks, that’s no longer the case. Instead of setting up a Pivot Table, adjusting the layout, and refreshing it every time you add or replace figures, you can now write a single formula that produces the same results with far less effort and time. Using PIVOTBY, you can group summaries across two axes and aggregate values, just as you would with a Pivot Table. However, because everything lives inside a formula, your summaries will update automatically, making it easier and faster for you to identify trends in your data. PIVOTBY isn’t just another pivot table It’s a single formula that builds a full summary instantly Screenshot by Ada Despite producing similar-looking outputs, PIVOTBY has nothing to do with Excel’s traditional PivotTable feature. It’s a dynamic array formula available in Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel 2024, and Excel 2021 (including Mac versions) that groups, aggregates, sorts, and filters your data in a single step. You write one formula, press …

Drinking tea and coffee may help preserve brain function and reduce risk of dementia, study suggests | Science, Climate & Tech News

Drinking tea and coffee may help preserve brain function and reduce risk of dementia, study suggests | Science, Climate & Tech News

Published by skeptic

Drinking tea or coffee may help preserve brain function and reduce dementia risk, a large US study has suggested. Researchers said those who had the highest daily intake of caffeinated coffee had an 18% lower risk of developing dementia compared to those with the lowest such intake. People who drank the most tea appeared to have a 16% reduced risk. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), ​also found that those who consumed the most tea and coffee also showed a slower rate of cognitive decline compared to those who drank the least. But decaffeinated coffee was not associated with lower dementia risk or better cognitive performance. Experts from Harvard University examined data on 131,000 health workers in the US, who were tracked for an average of 43 years. “We observed the most favourable associations were at moderate intake levels – the strongest associations were seen at about two to three cups per day of caffeinated coffee and about one to two cups per day of tea,” study leader Dr …