This week Brainy Days co-hosts Jeff and Paul start a conversation about what it really means to be in graduate school — Never feeling smart enough and being endlessly absorbed in a world of fierce competition can take a major toll on any graduate student’s mental health. Have you ever heard of imposter syndrome? Because it sucks. Jeff and Paul then take these seemingly niche emotions and relate them to a general audience by discussing the stress system in the brain and body in order to connect Brainy Days listeners through shared experiences.

Jeff and Paul attempt to walk us through the complicated mechanisms through which signals are sent to and received by brain cells. After a general introduction regarding the different kinds of neurotransmitters (and Jeff promising to talk about dopamine and failing to deliver), the boys chat about the electrical and chemical events that trigger the release of synaptic vesicles at the junction between two brain cells: the synapse. Jeff and Paul then discuss the mechanism through which SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), a commonly prescribed antidepressant, relieve depression and anxiety.

Returning after a two-week hiatus, Jeff and Paul gracefully fumble in discussing the many complexities of sleep and dreaming. The electrical properties of the brain differ while we sleep, all while we experience one of the most cosmic human experiences: dreaming. Anxiety dreams, lucid dreaming, and the neural circuitry of sleep paralysis are just a few topics Jeff and Paul briefly chat about this week.

Outgoing, obnoxious, social, outspoken. Reserved, internal, quiet, shy. These are just some of the strings of words typically used to describe either an extravert or an introvert. Having one of each as our co-hosts of Brainy Days, Jeff and Paul answer the same questions to learn more about the perspective of the opposing personality type. Human personality ranges on an infinite scale, but many people seem to favor one of these “attitude types” originally described by Carl Jung. Jeff also graces us with some embarrassingly delightful stories about awkward situations his extraversion has gotten him into in the past.

In the second episode of Brainy Days, Jeff and Paul have a general discussion regarding how they’ve both been trying to personally cope with the ongoing effects of COVID19. An abrupt halt of what we as a society (and species) consider “normal life” has given us all a gargantuan obstacle like we’ve never experienced before — and it’s starting to get to some of us. The goal of this episode is to normalize that even some of the healthiest minds are dealing with mental strife during this historic event, and that even in some of the worst possible situations we can do our best to learn from them. But in a nutshell, COVID sucks./p>

In the second episode of Brainy Days, Jeff and Paul have a general discussion regarding how they’ve both been trying to personally cope with the ongoing effects of COVID19. An abrupt halt of what we as a society (and species) consider “normal life” has given us all a gargantuan obstacle like we’ve never experienced before — and it’s starting to get to some of us. The goal of this episode is to normalize that even some of the healthiest minds are dealing with mental strife during this historic event, and that even in some of the worst possible situations we can do our best to learn from them. But in a nutshell, COVID sucks.