DARUSHIMO

At the University of California, San Francisco, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience.

The researchers suspect that the findings also apply to how humans learn.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

Here’s my theory: the problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy. I think he’s a really weird dude. Recall, for example, this comment of Schmidt’s from 2009, regarding Google and privacy: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

The industry is filled with eccentric CEOs — billionaires who, say, wear a wardrobe that consists of nothing but identical black shirts and Levi’s 501 jeans, or who dress as a samurai warrior, replete with swords, at their home. But Schmidt doesn’t seem eccentric (or at least not merely so). He seems creepy.