The headline is broadly defensible, but the qualifications matter. Effect sizes vary by population, the strongest claims rest on shorter trials, and credible voices push back on how it's typically framed.
So just to be clear, it's epinephrine creates the alertness, that's coming from a subset of neurons in the brain stem if you're interested, and acetylcholine coming from an area of the forebrain is tagging or marking the neurons that are particularly active during this heightened level of alertness.
Every Sunday: the week’s new conflicts and verdict changes — and nothing else.
Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
So acetylcholine is sorta like a highlighter marker upon which neuroplasticity then comes in later and says, wait, which neurons were active in this particularly alerting phase of whatever, you know, day or night, whenever this thing happened.
Now, that marks the cells, the neurons, and the synapses for strengthening, for becoming more likely to be active in the future, even without us thinking about it.