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Brain Commun
Brain Commun
braincomms
Brain Communications
2632-1297
Oxford University Press UK

10.1093/braincomms/fcae266
fcae266
Editorial
AcademicSubjects/MED00310
AcademicSubjects/SCI01870
Summer days: research culture and the neuroscience of taking a break
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2530-0598
Spires-Jones Tara L Edinburgh, UK

E-mail: tara.spires-jones@ed.ac.uk
2024
02 9 2024
02 9 2024
6 5 fcae26605 8 2024
05 8 2024
14 8 2024
02 9 2024
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain.
2024
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Our editor discusses taking a vacation without a computer and some neuroscience evidence supporting the need for work–life balance.

Graphical Abstract

Graphical Abstract
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pmcWelcome to volume 6, issue 5 of Brain Communications. I hope you have all enjoyed the summer. I’m writing this after an amazing two-week vacation in Barbados with my family and without my laptop. Many thanks to our Associate Editor Paul Skehel and our editorial team for keeping Brain Communications running during my break. Taking time to completely disconnect from work is not typical for some people in academia where we wear many hats and make commitments. However, research culture has started to shift with more open conversations about managing work load. In a survey by Nature, 75% of 1748 academics interviewed said that they have dialled back their work efforts over the past few years.1

There is strong evidence that adequate sleep and exercise boost cognition and that conversely stress impairs cognitive function, arguing for managing work–life balance and taking breaks.2-4 Recent data from Mueller et al.5 published in Brain Communication supports the link between sleep deficits and cognitive decline during aging. Spending two weeks snorkelling, scuba diving, taking walks in the jungle and not setting alarms to wake up early was certainly refreshing for me. As an added bonus, I managed to drown my smartphone in the Caribbean taking away my crutch to keep checking emails. This also helped with sleep as neuroscience research, including a recent study by Höhn et al.6 in Brain Communications, indicates that smartphone use before bedtime can impair sleep.

Alongside sleep and exercise, spending hours observing sea creatures (see ‘Graphical Abstract’ for a new friend from the trip) and experiencing another culture were inspiring. Despite the full inbox and to-do lists waiting at the end of vacation, being completely disconnected from work has left me feeling more creative and able to come back into projects with new ideas and renewed enthusiasm. I hope all of you dear readers also find time to take a break and disconnect.

The cover image for this issue comes from Schaper et al.7 and shows two brain networks derived from lesions causing parkinsonism versus seizures on opposing ends of a seesaw, illustrating an inverse relationship between these two common brain diseases.

Competing interests

The authors report no competing interests.
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References

1 Forrester  N . Fed up and burnt out: ‘quiet quitting’ hits academia. Nature. 2023;615 (7953 ):751–753.36869111
2 Wagner  U, Gais  S, Haider  H, Verleger  R, Born  J. Sleep inspires insight. Nature. 2004;427 (6972 ):352–355.14737168
3 Ciria  LF, Román-Caballero  R, Vadillo  MA, et al  An umbrella review of randomized control trials on the effects of physical exercise on cognition. Nat Hum Behav. 2023;7 (6 ):928–941.36973359
4 Kim  EJ, Kim  JJ. Neurocognitive effects of stress: A metaparadigm perspective. Mol Psychiatry. 2023;28 (7 ):2750–2763.36759545
5 Mueller  C, Nenert  R, Catiul  C, Pilkington  J, Szaflarski  JP, Amara  AW. Brain metabolites are associated with sleep architecture and cognitive functioning in older adults. Brain Commun. 2024;6 (4 ):fcae245.39104903
6 Höhn  C, Hahn  MA, Gruber  G, Pletzer  B, Cajochen  C, Hoedlmoser  K. Effects of evening smartphone use on sleep and declarative memory consolidation in male adolescents and young adults. Brain Commun. 2024;6 (3 ):fcae173.38846535
7 Schaper  FLWVJ, Morton-Dutton  M, Pacheco-Barrios  N, et al  Brain lesions causing parkinsonism versus seizures map to opposite brain networks. Brain Commun. 2024;6 (3 ):fcae196.38915927
