Samsung’s VR missile, autism as evolution’s trade-off, and unlocking your brain years

Samsung’s Project Moohan: The VR missile aimed squarely at Apple’s Vision Pro

Samsung’s long-whispered Project Moohan is about to crash Apple’s Vision Pro party, and it’s bringing some serious firepower. 

Launching globally on October 21 (preorders kick off on September 29), the premium headset features Qualcomm’s powerful Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chip and razor-sharp 1.3-inch Micro-OLED panels, producing a staggering 13.64 million pixels per eye, nearly two million more than Apple’s own crown jewel. 

The visuals promise deeper colors and brighter worlds that could make the Quest 3 look like a relic. At a rumored $1,799–$2,999, Moohan undercuts Vision Pro’s $3,499 sticker shock while flexing specs way beyond Meta’s budget gear. 

After two years in the shadows, Samsung’s play could redraw the XR battlefield and give Apple a real fight for premium VR dominance.

Vaccines don’t cause autism…evolution does? 

A recent study implies that Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) may exist because of how complex our brains are.

According to the scientists, ASD related behaviours are rarely observed in simians other than humans. Additionally, these behaviors involve advanced cognitive skills like language production and comprehension, something that you’d be harder pressed to find in most of our primate brethren.

New gene sequencing techniques have revealed genomic elements that were generally stable in most mammals but not in us. The most common neurons in the brain’s outer layer, known as L2/3 IT neurons, underwent rapid evolutionary change in humans compared with other apes, which coincided with significant modifications in genes linked to autism. 

While the findings point strongly towards evolution favoring autism-associated genes, we don’t know what advantage this gave us specifically. These genes are also associated with delaying our development, so it’s possible that the evolution of autism-linked genes gave us an advantage by slowing postnatal brain development in turn increasing the capacity for language; the lengthier brain development time in early childhood was beneficial to human evolution because it led to more complex thinking.

Basically, the same evolutionary changes that gave our brains more complexity naturally gave us more neurodiversity. 

Thinking of it like that, it sounds like the most obvious thing in the world. If you ever have someone tell you that vaccines cause autism, you can smile, knowing that you won the evolutionary lottery over them.

How old are you? In brain-years. 

Three coloured spots on half of the brain illuminate special locations in the movement areas of the brain that connect to areas involved in thinking, planning and control of basic bodily functions such as heart rate, in an undated illustration. Source: REUTERS

You’ve seen those books, videos, tabloids, and even games, all trying to gauge your “brain age” in various, scientifically unsound ways. There’s never been a reliable way to measure, or even quantify, what the term even means. But recently, scientists have been making a metric for it which shows how the ‘healthy’ brain ages.

In 2022, there was a study in the science journal Nature that examined over 100’000 brain scans from a plethora of age groups. They found that on average, regions of the brain can shrink over time, especially those related to neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia, even depression and anxiety. But growing old doesn’t simply lead to an ‘older’ brain. There is a gap between someone’s chronological age and their ‘brain age’, as in someone younger can have an ‘older brain’ for their age. 

Premature brain aging has been linked to genetics, chronic stress, inflammation, and more. You can’t attribute causes to such large changes by singular scans, after all. Singular scans act more like ‘thermometers’ for your overall brain age and health. 

So, how do you get a healthy brain? There’s no cure-all, but evidence says that you need to eat well, sleep well, exercise, be socially active, and avoid smoking. Oh, and to stay in school. Yes, I know how it sounds; like your mother sent you a Facebook post on the ‘Top 10 things to do to have a healthy mind.’ It’s not my fault that the generic advice is mostly right.