- A debate erupted over “digital nootropics”: one participant sought structured games that improve memory, logic, and recall, citing childhood card-matching, Tetris, Rocksmith 2014 for motor learning, and the music-interval trainer Fugue on Steam as prototypes.  
- fenn countered with meta-analyses showing brain-training games yield only domain-specific proficiency, not durable gains in fluid intelligence; dual-n-back was labeled single-author hype.  
- kanzure added twin-study evidence that variation in educational quality has little effect on “learnedness,” reinforcing skepticism that schooling or gamified drills raise intelligence.  
- Despite the skepticism, Anki (spaced-repetition flash-card software) was endorsed for targeted memorization.  
- Key links circulated: a Nature paper on “Machine learning-guided channelrhodopsin engineering enables minimally invasive optogenetics” (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-019-0583-8), an arXiv paper on 20-photon boson sampling, scite.ai for tracking paper support/contradiction, a Cell paper on BarSeq for neuronal projection mapping, and a BioRxiv preprint showing hippocampal place-field induction is constrained by pre-existing network dynamics.  
- Other notable references: Scott Aaronson’s blog, Luke Muehlhauser’s essay on the Industrial Revolution, a Medium critique of “pure learning” in AI, and a neurowitz Twitter thread urging the field to skip mouse connectome and jump straight to marmoset for faster human whole-brain mapping.  
- Brief mention of gene-based therapies as a last-resort intervention for otherwise fatal autoimmune diseases.