by Nicholette Zeliadt An experimental drug prevents seizures and death in a mouse model of Dravet syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy that is related to autism, researchers reported 18 October 2019. The drug works by silencing a DNA segment called a ‘poison exon’ and is expected to enter clinical trials next year. If it works, it offers hope for treating not just Dravet, but other forms of autism as well: Another team has identified a poison exon in SYNGAP1, an autism gene that also causes epilepsy. Poison exons seem to impede the production of certain crucial proteins; blocking these segments would restore normal levels of the proteins. “The beauty of the technology,” says Gemma Carvill, assistant professor of neurology and pharmacology at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, “is that “any gene that has a poison exon is potentially a target.” Several teams presented unpublished work on poison exons in a standing-room-only session at the 2019 American Society of Human Genetics meeting in Houston, Texas. People with Dravet often have autism, and most die in childhood2. The syndrome typically stems from mutations in a gene called SCN1A, which encodes an essential sodium channel in neurons. Only about 25 percent of mice with mutations in SCN1A live beyond 30 days of age. The new drug consists of short strands of ‘antisense’ RNA that restore normal levels of the channel, said Lori Isom of the University of Michigan, who presented the work. And all but 1 of 33 mice that received a single injection of the drug at 2 days of age remained alive 88 days later. © 2020 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Epilepsy; Autism
Link ID: 27437 - Posted: 08.29.2020

By Carolyn Wilke Female hyenas may be out for cubs’ blood — even within their own clans. New research suggests that infanticide may be part of a strategy females use to maintain their social standing. “It’s not that these events are weird one-off things … this is actually a pretty significant source of mortality,” says Eli Strauss, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Strauss and his colleagues scoured three decades of data on spotted hyena populations in Kenya to study deaths of cubs less than a year old (SN: 4/23/02). Of 99 observed deaths, 21 could be attributed to infanticide, always by female killers. Starvation and lions also took many young cubs’ lives. The infanticide observations made the team wonder why hyenas kill within their own group. It “seems sort of counterintuitive if animals benefit from living socially,” Strauss says. Though hyenas spend much of their time alone, group living allows them to defend their turf against rival hyena clans and to gang up against threatening lions, he says. Hyena mothers give birth in an isolated den. But typically within a few weeks, they move their cubs to a communal den. Such dens shelter little ones from large predators that can’t enter the sanctuary’s small access holes, says Ally Brown, an environmental biology student at Michigan State University in East Lansing. But the communal den presents other risks — all the cases of infanticide occurred in its vicinity, documented by researchers who either found the dead cubs or observed the clans from cars that serve as mobile blinds (SN: 4/23/02). © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020.

Keyword: Aggression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 27436 - Posted: 08.26.2020

By Apoorva Mandavilli The coronavirus may infect anyone, young or old, but older men are up to twice as likely to become severely sick and to die as women of the same age. Why? The first study to look at immune response by sex has turned up a clue: Men produce a weaker immune response to the virus than do women, the researchers concluded. The findings, published on Wednesday in Nature, suggest that men, particularly those over age 60, may need to depend more on vaccines to protect against the infection. “Natural infection is clearly failing” to spark adequate immune responses in men, said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who led the work. The results are consistent with what’s known about sex differences following various challenges to the immune system. Women mount faster and stronger immune responses, perhaps because their bodies are rigged to fight pathogens that threaten unborn or newborn children. But over time, an immune system in a constant state of high alert can be harmful. Most autoimmune diseases — characterized by an overly strong immune response — are much more prevalent in women than in men, for example. “We are looking at two sides of the same coin,” said Dr. Marcus Altfeld, an immunologist at the Heinrich Pette Institute and at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. The findings underscore the need for companies pursing coronavirus vaccines to parse their data by sex and may influence decisions about dosing, Dr. Altfeld and other experts said. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 27435 - Posted: 08.26.2020

By Charlotte Hartley “I was at home and that scary red monster thing from that stupid Looney Tunes show was hanging around,” reads the dream diary of Izzy, a teenage girl. “There were lots of them trying to get in and I was scared to death.” Like many people, Izzy dreams about strange characters in unlikely situations. But according to a new study, in which researchers analyzed thousands of dreams with an automated tool, Izzy’s dream is probably just an expression of her adolescent anxieties—a funhouse reflection of her everyday experiences. The researchers say the tool, which identifies and quantifies the characters, interactions, and emotions of dreams, could help psychologists quickly identify potential stressors and mental health issues among their patients. Throughout history, people have tried to extract hidden meaning from dreams. Ancient Babylonians believed dreams contained prophecies, whereas ancient Egyptians revered them as messages from the gods. In the 1890s, Sigmund Freud assigned symbolic meanings to dream characters, objects, and scenarios—with an emphasis on sex and aggression. Today, however, most psychologists support the “continuity hypothesis,” which posits that dreams are a continuation of what happens in waking life. Indeed, numerous studies have shown that dreams often reflect day-to-day activities and can act as a sort of nocturnal therapist, helping people process experiences and prepare for real-life problems. “If we can understand our dreams better at scale, then maybe we can also tailor technologies that improve our waking life,” says Luca Maria Aiello, a computational social scientist at Nokia Bell Labs and co-author of the study. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 27434 - Posted: 08.26.2020

Georgina Ferry The lightning flick of the tongue that secures a frog its next meal depends on a rapid response to a small black object moving through its field of view. During the 1950s the British neuroscientist Horace Barlow established that neurons in the frog’s retina were tuned to produce just such a response, not only detecting but also predicting the future position of a passing fly. This discovery raised the curtain on decades of research by Barlow and others, establishing that individual neurons of the billions that make up the visual system contribute to the efficient processing of movement, colour, position and orientation of objects in the visual world. Barlow, who has died aged 98, combined three approaches to the question of how the brain enables us to see. He looked at how people perceive, for example measuring the smallest and faintest spot of light they could reliably detect; he studied the responses of single neurons in the retina and brain to different visual stimuli; and he developed theories to account for the relationship between what neurons are doing and the corresponding visual experience. All his work started from the principle – apparently obvious but not often stated – that a deep, mathematical understanding of what is involved in the psychological process of seeing is an essential basis for exploring how the physiological elements of the visual system serve that end. In a vivid analogy, he wrote: “A wing would be a most mystifying structure if one did not know that birds flew.” He is best known for demanding answers to the question of how such a complex system could work most efficiently. He was influenced by early computer scientists, and was a pioneer in seeing visual signals as information to be processed. His concept of “efficient coding” predicted that of all the information presented to the eye, the brain would transmit the minimum necessary, wasting no energy on redundant signals. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limite

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 27433 - Posted: 08.26.2020

Although the number of people with dementia continues to increase, the rate of growth has declined by 13 percent in each of the past three decades. The brain disorder currently affects nearly 50 million people worldwide and nearly 6 million in the United States. The new finding, reported by Harvard researchers in the journal Neurology, suggests that the number of people developing dementia in coming years may be less than expected. Nonetheless, that number — known as the prevalence of dementia — is expected to triple in the next 30 years, growing to more than 150 million people worldwide, due in large part to increases in life expectancy and population size. Dementia, which involves deterioration in memory, thinking and behavior beyond what is considered a normal part of aging, includes but is not limited to Alzheimer’s disease, which accounts for 60 to 70 percent of dementia cases. The researchers cited a “somewhat stronger” decline in the rate of growth — referred to as the incidence rate — among men than women (24 percent vs. 8 percent). They projected that, if the trend continues, it is possible that up to 60 million fewer people than expected would develop dementia worldwide by 2040. The researchers did not determine underlying causes of the decline in incidence, but they did note that improvements in lifestyle overall — as well as better control of blood pressure and cardiovascular issues — may have contributed to the decline. Their research was based on data from seven long-term studies, involving 49,202 people 65 and older from six countries in Europe and North America, including the United States. But the database included only people of European ancestry, and other research has found stable or increasing rates of dementia diagnoses in other ethnic and geographic regions. — Linda Searing

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 27432 - Posted: 08.26.2020

By Benedict Carey For a couple of minutes on Thursday, the sprawling, virtual Democratic National Convention seemed to hold its collective breath as 13-year-old Brayden Harrington of Concord, N.H., addressed the nation from his bedroom, occasionally stumbling on his words. “I’m a regular kid,” he said into a home camera, and a recent meeting with the candidate “made me feel confident about something that has bothered me my whole life.” Joe Biden and Mr. Harrington have had to manage stuttering, and the sight of the teenager openly balking on several words, including “stutter,” was a striking reminder of how the speech disorder can play havoc with sociability, relationships, even identity. Movies like “The King’s Speech,” and books like Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral,” explore how consequential managing the disorder can be, just as Mr. Biden’s own story does. How many people stutter? The basic numbers are known: About one in 10 children will exhibit some evidence of a stutter — it usually starts between ages 2 and 7 — and 90 percent of them will grow out of it before adulthood. Around 1 percent of the population carries the speech problem for much of their lives. For reasons not understood, boys are twice as likely to stutter, and nearly four times as likely to continue doing so into adulthood. And it is often anxiety that triggers bursts of verbal stumbling — which, in turn, create a flood of self-conscious stress. When Mr. Harrington got stuck for a couple of seconds on the “s” in “stutter,” he turned his head and his eyes fluttered — an embodiment of physical and mental effort — before saying, “It is really amazing that someone like me could get advice from” a presidential candidate. About half of children who stutter are related to someone else who does, but it is impossible to predict who will develop the speech disorder. There are no genes for stuttering; and scientists do not know what might happen after conception, during development, that predisposes children to struggle with speaking in this way. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Language; Attention
Link ID: 27431 - Posted: 08.22.2020

by Angie Voyles Askham A new study pinpoints genes and cell types that may account for the atypical brain structure in people with genetic conditions related to autism1. The work offers insight into how the brain develops differently in people with these conditions and identifies new potential therapeutic targets, says Mallar Chakravarty, associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal. Chakravarty has collaborated with the researchers previously but was not involved in the new work. The analysis considered people with six genetic conditions associated with atypical brain development, including syndromes associated with deletions in the chromosomal regions 11p13 and 22q11.2, both of which increase the likelihood of autism2. “We used known genetic conditions as a kind of foothold into the complex biology of neurodevelopmental disorders,” says lead researcher Armin Raznahan, chief of the Developmental Neurogenomics section at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health intramural research program. Previous studies of mice with autism-linked genetic conditions have shown that brain structure changes tend to crop up in regions where the relevant genes are ordinarily expressed3. The same holds true for people, Raznahan and his colleagues found after comparing measurements from brain scans with existing data from postmortem brains. “It’s wildly creative,” Chakravarty says of the method. Raznahan and his colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 231 adolescents and adults with one of the six genetic conditions and 287 controls. Each of the six conditions results from a deletion or duplication of a chromosome or set of genes within a chromosome. © 2020 Simons Foundation

Keyword: Autism; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 27430 - Posted: 08.22.2020

By Anahad O’Connor Artificial sweeteners hold the promise of satisfying your sweet tooth without the downside of excess calories, and they are increasingly used in products ranging from diet sodas and powdered drink mixes to yogurt and baked goods. But whether using them can prevent weight gain — a problem many people are struggling with during the coronavirus lockdowns — has long been an open question. Now some studies are providing answers. Researchers have found that artificial sweeteners can be useful as a tool to help people kick their sugar habits, and that for some people, replacing sugar with nonnutritive sweeteners can indeed help stave off weight gain. But they can also have effects on hormones, blood sugar and other aspects of metabolism that some experts say are concerning, and they caution against consuming them routinely for long periods of time. “The idea we need to get rid of is that because they have zero calories they have zero metabolic effects,” said Marta Yanina Pepino, an assistant professor in the department of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Our data suggests that they are metabolically active, and depending on how frequently you use them, some people can see more effects than others.” Purchases of foods and beverages containing sugar substitutes have risen as health-conscious consumers cut back on sugar. Diet beverages account for the largest source of these sweeteners in the American diet. Among the most popular sugar substitutes are sucralose, also known as Splenda, and aspartame, which is found in Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi and thousands of other foods. Stevia, a zero-calorie plant extract that is marketed as natural, is also widely used in many products as a sugar substitute. In a report published recently in the Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital studied what happened when soda drinkers switched to drinking water or beverages that were artificially sweetened. The researchers recruited 203 adults who consumed at least one sugary beverage daily; only some of them were overweight. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 27429 - Posted: 08.22.2020

When it comes to brain cells, one size does not fit all. Neurons come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and contain different types of brain chemicals. But how did they get that way? A new study in Nature suggests that the identities of all the neurons in a worm are linked to unique members of a single gene family that control the process of converting DNA instructions into proteins, known as gene expression. The results of this study could provide a foundation for understanding how nervous systems have evolved in many other animals, including humans. The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health. “The central nervous systems of all animals, from worms to humans, are incredibly intricate and highly ordered. The generation and diversity of a plethora of neuronal cell types is driven by gene expression,” said Robert Riddle, Ph.D., program director at NINDS. “So, it is surprising and exciting to consider that the cell diversity we see in the entire nervous system could come from a just a single group of genes.” Researchers led by Oliver Hobert, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University in New York City and graduate student Molly B. Reilly, wanted to know how brain cells in the C. elegans worm got their various shapes and functions. For these experiments, the researchers used a genetically engineered worm in which individual neurons were color coded. In addition, coding sequences for green fluorescence protein were inserted into homeobox genes, a highly conserved set of genes known to play fundamental roles in development. Homeobox gene expression patterns were determined by examining the patterns of the glowing fluorescent marker.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Brain imaging
Link ID: 27428 - Posted: 08.20.2020

Chris Woolston Signs of depression among graduate students in the United States have apparently doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a survey that drew responses from more than 15,000 graduate and 30,000 undergraduate students at 9 US research universities. The survey, conducted by the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium — a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in Minneapolis — found that indications of anxiety among graduate students rose by 50% this year compared with last year. “It’s very alarming that so many students are suffering from mental-health issues,” says Igor Chirikov, director of SERU and a senior researcher in higher education with the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. “The pandemic has obviously had a big impact.” The survey, which ran from 18 May to 20 July, used simple two-item questionnaires — the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-2 and Patient Health Questionnaire-2 — to screen for symptoms of anxiety disorders and major depression. Thirty-nine per cent of graduate students (a group that includes law- and medical-school students) screened positive for anxiety, and 32% screened positive for depression. When the same screening questions were asked in March to July 2019, 26% of graduate students had signs of anxiety and 15% showed depression symptoms. © 2020 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Depression; Stress
Link ID: 27427 - Posted: 08.20.2020

By Gillian R. Brassil and Jeré Longman A restrictive Idaho law — temporarily blocked by a federal judge Monday night — has amplified a charged debate about who should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, as transgender athletes have become increasingly accepted on the playing field while still facing strong resistance from some competitors and lawmakers. While scientific and societal views of sex and gender identity have changed significantly in recent decades, a vexing question persists regarding athletes who transition from male to female: how to balance inclusivity, competitive fairness and safety. There are no uniform guidelines — in fact the existing rules that govern sports often conflict — to determine the eligibility of transgender women and girls (policy battles have so far primarily centered on regulating women’s sports). And there is scant research on elite transgender athletes to guide sports officials as they attempt to provide equitable access to sports while reconciling any residual physiological advantages that may carry on from puberty. Dr. Eric Vilain, a geneticist specializing in sexual development who has advised the N.C.A.A. and the International Olympic Committee on policies for transgender athletes, said that sports leaders were confronted with “two almost irreconcilable positions” in setting eligibility standards — one relying on an athlete’s declared gender and the other on biological litmus tests. Politics, too, have entered the debate in a divided United States. While transgender people have broadly been more accepted across the country, the Trump administration and some states have sought to roll back protections for transgender people in health care, the military and other areas of civil rights, fueling a rise in hate crimes, according to the Human Rights Campaign. In March, Idaho became the first state to bar transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 27426 - Posted: 08.20.2020

By Gretchen Reynolds People who are evening types go to bed later and wake up later than morning types. They also tend to move around far less throughout the day, according to an interesting new study of how our innate body clocks may be linked to our physical activity habits. The study, one of the first to objectively track daily movements of a large sample of early birds and night owls, suggests that knowing our chronotype might be important for our health. In recent years, a wealth of new science has begun explicating the complex roles of cellular clocks and chronotypes in our health and lifestyles. Thanks to this research, we know that each of us contains a master internal body clock, located in our brains, that tracks and absorbs outside clues, such as ambient light, to determine what time it is and how our bodies should react. This master clock directs the rhythmic release of hormones, such as melatonin, and other chemicals that affect sleep, wakefulness, hunger and many other physiological systems. Responding in part to these biochemical signals, as well as our genetic inclinations and other factors, we each develop a chronotype, which is our overall biological response to the daily passage of time. Chronotypes are often categorized into one of three groups: morning, day or night. Someone with a morning chronotype will naturally wake early; feel most alert and probably hungry in the morning; and be ready for bed before Colbert comes on. Day types tend to wake a bit later and experience peak alertness a few hours deeper into the day. And evening types rise as late as possible and remain vampirically wakeful well past dark. Our chronotypes are not immutable, though. Research shows that they have a yearslong rhythm of their own, with most people harboring a morning or day chronotype when young, an evening version during adolescence and young adulthood, and a return to a day or morning type by middle age. But some people remain night owls lifelong. Our shifting chronotypes are known to affect our health, especially if someone is an evening type. In past studies, people identified as evening types were more likely to develop heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other metabolic conditions than people with other chronotypes. They also tended to exercise less and sit far more, which some researchers suspect contributes to their risks for health problems. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 27425 - Posted: 08.18.2020

Sharks have more complex social lives than previously known, as shown by a study finding that gray reef sharks in the Pacific Ocean cultivate surprising social networks with one another and develop bonds that can endure for years. The research focused on the social behavior of 41 reef sharks around the Palmyra Atoll, about 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii, using acoustic transmitters to track them and camera tags to gain greater clarity into their interactions. Far from being solitary creatures, the sharks formed social communities that remained rather stable over time, with some of the same individuals remaining together during the four years of the study. The researchers documented a daily pattern, with sharks spending mornings together in groups of sometimes close to 20 individuals in the same part of the reef, dispersing throughout the day and into the night, and reconvening the next morning. “Sharks are incredible animals and still quite misunderstood,” said Florida International University marine biologist Yannis Papastamatiou, lead author of the research published last week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. “I like to talk about their ‘secret social lives’ not because they want it to be a secret, but because only recently have we developed the tools to start seeing and understanding their social lives,” Papastamatiou said. “Not all sharks are social and some are likely solitary.” The reef shark is medium-sized, reaching about six feet long. Its sociality bore similarities in terms of stability over time to certain birds and mammals but differed in that it did not involve nesting, mating, making vocalizations or friendly interactions.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 27424 - Posted: 08.18.2020

By Jillian Kramer We spend a substantial part of our days visually scanning an area for something we want—our keys or ketchup, for example. For scientists the way we do so “provides a window into how our minds sift through the information that arrives at our eyes,” says Jason Fischer, a cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University. Past research has focused on readily apparent visual characteristics such as color, shape and size. But an object's intrinsic physical properties—things we know from experience but cannot see, such as hardness—also come into play. “You may not be able to immediately see that a brick is heavier than a soda can and harder than a piece of cake, but you know it. And that knowledge guides how you act on a brick as compared with those other objects,” says Fischer, senior author on a new study led by graduate student Li Guo. “We asked whether that knowledge about objects' hidden physical properties is, in itself, something you can use to locate objects faster.” The study was published online in May in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Researchers asked study participants to pick out the image of an item in a grid of other objects as quickly as possible. Each grid was controlled for the color, size and shape of the objects presented, so participants could not use easy visual cues. For example, when they were asked to find a cutting board, the grid also included softer but similarly colored items such as a croissant and a bandage and similarly shaped items, among them a sponge, pillow and paper bag. © 2020 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 27423 - Posted: 08.18.2020

By Hannah Thomasy Some 2 percent of men in the U.S. identify as bisexual. But, for decades, some sexuality researchers have questioned whether true bisexual orientation exists in men. In 2005, J. Michael Bailey, a sexuality researcher at Northwestern University, and two colleagues showed men who identify as bisexual brief pornographic clips featuring men or women, while measuring their subjects’ self-reported arousal and change in penis circumference. The results, when compared to men who identified as straight or gay, led them to conclude that the men identifying as bisexual did not actually have “strong genital arousal to both male and female sexual stimuli.” This was in contrast to work on sexual arousal in women, which showed that they — whether identifying as straight or gay — were physically aroused by both male and female stimuli. A New York Times headline covering Bailey’s 2005 study on men declared: “Straight, Gay, or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited.” But the paper also spurred more research into the subject — some of which has now led Bailey to revise his conclusions. In a paper published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Bailey and 12 colleagues reanalyzed data from eight previously published studies of bisexual-identified men, including the 2005 paper. The new review finds that men who reported attraction to both men and women do in fact show genital arousal towards both male and female stimuli. The data, the authors conclude, offers “robust evidence for bisexual orientation among men.” The PNAS study has drawn positive coverage and received praise from some activists, who see it as valuable confirmation for an often-marginalized sexual identity. But it has also received backlash from other scientists and many bisexual people, some of whom argue that in attempting to prove, based on genital arousal, that bisexuality exists, researchers are discounting bisexual people’s lived experiences. It has also reignited a broader debate over the ethics of human sexuality research — and about what role, if any, scientists should play in validating the experiences of queer people.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 27422 - Posted: 08.18.2020

By Jan Hoffman The collateral damage from the pandemic continues: Young adults, as well as Black and Latino people of all ages, describe rising levels of anxiety, depression and even suicidal thoughts, and increased substance abuse, according to findings reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a research survey, U.S. residents reported signs of eroding mental health in reaction to the toll of coronavirus illnesses and deaths, and to the life-altering restrictions imposed by lockdowns. The researchers argue that the results point to an urgent need for expanded and culturally sensitive services for mental health and substance abuse, including telehealth counseling. In the online survey completed by some 5,400 people in late June, the prevalence of anxiety symptoms was three times as high as those reported in the second quarter of 2019, and depression was four times as high. The effects of the coronavirus outbreaks were felt most keenly by young adults ages 18 to 24. According to Mark Czeisler, a psychology researcher at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, nearly 63 percent had symptoms of anxiety or depression that they attributed to the pandemic and nearly a quarter had started or increased their abuse of substances, including alcohol, marijuana and prescription drugs, to cope with their emotions. “It’s ironic that young adults who are at lower risk than older adults of severe illness caused by Covid-19 are experiencing worse mental health symptoms,” said Mr. Czeisler. A survey of about 5,000 people done in April, during the earlier days of the pandemic, Mr. Czeisler said, suggested that tremors in the mental health firmament were beginning to surface. Already in April, high percentages of respondents reported they were spending more time on screens and less time outside than before the pandemic, which translated into more virtual interactions and far fewer in person. They noted upheavals to family, school, exercise and work routines, and to their sleeping patterns. All of these are factors that can contribute to the robustness of mental health. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 27421 - Posted: 08.15.2020

By Lucy Hicks “Social distancing” has become one of the buzz phrases of the year. But it turns out humans aren’t the only animals that put some space between themselves and others to reduce the transmission of disease. Wildlife—from finches to mandrills—use similar tactics, according to a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Science chatted with two of the study’s authors—Andrea Townsend, a behavioral ecologist at Hamilton College, and Dana Hawley, a biologist at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University—about how self-isolating works throughout the animal kingdom. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Q: How do animals know when they need to socially distance? Andrea Townsend: COVID-19 has so many symptoms that it’s hard to know when someone is sick. But some animals like house finches use very general behavioral cues, such as lethargy, to assess potential infections and avoid certain individuals. Dana Hawley: In other cases, animals have evolved fairly complex cues to induce social distancing. The Caribbean spiny lobster [a social lobster that normally lives in groups] has evolved to detect a chemical cue in the urine of sick lobsters and avoid areas that these sick lobsters occupy. Another example is in mandrills. Researchers took the feces of animals that did or did not have parasites and basically put a tiny amount on the side of a tree. They found that the primates were much more strongly drawn to the feces of unparasitized animals than those that were parasitized. © 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 27420 - Posted: 08.15.2020

By Carolyn Wilke Taste buds can turn food from mere fuel into a memorable meal. Now researchers have discovered a set of supersensing cells in the taste buds of mice that can detect four of the five flavors that the buds recognize. Bitter, sweet, sour and umami — these cells can catch them all. That’s a surprise because it’s commonly thought that taste cells are very specific, detecting just one or two flavors. Some known taste cells respond to only one compound, for instance, detecting sweet sucralose or bitter caffeine. But the new results suggest that a far more complicated process is at work. When neurophysiologist Debarghya Dutta Banik and colleagues turned off the sensing abilities of more specific taste cells in mice, the researchers were startled to find other cells responding to flavors. Pulling those cells out of the rodents’ taste buds and giving them a taste of several compounds revealed a group of cells that can sense multiple chemicals across different taste classes, the team reports August 13 in PLOS Genetics. “We never expected that any population of [taste] cells would respond to so many different compounds,” says Dutta Banik, of the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. But taste cells don’t respond to flavors in insolation; the brain and the tongue work together as tastemakers (SN: 11/24/15). So the scientists monitored the brain to see if it received bitter, sweet or umami signals when mice lacked a key protein needed for these broadly tasting cells to relay information. Those observations revealed that without the protein, the brain didn’t get the flavor messages, which was also shown when mice slurped bitter solutions as though they were water even though the rodents hate bitter tastes, says Dutta Banik, who did the work at the University at Buffalo in New York. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 27419 - Posted: 08.15.2020

By Katherine J. Wu Dr. Arianne Pontes Oriá stands firm: She does not make animals cry for a living. Technically, only humans can cry, or weep in response to an emotional state, said Dr. Oriá, a veterinarian at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil. For humans, crying is a way to physically manifest feelings, which are difficult to study and confirm in other creatures. But Dr. Oriá does collect animal tears — the liquid that keeps eyes clean and nourished. In vertebrates, or animals with backbones, tears are vital for vision, Dr. Oriá said. And yet, these captivating fluids have been paid little to no attention, except in a select few mammals. “A lot of vision, we’re not aware of until it’s a problem,” said Sebastian Echeverri, a biologist who studies animal vision but doesn’t work with Dr. Oriá’s team. “We notice when tears are missing.” That’s a bit of a shame, Dr. Oriá said. Because whether it hails from dogs, parrots or tortoises, the stuff that seeps out of animals’ eyes is simply “fascinating,” she said. As she and her colleagues have reported in a series of recent papers, including one published on Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science, tears can be great equalizers: Across several branches of the tree of life, vertebrates seem to swaddle their eyes with fluid in much the same way. But to help them cope with the challenges of various environments, evolution has tinkered with the tears of the world’s creatures in ways that scientists are only beginning to explore. Research like Dr. Oriá’s could offer a glimpse into the myriad paths that eyes have taken to maximize their health and the well-being of the organisms that use them. © 2020 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 27418 - Posted: 08.15.2020